Inside Dallas ISD

When Christian “Kiki” Recino Gonzalez, current soccer coach and geography teacher at W.T. White High School, stood on a pitch facing the 2015 U.S. women’s soccer national team, it felt surreal. She had grown up in Arlington, the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants, watching stars like Alex Morgan and Marta Vieira da Silva on TV. Suddenly, she was lining up against them, wearing Guatemala’s blue and white. Her mom worked as a school cafeteria worker and her dad was a truck driver. Soccer, though, was her father’s great love, and it soon became hers. “I just followed my dad wherever he…

Meghan Royal, nurse and safety coordinator at the School for the Talented and Gifted in Pleasant Grove, will tell you she doesn’t like talking about herself.  She calls herself a helper, someone who’s more comfortable taking care of others than being in the spotlight. But when she starts talking about her students and her school, it’s clear why she deserves recognition. National Nurses Day, on May 6, recognizes the work nurses perform every day to improve the health and well-being in their communities, and for school nurses, of their schools.  Before she ever stepped into a school clinic, Royal had…

For elementary teachers Arial Kossie and Nila Miller, their lifelong friendship and shared legacy in Dallas ISD, began in pre-K and now continues at two district elementary schools.   Kossie and Miller met at Jimmie Tyler Brashear Early Childhood Center, the school’s name at the time. After spending their elementary and middle school years apart, they reconnected at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. There, as members of the Class of 2007, they developed a love for the performing arts that would later shape their paths as educators.  Miller’s early experiences at Brashear laid the foundation…

At a Montessori recognition ceremony earlier this semester, Elena Hill, deputy chief academic officer, addressed a room of Montessori-credentialed teachers with a childhood anecdote that stressed the need to offer this program in public schools like those in Dallas ISD.  Hill attended a Montessori program for one year when she was 4 years old. Decades later, she asked her mother, a retired teacher, why she didn’t keep her in the Montessori program.  “Do you know what she told me?” Hill paused to let the room think for a moment. “She said that it was too expensive.”  Which is why, Hill…