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2010
Maria Elena Graham
Palmdale Unified SD
Maria Elena Graham has worked as a bilingual instructional assistant at Summerwind
Elementary School in the Palmdale School District for the past 9 years. She serves as a liaison
between the school, parents and the community while facilitating interventions for English
Learners in kindergarten through grade six. She attends, translates, and interprets in IEP
meetings, parent conferences, PTA fundraisers, and Student Study Team Meetings at her school site and throughout
the district. Furthermore, Mrs. Graham is the facilitator for the English Learner Advisory Committee meetings at her
school site. In the last two years she has been part of the CABE Chapter 58 meetings where she has been an active
participant in the planning of this annual regional conference. Her positive attitude and commitment to children and
their families make her an invaluable, highly professional and deeply respected educator.
2009
Celia Lemus
Pomona USD
Ms. Lemus has been a Pomona Unified School District employee since 1981 and has
performed her duties as a Bilingual Paraprofessional in different categories of work at
various school sites. She has had the opportunity to successfully assist general and
special education students individually and in small groups. By knowing two languages, she has the capacity to
be part of the bilingual students’ academic development. When most of her students only spoke Spanish she
helped them in Reading, Language, Writing, Math and other subjects. Through her assistance the students
began to understand the material and she and the teacher were very excited to see their progress. After a few
months, they were writing complete sentences with few sentence structure problems. Their math skills were
outstanding. Ms Lemus was proud because she had the necessary patience to keep going. It was so difficult
to work with students that had no skills in English. Nevertheless, she didn’t give up. Ms Lemus believes that
working as a Bilingual Paraprofessional is a calling instead of a job. She believes that by having a chance to
help English Learner students be successful is her greatest award.
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