Adamson High School’s principal finds himself speaking Spanish in a Catholic Church in Oak Cliff, encouraging parents to get their kids to school and motivated to pass the TAKS test, in the next-to-last installment of the DMN’s big feature on how DISD educates kids, particularly immigrants. The final installment can be found in the newspaper and its website today. The series has been a good read, and it even opened up the eyes of the DMN reporters involved, who said in a posted video that they have a new respect for DISD and its people after hanging around with them for the better part of the past year doing this series.
One aspect of DISD that is covered in the 4th portion of the story is the ultra-dedicated personnel staffing our neighborhood schools. As in every business and organization, there are a few slackers in DISD (and, perhaps not surprisingly, those clowns seem to garner a disproportionate share of media coverage), but the average DISD teacher, administrator and staff person I’ve run into during my 11 years as a DISD parent are among the hardest-working people I’ve ever met. Adamson’s principal is literally all over his neighborhood, touting the school, checking up on his students, rallying them to do better and, in general, doing everything humanly possible to give kids an opportunity to make the most of themselves while at Adamson. His dedication is mirrored throughout the district; it’s just rarely highlighted in the media, because it takes a bit of elbow-grease to identify and, truthfully, it’s not as sexy as catching some secretary with a drawer full of iPods that have been charged on a district credit card.
But these are people who can truly say they’re making a difference in the lives of others. I wouldn’t want their job, and probably wouldn’t be very good at it anyway, but I appreciate the fact that they show up for work every day, do their best despite minimal recognition and then turn around and get pumped up to do it all again the next day. Thanks to the DMN for highlighting this element of DISD, even if that wasn’t necessarily the paper’s intent.
