Inside Dallas ISD

Thousands of Texas PTA parents converged on Dallas July 17-19 for workshops, idea exchanges, and how-to sessions in search of ideas on how to help schools and PTAs better support families in the coming school year. The occasion was the Texas PTA Summer Leadership Seminar, the state’s largest gathering of PTA representatives. The staff of Dallas ISD’s Office of Family and Community Engagement drew a crowd for its workshop, “Re-engaging the Disengaged Parent,” which featured tips to help PTAs attract hard-to-reach parents. Among the workshop’s topics were how to build effective relationships with parents, how to sell school parent involvement…

How does the brain acquire language? What are some best practices to help learners become proficient in a new language, whether the language is English, Spanish, or even Japanese? Dallas ISD’s World Languages and Bilingual/ESL departments will explore these questions and provide teachers and administrators with new tools and the latest research in language learning at their first-ever Language Acquisition Symposium, which is July 29 and 30. Conference organizers say the need is greater than ever to employ more effective methods to help learners acquire languages. If students are to successfully compete in a global marketplace, they will need to become…

This week, 150 Dallas ISD teachers will attend a professional development training at Southern Methodist University’s Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education. Dallas ISD covered each teacher’s $3,000 tuition to attend the three-week-long intensive training, which is designed to help teachers based on their Teacher Excellence Initiative effectiveness rating. The teachers in attendance at the SMU Teacher Academy will be introduced to curriculum focused on increasing classroom effectiveness and improving classroom instructional practice within cohorts based on each educator’s TEI teacher effectiveness level. “The idea is that this is differentiated support for teachers that takes them from where they are, what…

In her 24 years working for Dallas ISD, Jane Didear has facilitated more than 450 partnerships with businesses, nonprofits and civic groups that support the district’s students and staff. On Aug. 31, Didear will go from working in the district’s Volunteer and Partnerships office to volunteering herself, as it’s her last official day with the district. Didear is retiring after working in multiple departments and receiving many accolades. Among her many accolades, Didear has received PTA life membership awards from both the Texas and National PTA, the Junior Achievement Champion Award, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame of…