Inside Dallas ISD

What began as a teaching moment and a community improvement effort has turned Ascher Silberstein Elementary School into a place where students, team members and the community can appreciate and learn about nature.  It all started when Principal Erika Pasieczny noticed how many dogs ran around loose in the neighborhood. She started to tackle the problem by instilling in students the responsibility that comes with owning pets.  “We realized that our community wasn’t doing a good job of taking care of our pets,” said Pasieczny. “So we started an animal room, so we could teach all the students how to…

It was a full circle moment for Maria “Lupe” Vargas Garcia, when she first came to teach at W.E. Greiner Middle School Exploratory Arts Academy to be the orchestra director—she had attended the school as a student. When she found instruments at the school that could potentially be used to start a mariachi student program, she approached her principal about the idea and received the green light to start an afterschool program. “I just figured there’s a lot of Latinos in the school and thought this would catch on really well here,” Garcia said. “I expected about 10 to 15…

Becoming a teacher was always in the back of Allison Eddy’s mind, but she said she did not take the leap until she became a substitute teacher and saw how powerful the connections she formed with her students could be. “I was a long-term sub for six weeks, and it felt like my classroom,” she said. “Then one evening I got a text that I was no longer going to be their substitute. That broke my heart. I really knew my students, and I never wanted to be pulled from a class again. So I signed up and got my…

Dallas ISD is joining a 50-year celebration on May 10 that recognizes school nurses and promotes a better understanding of the role they play in education—National School Nurse Day. Zelda Saxton has been a school nurse at Obadiah Knight Elementary School for the past 14 years, and she said she has loved every moment of it. She previously worked in oncology and hematology units with a focus on cancer patients, so she said it wasn’t until she came to Dallas ISD that she fully understood the importance of supporting education. She recalls working with a student who had dyslexia and…