Meet Daniel Saenz
Daniel Saenz comes from a legacy of service in the city of Houston. His mother, Graciela, served on Houston City Council in the 1990s. His father, Elroy, is a retired Houston Police Officer and Army Veteran. Naturally, he is very involved in the community himself. Daniel is a graduate of the United Way Non-Profit Board training program Project Blueprint and Leadership ISD.
Following in his parent’s footsteps, Daniel is involved in the community.
“I'm also on the board for the LULAC 60. I am a sergeant at arms for the organization. LULAC 60 is one of the oldest Latino organized, community groups in all of the United States. They've done a lot of work within our community and so I joined them a few years back to see how I can engage with them. I want to find ways to make those connections and find ways to help serve the community by finding organizations and saying, ‘who do you want to talk to or what's your target group? . Okay, well let's go find them.’ My mantra is I want to help. Developing that really has taken me to another level.”
Daniel is very passionate about education.
“I'm also working with los ninos, which is actually an early education program there in the East End. They provide early education to a Montessori program, which is actually very unique and you don't find many of them in the lower income areas of Houston. And then I was on a board for a charter school, we tried to open up a charter school in the Kashmere Garden area so that was a very unique undertaking. It takes a lot to open up a charter school, and being on the board of an upstart charter school is very very difficult and challenging. Sadly we weren’t given a charter. I learned so much about school governance, especially here in the state of Texas. It helped me to stay engaged with education. I still stay in the know when it comes to the different ISDs and the different programs that are going around in the Houston area. I advocate for all schools, which is a lot of fun to do because there's so much out there. I am a huge fan of Leadership ISD, I was going down that road in education. I had made a lot of solid contacts that I wanted to help. So when Leadership ISD came to me and said hey, you know, are you interested, I said, ‘Absolutely!’ I get excited and happy that I'm now in this area. I was not a good student. I was one of those students that, you know, very easily could be called stupid by the teachers or by other students. I failed in almost every attempt and was never given too much support. My parents loved me. Don't get me wrong... my parents were always there and they always pushed me to do well but they weren't teachers themselves.”
Daniel’s passion for education began in 2008 when the oil and gas industry failed and he began working in a school.
“So, within six months of losing my job, I started a new job. And I was an IT Director for Southwest charter schools, which is right there off of 59 and West Park. I slowly grew with the school. I came in like a wrecking ball just sort of Miley Cyrus's song, thinking that I knew everything there was to know because I was from oil and gas and man I had all this experience. And I didn't know diddly squat. I didn't know how schools functioned. So that was a real eye opener but after about three months, me and the CFO had a heart to heart. ‘I said okay, I want to help.’ Low and behold the very last year I was there, I was already doing business development, both for the charter school and for the apple technology departments, advocating for the school and working with new businesses. Then they needed a teacher for computer science class. And just so you know in the IT world computer science is something completely different from IT support. So I said yes, because I was eager to help but it also meant that I had to learn programming. So I taught one ninth grade class. And it was one of the best experiences I've ever had in my entire life. I wanted to be the teacher I always wanted. That teacher that everybody always talked about. I knew that in a classroom, it wasn't just always about the lesson you will learn, it was about communication with the students. And so, at that school I wore a suit and tie every day. I greeted the students at the door with a firm handshake and eye contact. This was a learning environment you were getting ready to come into, and it was a safe environment you were coming into. This was our classroom, and these were 99% Latino and one African-American student. This was in a low income area and they were learning computer science, which is not an easy subject to learn. There was no foundation so I was teaching the foundations of computer science and they didn’t have computers at home to practice on. What really set us apart was the class was to be instructed off of what's called project based learning. A project based learning environment is much like the workforce, working in the real world. Here's your task. Here are the instructions you need to complete the task. You've got one person who's the lead, you've got the others who are the supporters and team works back and forth until the project's done. It's a very unique way of learning. The teacher takes a backseat and essentially becomes a facilitator. So that way we can answer questions and we can help them understand different perspectives and views of how to understand the problem. So, this was an amazing environment for the kids to really either thrive in or struggle. What I wanted to do was make sure that if there were struggles that they did not feel like they were struggling alone. I was going to struggle with them. I was going to work with them.”
Daniel is the type of advocate that we need supporting the students in our school system. He meets students where they are and helps them to get where they need to be. He has done the work in the field and now he is using his access to do the work behind the scenes.
