Francisco Cardoza
5th Grade Teacher
Village Park ES
The 2022-23 Teacher of the Year for Orange County Public Schools is an educator who transports, transforms and elevates students through his teaching. Francisco Cardoza, a 5th grade teacher at Village Park ES, keeps students involved and engaged in learning minute by minute.
It starts at the beginning of the day, when students are welcomed to his class with a handshake and a high-five. Cardoza’s classroom is a high-energy place, with motivational chants, songs and movement infused in the instruction. He is also known for radical classroom transformations. He recently turned his room into a NASCAR race track, where he engaged students in lessons about force, motion and fractions while wearing an orange racing jumpsuit.
During lessons, he expects students to participate, and he regularly checks in to verify their understanding. He also frequently draws connections between classwork and real life, and helps students take charge of their own learning.
When Village Park ES opened to relieve overcrowding in nearby schools in August 2021, Cardoza jumped right in to help shape the culture of the new school. He started the school’s National Elementary Honor Society chapter and its Safety Patrol, leads one of the school’s four academic houses, helps run the school’s Amazing Shake initiative – which teaches students professional skills, such as the power of the handshake – and regularly tutors and mentors.
At the Lake Nona-area school, a majority of the students speak Spanish. As a native Spanish-speaker and former English-language learner, Cardoza offers the same encouragement and has the high expectations that his own teachers had for him.
His favorite school day of the week at Village Park is Monday, because that is the day when “all staff members that are a part of our house meet by the car loop or walker area and greet our scholars with music and hyped-up energy,” Cardoza said.
He also has some advice for other educators: “Be authentic and don't try to be someone you are not. We must model by example and let students know that having similarities is awesome but being different is amazing!”