Nine teachers with Deferred Action status were honored Friday by the White House as “Champions of Change” for their leadership as educators in their communities.
“It’s a recognition of all the work that we’ve done,” Maria Dominguez, one of the honorees, said on msnbc Monday. “I’m not talking about just me, but the people that work around me to make things happen.”
Dominguez, who was brought to the U.S. as a child by her widowed mother who worked multiple jobs, says she knew there would be obstacles in her way, particularly when it came to pursuing college.
She said it’s important for her to be able to share her own story with her students. “I tell my story because when they talk to me, I know they feel afraid of the status of their parents, which is normal, but I tell them: I came from the same community you did. This is my story and if I did it, you can do it,” Dominguez said.
She added, “Some of my kids’ parents have two jobs and I know they come home late and sometimes they don’t do their homework. So letting them know that even though it might be hard and that they’re going to be facing obstacles, everything is possible.”
Nicole Acevedo
I am a bilingual national reporter specializing in issues affecting Latino communities in the U.S., the Caribbean and Latin America. Experience I have produced hundreds of stories across digital, radio and broadcast platforms throughout my career — reporting on everything from elections, natural disasters and immigration to pop culture trends, social justice issues and breaking news. I'm best known for my coverage of the crises affecting Puerto Rico, including its reconstruction process after Hurricane Maria, the island’s financial crisis and more. After graduating from the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University with a bachelor's degree in broadcast and digital journalism in 2016, I joined the inaugural cohort of students who helped launch the Spanish-language bilingual journalism master’s program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Awards I was a 2024 finalist for the NAHJ/University of Florida award in investigative journalism for my reporting uncovering the challenges Puerto Rican families face in caring for their elders, given that the island’s population is aging faster than most places on Earth and fragmented by migration. I served as the lead reporter and writer of NBC News' 2022 Hispanic Heritage Month project “Who’s Latino? Amid growing numbers the definition is expanding,” which was awarded an NAHJ Ñ Award for best Latino issues story for print/digital.