January 2024 Superintendent's Superstar

Surabhi is a senior at Clovis North High School. She is an academic all-star who seeks out challenging and stimulating environments. However, Surabhi is not content to merely succeed in the classroom. She also hopes to actively give back to her community in a way that will enhance the educational experience of young people for generations to come. 

To achieve this goal, Surabhi has taken an issue close to her heart and has worked diligently to make her vision a reality. After noting that students rarely read and study works written by or about people of color, Surabhi felt called to make a difference. She started small at first by taking over Coloring Books Club – a club meant to provide interested students with chances to read shorter works that reflect diverse experiences. Through her leadership, club membership grew, and more students were getting informal opportunities to build empathy and appreciation through literature.

Over time, Surabhi felt called upon to do even more. To achieve this goal, Surabhi worked over the summer to create curriculum for “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros. Once her unit was written, she painstakingly reached out to teachers in various districts and offered them her material if they would consider teaching the book to their students. Surabhi went as far as to use her National History Day winnings to purchase copies of the book so that she could donate them to schools and teachers who wanted to teach the book but didn’t have the funds to procure copies of the text. Since then, Surabhi has partnered with the Assistance League and Barnes & Noble to get as many copies of the book donated as possible. Her persistence means that so far 40 teachers across eight different school districts have agreed to incorporate this book into their curriculum.