Inside Dallas ISD

Students at Lakewood Elementary School and Henry B. Gonzalez Personalized Learning Academy have expanded their communication skills in Spanish as well as their cultural knowledge, thanks to a collaboration between the schools through an international exchange program through the University of Barcelona. Gloria Prieto Puentes, a bilingual teacher at Lakewood Elementary, and her son, Sergi Calavia, an art teacher at Henry B Gonzalez, have brought this international exchange program into their classrooms the last two years. Prieto Puentes, who is originally from Barcelona and graduated from the university, first heard about the program from one of her colleagues, who shared…

Hailey Rangel, a prekindergarten teacher at Jill Stone Elementary School, is on a mission to bring “field trips” to her students, which includes interactive activities to not only engage them, but also make learning more meaningful. During the COVID-19 pandemic, field trips were restricted and schools had limited visitors. The expense of busing students to field trip locations even without the pandemic restrictions was also an obstacle. So putting two and two together, Rangel decided to bring the learning opportunities of field trips to her school, instead. At the beginning of last school year, she did research for free on-campus…

Principal Dawna Duke is taking learning on the go at Thomas C. Marsh Preparatory Academy thanks to recently getting cleared to drive a school bus for Dallas ISD. Duke said she realized how expensive it is to use a school bus due to the cost of paying a driver and how limited field trips are if they have to be completed by a certain time, so she decided to step up and take on a bus driver role herself to make active learning more accessible. As a licensed bus driver, she can use a district bus. Now that she has…

For Sandy Peatrowsky, a deaf/hard of hearing itinerant teacher, no day looks the same. She visits up to five schools per day to work with an average of 16 students per week across most grade levels, catering lesson plans and activities to each individual’s needs. During her visits, communication is a regular theme, whether it be related to vocabulary, auditory memory, or self-advocacy. “For a student who does not have hearing aids or hearing loss, they will hear a word 100 times, but my student might only hear it 50 times,” Peatrowsky said. “We do a lot of work so…