Quintanilla Middle School 10-year Reunions

This is a photo taken at the 10 year reunion for the Quintanilla 8th grade Class of 2008 in 2018. Ms. Halton (RIP 2022, Quintanilla Counselor) is to the far right in the front row. She was a priceless supporter of all students, and also a strong supporter of what was then called the School Time Capsule Project. It is now called the RootsandGoals.org Pk3-12 Homework Project serving students from the age of 3 through 18. Now only seniors have their Roots & Goals Self-addressed Envelopes (with copies of letters from each parent, grandparent, and other close adults) placed into one container for all their class and placed into a 500 or 700-pound vault for 10 years. How many high school graduates will miss this 10-year reunion to get back their envelope? Student achievement has never been higher!!!

Jonathan Kozol Fought School Inequality for Decades. Here’s One Final Plea. With his latest, and last, book, the 87-year-old writer refuses false optimism.

A little history lesson for those who didn’t know.

A million dollar investment per school will NEVER improve achievement in any normal sized Pk3-12 Texas school more than the free RootsandGoals.org Homework Project.

Home | The StudentMotivation.org Homework Project 2/9/26 the Project is in the process of being renamed the RootsandGoals.org Homework Project. The goal is to simp ...

Updated 3/2/26 -The RootsandGoals.org Pk3-12 Homework Project is now the new name for the old StudentMotivation.org Homework Project. The goal was a name more accurately describing the range and driving force of this free student achievement acceleration Project. Handouts on the website are updated as the new URL is established: https://studentmotivation.org/handouts/.

Students themselves change wonderfully when focusing on life goals & family roots in school through the RootsandGoals.org Homework Project at no cost! Academic achievement always soars!

In 2023 South Oak Cliff High School (SOC) had a 7-year average School Effectiveness Indices (SEI) score that made it the 19th highest SEI scoring of the 22 comprehensive high schools in Dallas ISD. (See the SEI measurement definition and school records at https://mydata.dallasisd.org/SL/SD/SEI/Default.jsp.)

In 2023/24 SOC started their StudentMotivation.org Project by asking all students in all grades to write a letter to themselves about their life goals. The 2024 SOC SEI score jumped 9.4 points! It was the largest one year gain in history for SOC! It was the 3rd highest 2024 SEI of all 22 comprehensive high schools! (Disciplined research is needed to verify cause and effect, but consistent improvement like this has followed this Project focusing students on their family roots and life goals since 2005. It would have died long ago without consistent academic and behavioral improvement by students! BB)

In 2024/25 separate letters from SOC parents and grandparents to their student, about their dreams for the student and a story from family history, were added. Only about half of SOC students requested such letters from each parent, grandparent and other close relative. When a letter was finished the student and letter writer were told to meet, in person or by phone, to read it together. They discussed the letter and answered each others questions.

After all letters were discussed with each letter writer, the student writes a letter to themselves about each letter. Then the student wrote about their own life plans. This last letter also went into the Roots & Goals Self-addressed envelope.

The SOC 2025 SEI broke all records! It jumped another 9.8 points above the 9.5 record setting 2024 improvement!

SOC earned a 2025 SEI score of 63.8! It was the highest of all 37 DISD high schools, including higher than all Dallas ISD Magnet or Choice secondary schools for the 2025 SEI score! (See green area for Project years in first 10-year SEI Score Chart of all 22 comprehensive high schools below. And know that SOC celebrates having the highest Black enrollment of any school in all of DFW!)

In only 5 of the past 10 years have any DISD secondary schools secured higher SEI scores than the SOC 63.8 score in 2025. They were 2 Magnet schools! (See second 10-year SEI Score Chart below for all DISD Magnet Schools with the 5 scores higher than 63.8 highlighted in yellow.) These 2 magnet schools were the Science and Engineering & TAG Magnet Schools. They are often named as some of the best high schools in the nation!

SOC is now working toward such honors, but multiple repeats of the 2024 & 2025 SEI value added scores will be needed. Scores near or above 60 every year will be needed. That will require student work, a faithful focus on life goals, and diligently exploring family roots with family members. But it can be done!!! If effectively moved into being an annual Homework Project, the annual SOC SEI scores will remain high!

Now every school at all levels, Pk3 through 12th grade, should place near each homeroom American Flag, a Roots & Goals Envelope Box. Cost with labels is less than $5.

Inside, the dated and self-addressed Roots & Goals Envelopes for each student are copies of the family letters they have studied and know well. Two copies of all letters can be made free at any Dallas library. One copy is for the original letter writer. The other is sent to school in the Roots & Goals Envelope.

These Roots & Goals Letters are about student goals, with a new story from family history in each letter. Students who know their life goals and are studying family roots become different students. Negative behaviors disappear. Goal-focused behaviors dominate!

Such family letter writing to students starts when a child enters school at the age of 3. School sends one copy of the bi-lingual handout in the Handout section online home for every planned letter writing parent, grandparent, or other person close to the student. This first bi-lingual form in the handout section of the website gives each parent and relative information about the Project and writing a letter to their student.

The school also provides 2 envelopes for each student to take home. A parent is to date and address each of the envelopes with the student's name and address. The date is above the name. These two dated and self-addressed envelopes become the student's Roots & Goals Envelopes for that year.

After writing their letter, each letter writer meets with the child to read it to them, explain it, and discuss the meaning. Parents collect & copy such letters so the valuable originals can stay in safe keeping at home using one of the Roots & Goals Envelopes the parent prepares to store them. Free copying is available in any Dallas Public Library to make two copies of all letters. One copy is for the other dated and self-addressed Roots & Goals Envelope which is not sealed. Parents send this unsealed Roots & Goals envelope, with the copies inside, to school. The teacher counts the number of letters inside and writes that number under the student's address and circles the number. The envelope is then stored in the Roots & Goals Envelope Box near the flag in the room where the student says their daily pledge.

More active student involvement starts in the 3rd grade as student literacy skills advance and the RootsandGoals.org Homework Project changes. Students themselves begin writing letters to each family member they want a letter from as a homework assignment. They also give each potential writer a bi-lingual copy of the Project directions. The same meetings with each letter writer happen as before. All original letters are kept at home in safe storage in the second Roots & Goals Envelope. The copies are placed in one of the 2 envelopes provided by the school. Starting in the 3rd grade both envelopes are dated and self-addressed by the student, possibly in school before they are brought home.

These 2 envelopes become the Roots & Goals Envelopes for that year for the student. Each student puts the original letters they received inside one dated and self-addressed envelope. They then write a letter to themselves about each letter received and their own life goals. That letter also goes inside the Roots & Goals Envelope that will stay at home. Remember, this is homework.

This envelope with all originals is then brought to a library so 2 free copies can be made. One copy of each letter goes into the envelope going to school. The Roots & Goals Envelope with the copies is NOT sealed but brought to the teacher in school who counts the number of letters before sealing each Roots and Goals Envelope. They write the number of letters inside, including the one the student wrote, beneath the students address and circles it. Then each envelope is returned to the students and they place the sealed envelope inside the Roots & Goals Envelope Box near the flag in the classroom where the student says the Pledge of Allegiance each day.

Each student knows they will take their envelope home at the end of each school year to re-read the letters and keep them safe. They then plan for next year's new letters, updated goals and new stories from family history, and a new Roots & Goals Envelope. The process continues every year through graduation, as an annual homework writing assignment.

New meaning is constantly added to the daily Pledge of Allegiance as academic achievement grows. As more family members join in writing annual letters to their students, and as the percentage of students assembling self-addressed Roots & Goals Envelopes gets closer to 100%, the rise in academic achievement will continue every year for the school!

New academic records will be achieved in any school that faithfully uses the RootsandGoals.org Homework Project! But the phenomenal progress at SOC cannot be promised. A foundation was certainly laid by 9 years of seasoned leadership under Dr. Johnson.

Dr. Willie F. Johnson Jr. has been our SOC Principal for 9 years. He has mastered how to turn a neighborhood comprehensive high school into The Best Texas High School, while securing three 5A Texas State Football Championships along the way, in 2021, 2022, and 2025, with Coach Todd following the same belief system as Dr. Johnson!

No other Texas high school has achieved such a combination of athletic championships while also making record setting academic progress at the same time!

Our SOC Students & Community are the real winners, BOTH in academics AND in sports!!!

Meaning improves student achievement in every school, at any age, at minimal, if any, cost!

This is Mr. Betzen. I am very happy to see so many of you sharing the sad announcement of Coach Richmond's death and his funeral Saturday morning in Garland. I hope many of you can make it. It would be great to talk with you. If you still have a letter in the Quintanilla Time Capsule Vault that is 10 years old or more, hopefully volunteers will be helping to organize them for a reunion to return them to you.
The new StudentMotivation.org Project involves students of all ages Pk3 through graduation. Only the final 12th grade envelope with copies of letters from family and by the student remains in the Vault 10 years. 10-year high school reunions are much more common and better attended.

About 14 vaults remain in middle and elementary schools. Eventually they will be moved to high schools. 5 high schools already have vaults.

Roots & Goals letters are written by Thanksgiving each year by both family adults and each student. Each student gets a self-addressed Roots & Goals Letter Envelope that is filled with copies of that student's letters. It is sealed and stored in a Roots & Goals Envelope Box in each homeroom. The students in each homeroom have their Envelopes in that Box. They will see it daily as they say the Pledge. Hopefully they will remember the letters inside. At the end of each school year students take home their encelope to read the letters again and plan for the next years letters.

Home | StudentMotivation.org Project Education thrives as students focus more often on achieving their own life goals anchored in truth and their own family histor ...

I just found out Quintanilla Coach Larry Richmonds has died. The funeral service is this Saturday, 1/10/26 at 10 am in Garland at Saturn Rd. Church of Christ, 3030 Saturn Rd. Here is url to obit: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/larry-richmond-obituary?id=60383366
I look forward to visiting with all who can attend. Please share with all you know who may remember Coach Richmond. He was a well loved coach!

Larry M Richmond Obituary (2025) - Sunnyvale, TX - New Hope Funeral Home - Sunnyvale View Larry M Richmond's obituary, send flowers and sign the guestbook.

Today is 10/27/25 and the old School Time Capsule Project is renamed the StudentMotivation.org Project and improves all schools serving ages from 3 past 19! Vaults are only used by high schools for the storing of the last 12th grade envelope filled with letters for each student until the 10-Year High School Reunion!

School academic improvement goes up 10 times as fast as it did under the old time capsule project. Now envelopes filled with letters are written by Thanksgiving and returned to students at the end of every school year!

Study the StudentMotivation.org web site. You want your children's school to be doing this free-to-use Project!

Every school with old letters in vaults needs volunteers to help plan a class reunion to return them.

Bill Betzen, [email protected] (Put student motivation in your subject line.)

Quintanilla has a new principal, Sandra Hernandez. This is email I just sent her that included plans for the letters in the Quintanilla Vault that must be returned to alumni:

Dear Mrs. Hernandez,

I am a Quintanilla teacher who retired in 2011 to volunteer almost full time spreading what was known as the School Time-Capsule Project at Quintanilla. Covid killed the letter writing and the Quintanilla SEI dropped to the bottom over the next 5 years. I hope you will allow the new and greatly improved StudentMotivation.org Project to return to Quintanilla. We have about 10 classes with letters in the Quintanilla Time-Capsule Vault with over half of them past their 10-year Class Reunion return date for the return of those letters.

The Project now covers all grades from age 3 Pre-K through graduation. After Covid the first school to restart with the new model of the StudentMotivation.org Project was South Oak Cliff High School (SOC). They immediately became the most improved Dallas ISD high school in over a decade!
See spreadsheet below.

Here is a one page summary of the new design:
See document below

As you have time I would love to meet, but I am retired and I know you are VERY busy. Just say when & where.

I am working with Trustee Prisma Garcia to get all District 4 schools to excel!

Will you be at tomorrow's DISD Board Meeting for Prisma’s swearing in? I will be there for my 3 minutes on the Project.

I look forward to helping you move Quintanilla students toward their more true potential!

Welcome to Quintanilla!

Bill Betzen

Sent from AOL on Android

Quintanilla 8th graders from 2010 to 2019; we moved your letters from the shelves inside the Quintanilla Time Capsule Vault from the shelves you placed them on into plastic containers where they are more secure inside the vault. The 2010 8th grade letters are now on top, down to the 2019 letters on the bottom when all Project letter writing in all DISD schools stopped due to the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Volunteers will slowly be sorting letters alphabetically by class, then preparing address lists to use in addressing postcards using the addresses on the 10+ year old envelopes. Many need to be updated but let's get the data sorted by year ans in spreadsheets so the updates are easier.

First, once the addresses on the envelopes have all been photographed we will need volunteers to input the addresses into a spreadsheet. We will use the spreadsheet to address postcards to send to each class advertising the time and date of the reunion for each 8th grade class 2010 through 2014, then finally the class of 2015, hopefully by the end of May. Call Quintanilla (972-502-3200) to volunteer if you want to do this work at home on your computer with Microsoft Office.

I will email you the photos and spreadsheet format we will using.

Volunteers must register to be a DISD volunteer first to be cleared for security purposes since you will be handling personal information. Go to https://dallasisd.voly.org/.

I look forward to the reunion as much as you. It will also be announced here. How many received this message?
Bill Betzen 2000-2011 Computer Teacher.

This photo of the 10 shelves inside a vault holding student envelopes, many including letters from family after 2010, helps document the first 12 years of the School Time Capsule Project, 2005 to 2017. Except for 2016 & 2017, 100% of letters to and by students focused on goals 10 years into the future. In 2016 all students in Quintanilla, and in 2017 in Browne Middle School, were beginning to both receive letters from family about their dreams for the students and with a family history included! Dramatic improvements started! But in 2020 all letters writing stopped due to the Covid Pandemic. See StudentMotivation.org Project and the history link on homepage.

studentmotivation.org The Foundation: Meaningful annual letters for 14 years, Pre-k through 12th grade, from each parent, grandparent, and close relative, that inspire connection and reflection. These letters will always include dreams for the student and a new story from family history. One, or more, parents for each 60...