Inside Dallas ISD

The Society of Women Engineers recently held an event to grow young women’s interest in engineering careers. Design Your World, which happened March 28 at Zan Wesley Holmes, Jr. Middle School, gave young women the opportunity to do hands-on experiments with engineers from across the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Only 5 percent of women who enter college end up graduating with engineering degrees, and events such as Design Your World aim to increase that percentage. “The best way to get young women interested in engineering is to talk to them about it and allow them to see role models (who are engineers),” said Dr. Meagan…

Culinary students from across Dallas ISD participated in a healthy foods cook-off hosted by the Diabetes Health and Wellness Institute on April 9 at the Latino Cultural Center. The event promoted healthy ways of preparing food and featured high school students, college students and chefs at the professional level. One Dallas ISD high school that participated was Wilmer-Hutchins High School. The students at Wilmer-Hutchins are part of a culinary program that teaches students how to prepare for their future after they graduate by teaching them how to be chefs. The three Wilmer-Hutchins students that are competing made creative cupcakes using…

Students at Dallas ISD’s Nancy Cochran Elementary School will have an outdoor classroom and water-conserving garden thanks to Dallas being ranked at the top among large cities for residents pledging to conserve water. Dallas won the 2014 National Mayor’s Challenge for Water Conservation, and among the prizes was a water-friendly pocket garden – one that will be added to the courtyard at Cochran. On Thursday, April 9, Mayor Mike Rawlings, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lead administrator Gina McCarthy, Toyota Chief Environmental Officer Kevin Butt and nationally renowned muralist Wyland helped break ground on the garden. The artist’s Wyland Foundation, in partnership…

Ask noted Dallas ISD bilingual teacher Irma De La Guardia about the benefits of receiving an alternative teaching certification through Dallas ISD, and she is quick to answer. “It gives you as many resources as possible so you are successful in the classroom,” said De La Guardia, who was named the National Association of Bilingual Educators’ 2015 Teacher of the Year. “The (alternative teaching) certification sets you up for success.” De La Guardia, a third-grade dual-language teacher at Harry C. Withers Elementary, received her Dallas ISD alternative teaching certificate 12 years ago. She said the program isn’t easy, as it…