Michael Ruibal – Black Diamond Continuation School

When Michael Ruibal started college in his hometown of Sacramento, he didn’t set out to choose education as his field of study at first, but it seemed that education was out to choose him. Michael started his teaching career in the MESA Engineering Program at CSUS as a computer science major. Within a year, he was chosen to be a student facilitator for the LSAMP Program and Michael was given his first formal introduction to the teaching field. Michael was hooked and worked at the college for 6 more years in various teaching positions; he eventually returned to CSUS after graduating to earn his single subject teaching credential in mathematics and also become a Noyce Scholar in 2009.
 
Michael has been extremely happy working at Black Diamond High School for the past 6 years and has been thriving as an educator at the site. BDHS is an alternative high school in Pittsburg that has wonderful students and staff. Everyone at the school has been making strides to become increasingly better as each year progresses. The school has recently been recognized as a Model Continuation High School by the California Department of Education. The staff at BDHS has worked hard to incorporate various strategies that allow students to become effective collaborators and communicators, as well as creative and critical thinkers.
 
Michael has always had an interest in technology and makes it his goal to incorporate inventive ways to engage his students during class. Michael uses a student response system to get instant feedback during direct instruction in order check for individual student understanding. Michael uses kinesthetic activities such as quiz-quiz-trade and stations activities in order to get students out of their seats and moving around the classroom. Michael also uses a Problem of the Month and MARS/MAC performance tasks to encourage critical thinking, as well as communication amongst his students.
 
To share what he’s learned over his ten years of teaching, Michael often collaborates with his fellow teachers around the area. In 2017, Michael gave a presentation titles “Engaging High Needs Learners with Communication Strategies” at the California Math Conference North at Asilomar. Over the summer, Michael led an EdCamp session at the SVMI summer institute. He is also the Educational Technology Mentor at his site and assists his fellow teachers with any tech support that is needed.
 
If Michael wins the NBC All Star Teacher award, he plans on upgrading student and teacher technology and software at BDHS to better augment collaborative learning and digital teaching practices. If the school can do so, we will also expand the social-emotional programs at the school to better meet student needs at BDHS.