Learn more about Misla Barco's work as a teacher at East Palo Alto Academy on Stanford YouTube.

Misla Barco, a high school Spanish teacher at East Palo Alto Academy, was immediately suspicious when she was asked to be at Vice Principal Jeffrey Camarillo's office for a recruitment meeting at 7:30 a.m.

“He kept texting me, ‘Don’t be late. Don’t be late,’” Barco recalled. “I was thinking, this isn’t for recruitment. I was so worried.”

The nine-year veteran of the academy, a charter school operated by Stanford’s School of Education, was, indeed, in for a surprise.

When she arrived at Camarillo’s office, she was handed the phone.

“I wondered if I was in trouble. I took the phone and this person said, ‘Hi Misla.’ I said, ‘Hi,’” she recounted. “‘This is Arne Duncan, secretary of education. Do you know who I am?’”

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