Dr. Raul Gonzalez: Director
Dr. Raul Gonzalez shares a letter to the TREC community!
Dear TREC Community,
I am honored and excited to introduce myself to you as the new director of the Tucson Regional Educator Collaborative. It has been amazing to see from the outside what Dr. Kinser-Traut, staff, and the TREC Advisory Board, have been able to accomplish these past five years supporting educators throughout the greater Tucson area. And now, I am both thrilled and humbled to help continue this work.
Though originally from the Texas/Mexico borderlands, I have called Southern Arizona home for the past eleven years where I have immersed myself in the educator community — serving first as a teacher at Pueblo High School in Tucson, and then later as director for the Arizona Teachers Academy here at the University of Arizona.
Along this path, I have had the privilege of working in professional development spaces with educators from across the state. I intend to bring the insights I have gained from these experiences to further expand TREC’s relationships with those state and local partners already working with PK-12 educators. What’s more, I aim to focus significant efforts and resources on engaging with area teacher-leaders who are eager to serve.
I look forward to working with — and learning from — Southern Arizona’s educator community, and I encourage you all to be on the lookout for what TREC has planned for the rest of 2023 and beyond.
Best regards,
Raul C. Gonzalez, Ph.D
(he/him/él)
Alicia Durbin: Project Coordinator
Alicia Durbin has been in the early childhood education field for 19 years— teaching, mentoring, and leading. She loves supporting children, families, early childhood professionals and all educators. She taught in a 4-year-old classroom for eight years, was the director at St. Mark’s Preschool and Kindergarten for eight years and is now the Project Coordinator with Tucson Regional Educator Collaborative (TREC). She is a University of Arizona alumni and has a master’s degree in Education from NAU. She is mom to an elementary-aged son and an adult stepdaughter. She continues to learn both as an educator and parent on a daily basis from her own children and the teachers and volunteers she works with. Alicia was part of the SAZAEYC board for five years and held the position of President of the Board. She currently works to promote teacher retention and professional development for all teachers, birth -12th grade.