08-04-2025
Goliad honors assistant principal for winning award
Apr. 7—Goliad Elementary School honored Assistant Principal Samantha Natividad-Ramos Monday for winning the TEPSA Region 18 Assistant Principal of the Year Award.
TEPSA stands for Texas Elementary Principals and Supervisors Association.
Students, teachers, staff and families filled the auditorium to celebrate her. The Odessa High School Mariachis also paid tribute.
Students told her how much they appreciated her and offered hugs. She also received a bouquet of paper flowers along with her plaque.
Students said there are a lot of things that make Natividad-Ramos stand out as an assistant principal.
She's confident and helps students feel confident and strong.
Natividad-Ramos supports students at school, works hard, puts others before herself, shows how much she cares about the kids and makes them feel like they belong.
She said she does the job, not for the awards, but because of everyone in the room and thanked them for making Goliad a great place to be and making it easy to come to work every day.
Natividad-Ramos said she knew something was going on because "it was so secretive."
She has been with Ector County ISD for 15 years, seven of them as an assistant principal. This is her fourth year at Goliad.
"It really is an honor and a blessing. I was definitely taken by surprise. It's not something that I was expecting. I didn't go into education" for the glory, but to make an impact on student lives, Natividad-Ramos said.
"This is just a perk to it," she added.
The stereotypical assistant principal is mean.
"I hope that I have changed that. I try to, like I said, just make an impact. I know a lot of our students come from hard backgrounds, and so I ... want to be that change, that person, that they look back on, and ... think, you know what? She believed in me. She's the reason I kept going. ... So I ... try to motivate students as much as possible to be successful," Natividad-Ramos said.
She added that having the students come up and say things about her made her cry. The mariachis behind her also teared up.
