Inside Dallas ISD

Dallas Summer Musicals (DSM) and Dallas Independent School District (Dallas ISD) have joined forces to launch a new professional development program, ConnectEDU powered by PNC. ConnectEDU is the first program to be implemented as part of the brand new partnership formed between DSM and Dallas ISD with the intent to bring the spirit of Broadway to virtual learning and engagement opportunities for students and educators throughout the district. ConnectEDU is focused on providing high-quality professional development opportunities for theatre and dance educators that will increase cultural intelligence in the classroom. The goal of the program is to provide Dallas ISD…

While Veronica De La Torres is no longer assisting physicians with open-heart surgeries, she potentially helped save the lives of Dallas residents and Dallas ISD families this summer. The registered nurse worked tirelessly–inside and outside her clinic at Young Women’s STEAM Academy (YWSA)–to make sure that her students, their families, and the patients at a local hospital survive Covid-19. YWSA is an all-girls middle school with a number of Special Education units, including an Activities of Daily Living (ADL) classroom. ADL units serve students who exhibit severe to profound cognitive delays and who may also exhibit varying degrees of physical…

After working as a professional architect for more than a decade-and-a-half, Lorena Toffer found a calling in teaching. She’s a first-year educator and the leading instructor of the Principles of Architecture course at the new Career Institute East. After earning a masters in Architecture at Texas A&M University in 2004, Toffer began working for Corgan – a leading architecture and design firm based in Dallas. She was ultimately promoted to senior project manager, where she fully supervised projects from first sketches to construction. Toffer always felt a need to share her knowledge and experience with the younger generations. She began…

When Dallas ISD, Fort Worth ISD, and Univisón DFW teamed up in May to launch the television show Unidos para Aprender, which offers 58 minutes of educational programming in Spanish, they tapped brothers Fredy and Kevin Perez to help host the program. The Perez brothers were born in Dallas to parents originally from Guanajuato, Mexico, and only spoke Spanish in their house growing up. While Dallas ISD’s bilingual programs have taught the brothers English and they are thriving in school, they loved the opportunity to host the program that supports students’ academic progress by supplementing at-home instruction offered by Dallas…