{"id":28267,"date":"2024-04-11T00:16:26","date_gmt":"2024-04-11T06:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-department-of-education-commissioner-visits-the-mancos-school-district\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T00:24:43","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:24:43","slug":"colorado-department-of-education-commissioner-visits-the-mancos-school-district","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-department-of-education-commissioner-visits-the-mancos-school-district\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado Department of Education commissioner visits the Mancos School District"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Colorado
Colorado Department of Education Commissioner Susana Cordova visited the Mancos school district at the beginning of April. (Todd Cordrey\/Courtesy Photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, April 2, Colorado Department of Education Commissioner Susana Cordova visited the Mancos RE-6 School District and spent time with district staff and students.<\/p>\n

Superintendent Todd Cordrey shared that the district had invited Cordova, who is a former superintendent herself, to visit the district and see the district\u2019s successes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a really good visit. It was really incredible,\u201d Cordrey said.<\/p>\n

Cordova\u2019s visit coincided with the district\u2019s walkabout instructional days, which is when the district\u2019s teachers visit other teachers\u2019 classrooms to observe how other teachers are instructing their students.<\/p>\n

\u201cSusana Cordova had the opportunity to also go into classrooms, watch teacher instruction and see how well they\u2019re doing teaching kids and with the specific skills we\u2019re working on,\u201d Cordrey said. \u201cIt is differentiation of instruction based on student voice and choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cordrey explained that in this style of teaching method, teachers structure a lesson so that their students are fully engaged and able to make decisions during the learning process.<\/p>\n

Following the period shadowing classrooms, Cordrey said they had the opportunity to hear from her about her thoughts on the classes and district before they met with Montezuma-Cortez Superintendent Tom Burris, representatives from San Juan BOCES and other Montezuma County educational leaders.<\/p>\n

The education leaders shared an 1\u00bd-hour lunch meeting where they talked about \u201cthe challenges and successes we\u2019re having here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really powerful,\u201d Cordrey said.<\/p>\n

They spoke with Cordova about what rural districts are in need of, which Cordrey said Cordova said she would take back to the CDE to help meet the needs of remote school districts.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was really open to hearing our feedback. She was very responsive,\u201d Cordrey said.<\/p>\n

Cordova also shared her vision and goals for the CDE and their strategic plan that will be finished in June, sharing \u201chow that will positively impact\u201d the districts.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very productive meeting. We built relationships, and partnerships were developed,\u201d Cordrey said. \u201cWe felt really heard and understood in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the successful lunch meeting, Cordrey shared that the highlight of Cordova\u2019s visit was three Mancos students giving Cordova a tour of the district.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey shared with her our history and that we\u2019re the oldest operating high school in the state, as well as about the BEST grant that allowed us to do our extensive $25 million renovation and improvement of our facilities,\u201d Cordrey said. \u201cThen also just so many of the unique things about our campus like the time capsule we have, and it was a really good opportunity for her to really connect with our students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cordrey added that Cordova and the students greatly enjoyed one another\u2019s company.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe educator in her just came out and the students were fully engaged and they were enjoying each other\u2019s company and really learning from each other,\u201d Cordrey said. \u201cShe was asking them about where they plan to go (after high school) and how their educational experience has been, and they had a great conversation. I was just in the background watching them and it was really an endearing time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The visit allowed the district to showcase the work they\u2019re doing for students in the county.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very proud of the quality of professionals we have in the school district, and I wanted her to see that firsthand,\u201d Cordrey said. \u201cI\u2019m very proud of our student outcomes as a result of our incredible staff, and I felt like it was important for her to see that, especially from our remote, rural school district.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cordrey said he hopes the district can continue to host school education leaders like Cordova.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe definitely will continue to show off Mancos school district to state and national officials so that they can understand that good work we\u2019re doing, number one, and also that it is important that the locus of control be at the local level, so that we can have the greatest impact,\u201d Cordrey said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students lead a tour, share views with commissioner<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[155,28,83,392,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-28267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-education","tag-headlines","tag-mancos","tag-mancos-school-district-re-6","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80361,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28267\/revisions\/80361"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28267"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=28267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}