Photography by Yuvie Styles

Dallas ISD enrolls 1,200 freshmen and sophomores annually who have lived in the country for less than three years. On top of ad-justing to cultural changes and the inherent challenges of high school, many of these students know little to no English when enrolling. In fact, DISD has more students learning English than San Antonio ISD, El Paso ISD or Frisco ISD have in their total student populations.

“Unfortunately, often with ESL students, their language proficiency is seen as a learning deficiency. That is not the case,” Thomas Jefferson High School Principal Benjamin Jones says. “Many of our students come to us with really strong math backgrounds, especially with math being a pretty international language. We have a lot of students who do really well and they’re really equipped for it.”

Many newcomer students are able to catch up to their peers in the first two years of high school, even moving on to AP and honors courses.

“Just last year, the No. 7 student in our graduating class was a student whose first day at a U.S. school was at Jefferson, and she didn’t speak a lick of English when she came here. The goal of the Newcomer Academy is to take that from the standard that these students are ready and capable,” Jones says.

To ensure that students get an equitable education and can catch up with their peers, this year, DISD started Dallas International Academy, or the Newcomer Academy, for ninth and tenth graders who have been in the United States for less than three years.

“Newcomer students drop out of high school at an almost 50% rate. It’s largely because we do focus so much on their language acquisition that they don’t actually get the best content instruction or they get great content instruction. Still, their language acquisition is left behind,” says Jones.

The program is a school-within-a-school concept, allowing students to access the same re-sources that other Thomas Jefferson High School students have while having the independence in the classroom to work on English proficiency.

Students who are enrolled in Dallas International Academy benefit from the school’s extra resources, including additional teachers, a dedicated instructional specialist and a Wraparound Services Coordinator to assess students’ needs both inside and outside of the classroom. In addition to the increased personnel, teachers who participate in the program receive a stipend for the extra work they put into professional development and planning time for the newcomer students.

“It’s really just a concentration of resources and teacher talent and support so that we can support the students not only in their language development but in their graduation plan,” says Jones.

Since the 2019 tornado, Thomas Jefferson High School students have not been able to return to their own campus in three years. After the tornado, Jefferson staff worked quickly to turn the unused former Thomas Edison Junior High School space into usable classrooms again, and Jefferson High School and Dallas International School students have been operating there since.

The staff is preparing to move back to the newly renovated Jefferson High School building in January.

“We’ve tried to replicate that building as much as we can here,” Jones says. “We’ve done as much as we can here, but we will have some nicer, more up-to-date and larger facilities to do it in there.”

Though the academy is the first of its kind in the district, Jones says that the district could add more campuses down the road in other areas with existing newcomer populations.

“The kids are so great. They really are,” Jones says. “We have a history of standout students coming from our programs.”