Mrs. Echeverria grew up in Oak Cliff, a neighborhood of Dallas, TX. Born to immigrants from Laos, she is the first in her family to obtain a college degree. She attended elementary  and middle schools in Dallas ISD and graduated high school from the Hockaday School for Girls.

 

After receiving her bachelor’s degree in Psychology from SMU, she accepted a position in research at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Although she spent almost a decade working with adults and mental health, Echeverria decided to switch careers and pursue teaching, a profession that both her parents had in Laos before coming to America. She went through DISD’s Alternative Teaching Certification Program and landed her first teaching position at Mount Auburn Elementary in East Dallas where she taught both PreK and Kindergarten.

 

Mrs. Echeverria sees first hand how social emotional learning transforms the lives of young and old, alike. The building blocks of social emotional learning create the foundation to all learning. She believes that they focus on the whole child, build strong connections and strong classroom, school and parent communities.