María Del Carmen Martínez was born May 20, 1976 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Mari is the daughter of Héctor and Mildred. Héctor was a comptroller in the private sector, and Mildred was a secondary school principal. Mari is the oldest of three children and has a daughter named Mia.

Mari graduated from Colegio Puertorriqueño de Niñas, a private, all-girls K-12 school in Guaynabo, PR. She attended Tufts University in Medford, MA, where she graduated in 1998 with a degree in Child Development and a teaching certification. Mari also completed a Masters of Arts in Teaching with a focus in Early Childhood Education from Relay Graduate School of Education in 2017.

After graduation, Mari worked at the Tufts Educational Day Care Center, the university laboratory school, for two years. During this time, she was able to put into practice everything she learned about developmentally appropriate practices in early childhood and how young children learn through play. After this experience, she moved back to Puerto Rico and worked at Robinson School for the next 8 years as an ESL Pre-K and Kindergarten teacher.

Mari moved to Houston in 2008 and started her career in Alief as a Bilingual Kindergarten teacher at Hearne Elementary. She was in the classroom for five years and then worked as a Language Arts/Social Studies Specialist at Hearne for two years.

In 2015, a bond referendum passed that approved the building of Pre-K centers in the district. Mari was hired as the Early Childhood Transition Facilitator, a position that was created to be a part of the Language Arts Department. During her time as the EC Transition Facilitator, Mari focused on ensuring the district Pre-K program met the state’s requirements of high quality. This included: providing early childhood-specific professional development sessions, providing coaching to PK teachers, administering a progress monitoring tool and looking at data to identify and address needs across the district, evaluating the PK program, and creating yearly goals and next steps for improvement.

Mari applied and was awarded several grants to enhance the quality of early childhood education within the district’s Pre-K program, as well as for the private childcare centers in the Alief area. Mari also led the planning of the Full-Day Pre-K Pilot implementation that started with five elementary campuses that went from half-day to full-day Pre-K, which added additional literacy and oral language development opportunities for students. At this time, the Early Childhood Department was created and Mari became the Early Childhood Coordinator. The EC Department now has a team of Early Childhood Coaches that plan and support Pre-K and Kinder teachers and specialists across Alief. In 2021, the EC Department, under Mari’s leadership, began the implementation of experiential learning in Pre-K at 14 campuses, and later across the district. Experiential learning focuses on building vocabulary and background knowledge through purposeful play and hands-on, immersive experiences.

Mari’s passion for early childhood has been evident throughout her career. She believes in the importance of providing developmentally appropriate and high-quality learning opportunities to all students during their foundational years. Mari understands that young children learn best through purposeful and playful experiences carefully designed to enhance and promote learning.

Martinez Early Learning Center