De Leon, a fifth-grade math teacher, has quickly created a foundation of trust among students in his first year at Vista. You can find him on the soccer pitch coaching kids, at the grocery store, or nearby at his home.
Whether it’s his fellow teachers and staff members or the students he is guiding, it hasn’t taken long for De Leon to find that Vista is a learning environment that he wants to be fully immersed in. The hope is to help students grow and build relationships that impact them beyond their school years.
“I want the relationships built in the classroom to extend outside of the classroom, hopefully for their whole lives,” he said. “I think most of the relationships that I cherish are those that are built in school and that we held on for a long time.”
De Leon has coached boys soccer at Kenowa Hills High School and will be coaching at Potter’s House next season. He is a familiar figure at soccer games of all ages around the community, showing up to practices to help younger students who are just starting out in the sport.
“Most of my students play soccer, so I just try to get involved in that way,” he said. “I think that really shows that their teacher cares.”
De Leon’s investment in students has shown in the classroom as well, helping Vista continue to outperform the district like it has for 16 years. Single-digit multiplication was a struggle for students, and without having that foundational skill memorized, more complicated lessons were that much harder. But thanks to intervention, their scores from the third interim proficiency improved by 45%.
“I think meeting students at whatever level they are and building off that, that was the key to success for our proficiency scores,” he said. “That was something that we focused on at the beginning of the school year, and I think that definitely helped them build that base that they didn’t have before.
Keep up the excellent work, Mr. De Leon!
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About Vista Charter Academy
Vista Charter Academy is a tuition-free, public charter school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, serving students in Young 5s through eighth grade. It is part of the National Heritage Academies (NHA®) network, which includes more than 100 tuition-free, public charter schools serving more than 65,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade across nine states. For more information, visit nhaschools.com.
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