Please review this candidate's answers to the following questions by reading their written responses and/or watching their videos at the end of this page.

Roy Enriquez: A graduate of North Texas with a degree in music education, I have just completed my eighteenth year of teaching at North Garland High School. My whole career has been in Garland ISD first serving at Jackson Technology Center Middle School for seventeen years. During my tenure there, I took the program from a little over 100 students my first year as an assistant to its peak of 266 within my third year as head director. We saw the first Sweepstakes wins from that campus while I was there and went from taking one orchestra to taking three. We continuously received sweepstakes and high ratings at festivals. I am an active adjudicator for TMAA as well as serving as a guest clinician for All-Region Orchestras. I continuously judge for Solo and Ensemble competitions in the DFW area. I am very proud of the community that I and my assistants have created in our music programs. Students continuously come back to visit and say how much of a safe place our classroom was for them. When not working, I enjoy taking and teaching yoga classes and teaching private lessons. My favorite pastime is staying home with my husband and cuddling with my cat and two dogs.

Describe what personal qualities make you a good candidate for serving on the TODA Board and why you are interested in serving. Please include any prior experience in serving TODA in other capacities.

When I first entered this career, there was a world wind of excitement thinking of all the potential. I was hired as an assistant director into a program that was seemingly struggling to grow and find success at UIL evaluations. My first goal was to try to increase my knowledge in pedagogy and add more “tools in my toolbox” for the classroom. In this sense, TODA was exactly what I needed. My first convention I felt incredibly excited: I was like a kid in a candy store going to all the reading sessions and filling up my schedule with as much knowledge as possible. With all the things I learned, our program received its first ever sweepstakes and the growth and success only continued. I contributed a lot of these achievements to the knowledge I gained from TODA sessions and the community of teachers I not only learned from, but became friends with. Throughout the years, this organization has become important to me and my personal growth as a teacher. It is because of this love for the organization that I would like to have the opportunity to become a board member. I feel one of my personal fortes has been my ability to map out what my goals are and turn them into action items. Whether it's organizing lessons, analyzing a situation  and finding the nuances to have the best outcomes I will put in the extra time to make it happen. The desire to succeed is one of the qualities that help me flourish in the classroom. It is also important to me that campuses such as mine that are title one, very diverse and low socio-economical have their needs met from an organization such as ours. I would be the only Title one campus teacher on the board if selected. This community of campuses have different needs and I think having someone represent them would be vital to our organization. Also, while I am a high school teacher, my experience and knowledge is based from the majority of my career at the middle school level. I believe this allows me to understand the unique needs of both types of programs. To have the opportunity to take these skills and ambitions and apply them to TODA would be a blessing for me. TODA is an organization that I have actively participated in through serving on the hospitality and Silent auction committee and presenting during last year's Summer convention on a panel focusing on diversity and inclusion in the classroom. I am currently on the IDEA committee for TODA and serve as the Chair where we come together to help find ideas and ways in which we can meet the needs of our BIPOC community in the state.

What are the current challenges you see facing string education in Texas, and what would you do to address these as a member of the TODA Board?

One of the biggest challenges we have are financial deficiencies. We need to work with all parties to help keep string education as much of a priority as others when it comes to budgets on both district and state levels. This is something I would like to tackle by gathering data throughout the state and make it presentable for string teachers to use as a tool when talking with campuses and school districts to help them fight for their programs and know the value of an orchestra.

What is your vision for TODA moving forward?

One of the ways that I hope to impact TODA is to continue the success of our organization as well as make it a more mindful community when it comes to diversity of our students and making sure we are meeting their needs. This means considering more diverse judges, clinicians and composers in hopes that they may see themselves one day choosing our career path at a time when there are so many people leaving the field.