Inside Dallas ISD

It’s often said that Vickery Meadow is a melting pot of people and cultures in Dallas, and if that is so, Lee A. McShan Jr. Elementary School is a pot within a melting pot.  Students from around the world – many of them immigrants or refugees – attend the school, said fourth-grade teacher Arianna Zeb, who is helping her students learn about their heritage and envision their future. “Many families at McShan are from countries such as Burma, Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Malaysia, Afghanistan, and Nepal,” Zeb said.   Zeb was recently awarded her second Innovative Teaching Grant from the Junior…

More than 800 students from 42 schools competed in the UIL A+ Middle School Hybrid Academic Competition held on December 11. The academic events included in the online competition were calculator applications, chess, dictionary skills, listening, maps-graphs-charts, math, number sense, science and social studies, and spelling.  The in-person events were oral reading, ready writing, editorial writing, modern oratory, and impromptu speaking.  Top students will receive ribbons for each event.  Ribbons will be sent via district mail. The top-performing schools from each group are listed in the chart below. The campuses that had the most students ranked first or second on…

Marian Jones, a Lakewood Elementary crossing guard, greets every student and many parents by name as they walk through the busy intersection of Sondra Drive and Hillbrook Street.  Jones is just one example of a team of crossing guards and volunteers with a deeply ingrained sense of community that goes beyond ensuring the safe arrival and departure of Lakewood Elementary scholars.  “Some people, you don’t know what they’re going through,” Jones said. “I try to make them feel good and keep hope alive and inspire them. Whatever you’re going through, from the house to here, it’s going to be OK.…

For the past few weeks, employees of Dallas ISD’s Operations Division—bus drivers, cafeteria and maintenance workers and custodians—have been conducting a donation drive to collect items for homeless students. Items ranging from face wash, hand sanitizer, hair products and cosmetics bags to coloring books, journals, socks, gloves, scarves and even earbuds and cable protectors have been donated at seven service centers and Operations facilities. “It’s incredibly generous of our population in Operation Services who really make the least amount of money in the district, yet are providing donations to help those who are in need, especially during the holidays. It…