Inside Dallas ISD

The elevator music greets you as you walk into the door and for a brief moment you forget that you’re at a Dallas ISD high school. The idea of banking can seem foreign for some high school students. However, at Emmett J. Conrad High School, banking is becoming a part of everyday life. The school’s Academy of Finance recently opened the Bank of Conrad in the heart of the school where everyone can take advantage of the services offered. Complete with elevator music, neatly dressed academy student attendants, and a customer sign-in area, the Bank of Conrad welcomes many students…

Imagine walking into a classroom that is tailored to fit your child’s needs. That’s just what Dallas ISD plans to make possible next school year with the launch of five personalized learning campuses. Personalized learning transforms the traditional classroom by giving children what they need in the way that works best for them. Campuses that will implement the new teaching strategy include Cabell, Rogers, and Zaragoza elementary schools, Marsh Preparatory Academy and a proposed new high school. Watch as teachers from Rogers Elementary give you an inside look at the world of personalized learning.

Science teacher Dana Clark is an education trailblazer. She’s traveled the world in search of knowledge to bring back and share with the students in her classroom at Irma Rangel Young Women’s Leadership School where she’s taught for 10 years. Clark has studied sea turtles in the Amazon of Peru, climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa, to study climate change, and this summer helped to map the seafloor around Alaska as part of a seafaring expedition sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The adventurous teacher says she enjoyed every moment and that she’s used the experiences to enliven…

Can you interpret the formula Q=cm∆t? Do you have even a clue? If not, you might ask yourself if you’re smarter than a sixth-grader since the formula is the basis of a middle school science fair project. For Vanessa Padilla, a sixth-grader at Henry W. Longfellow Career Exploration Academy, this group of letters and symbols is central to the science project “Heating Up” she will present this weekend at the city’s Divisional Science Fair. Her project examines the lowest specific heat of copper, brass and iron, and the equation represents the relationship between heat and temperature change. Padilla’s interest in…