‘Student management’ over discipline, Dallas ISD’s next superintendent says

DALLAS — Hearken to this newest episode of Y’all-itics right here!

Dr. Stephanie Elizalde has been an educator for greater than three many years. 

She’s labored for a number of the largest college districts in Texas, spending the final couple of years main the Austin Impartial College District.

She’ll quickly transfer north after being named the only finalist for the Dallas ISD superintendent job, which might be her second stint with the district.

Elizalde just lately joined us for a particular, early launch version of Y’all-itics.  

Whereas the dialog primarily targeted on college security and what needs to be finished to maintain our youngsters protected, we additionally requested her about a few of her plans for Dallas ISD.

We particularly wished to know the way she’ll enhance efficiency and fairness within the district. And she or he instructed us she’d begin with what she calls “scholar administration.”

“I do not like using the phrase self-discipline. Self-discipline implies that we’re doing one thing to college students and that it is all punitive. And I actually suppose we have to rethink scholar administration, in that it has to develop into a improvement of them finally changing into self-managers. That is what we’re working to create,” Elizalde mentioned on Y’all-itics.  

“It is how do we offer them interventions and instruments such that they are in a position to handle themselves as a result of life goes to be life. It isn’t what’s taking place,  It is how will we reply to what’s taking place,” she added.

Elizalde says she additionally plans to handle “unconscious bias,” which she says can usually result in decrease expectations for some college students, which might restrict future success.

One of many largest challenges she’ll face as soon as she arrives is recruiting and retaining academics, an issue plaguing districts throughout the state.

She says it’ll take a gaggle effort that begins by reconnecting with the explanations they wished to show within the first place: making a distinction in a toddler’s life and serving the larger good of a group.

However then, she says, they’ll additionally need to get inventive. 

In Austin ISD, they just lately discovered a approach to offer further planning time throughout the day, so academics don’t need to do all of it after college.

“We had been capable of finding further planning time for secondary academics. We have by no means been capable of finding further planning time for elementary academics. And our workforce got here up with a number of distinctive methods in doing that,” mentioned the superintendent. 

“It’ll value us slightly bit of cash to ensure that that to occur. But when this offers academics a second to do a few of that throughout the day as an alternative of after college, that could possibly be one thing {that a} instructor may say, you recognize what, okay, I’m going to remain,” she mentioned.

Even little issues could make a distinction, equivalent to writing a thank-you be aware, whether or not that’s from directors, mother and father and even college students.  

The purpose, she says, is to determine a method to make academics really feel valued, not solely inside a faculty, but additionally contained in the group.

“As a result of I’ll let you know, each myself as a instructor and the academics that I get to work with, what do they really need? They need somebody to inform them they’re doing an excellent job,” Elizalde mentioned. “They need somebody to allow them to know the way essential they’re of their youngsters’s lives. They wish to really feel valued. They wish to really feel that they’re making a distinction.”

Hear extra about Dr. Elizalde’s plans for Dallas ISD and her concepts to maintain our youngsters protected and return to the core mission of public schooling in our newest episode of Y’all-itics.  It’s a extensive ranging and fascinating dialog led by WFAA anchor/reporter Teresa Woodard, who took over for the Jasons (they’re each taking some much-needed household time… and we hope you’re too throughout these tough days)