SUSANA LARA

Class of 1991
​Inducted in 2015

Susana was inducted into the SHSAA Hall of Fame in 2015.

Susana Lara is a curriculum specialist at SHS. She received her B.S. degree in secondary education with endorsements in Spanish, English and ESL and her M.A. degree in education leadership in teaching and learning. Her students won awards in the National Spanish Exam Competition and the UNL Language Competition. She worked to create curriculum for the first “Spanish for Spanish” program and to align it with the Language Arts curriculum to support literacy and writing skills in both English and Spanish, which is growing. She advocated for a Latin American Studies course, which is now offered to students.

As Advanced Placement coordinator, she has worked with other teachers to expand the program, resulting in SHS having the highest number of students taking and passing the AP Spanish and Culture Examination. The classes have grown from one section to multiple sections and have maintained high passing rates. She works with parents to inform them of the benefits of advanced placement, dual enrollment and higher education. She held a parent-student conference and college fair that included more than 100 parents and students who visited UNO. Other schools since have followed suit. She won the Knights of Columbus Education Leadership Award, Alice Buffett Outstanding Teacher Award and a Barrientos Scholarship Award in Education.

Her community service includes starting the first Spanish youth club at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. She volunteers as a religious education teacher at the church and has received volunteer awards from Gomez Heritage Elementary School. The Latino Leaders group she sponsors has volunteered at local elementary schools, adopted families at Christmas, cleaned up South Omaha, painted over graffiti, and participated in Cinco de Mayo activities.