Second year teacher on a mission to help students achieve dreams

Making the transition from being a Dallas ISD  interpreter and tutor to a math teacher was a challenge that Ndayishimiye Innocent embraced. Innocent, who just started his second year teaching at Francisco “Pancho” Medrano Junior High School, had been working in the district’s Translation Services Department for five years before diving into teaching. 

Innocent, who speaks five languages fluently,  Kirundi, Kinyarwanda, Swahili, French, English – and is in the process of reaching fluency in Spanish – is committed to making sure all of his students feel welcomed and seen. 

“As a novice teacher, I got to learn on the spot. You learn by experiencing a challenge that was needed,” Innocent said.  Being in the classroom and working with students of different backgrounds, cultures, and different needs, makes it more challenging and very different from being a tutor, Innocent said.

Having gone through his first year of teaching in the 2023-2024 school year, Innocent realized that teachers needed support beyond the classroom, and felt it  was the responsibility of the community to do their part as well. This inspired him to found a math readiness program this summer, a collaboration between the Northwest Community Center and the Dallas Burundian Community (Dabuco), where he serves as the president and one of the co-founders.

Innocent volunteered his time teaching, with the help of community volunteers, to prepare students for middle school and receive the instruction in their native language. Students learned math vocabulary, work strategies, and technology use in the classroom, which students from refugee backgrounds struggle with, he said.

This summer he also partnered with ACT AFRICA, a group of dentists, dental and medical students at Texas A&M University and a non-profit organization named Beauty Out of Dust, created by former Dallas ISD and Fort Worth ISD graduate students. Innocent allowed the group to use his family-owned health center in Bujumbura, Burundi. 

“I wanted the students’ learning experiences to not be limited by geographic boundaries, but to be able to work on international missions such as this one,” Innocent said. He facilitated the mission trip of eight students with their two professors and two professional dentists to go practice at his family’s clinic.

Innocent has had the experience of being both an immigrant and a refugee to this country and knows the challenges that newcomers and students from underserved communities face. He said that having gone through these challenges and different life lessons was the charge and call to action that made him realize that he could use his life experiences to help students make changes in their lives and have a better future. 

“As someone from parents who managed to escape the intellectual genocide and was able to go to school, I feel like I have a duty to help this community,” Innocent said. One of the reasons why Innocent said he became a teacher is because most of the people in his Burundian community, have not had the chance for an education because of their background and history, he said. 

Having been a teacher in the past in Tanzania, he had seen the fruits of his teaching career. One of his former students who had been in a refugee camp where Innocent taught became a doctor. His student stayed in touch and was featured in the local news media for the work he was doing in Tallahassee, Florida to help others. 

Innocent is no stranger to the health industry, as one of his bachelor’s degrees is in public health, along with a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction. Education and public health go hand in hand, he said. When a student’s family is struggling with sickness or when a student is sick due to a disease that can be preventable, it interferes with a student’s learning success, he said. 

His organization, Dabuco, has partnered with Dallas County Health and Human Services to provide health literacy education to improve health,  which he called a solid foundation for the learning success of a student. 

While completing his studies in Kenya in 2007, he noticed that students who were HIV positive, whose parents were HIV positive, or who had lost one or both parents because of HIV/AIDS were being discriminated against and stigmatized by community members. 

To bring the students and the community together he co-founded an organization, which not only brought the students to play together, but brought forth education to help dismantle the misinformation in the community. Innocent and his team built playgrounds and partnered with the Right to Play organization – and together, this helped the students and the community unite.

Whether he is leading and connecting his community to resources, or leading his students in the classroom, Innocent said that empathy, compassion, and understanding are what gets him through challenging days. He said he is inspired by the words “primum non nocere,” which is a Latin phrase that translates to “first do no harm.” 

“This includes other people’s dreams,” he said. “All of my students have a dream, and I have a mission to help them achieve their dreams.”  He said there was a time when not many believed that he could be somebody. He said that even if a student was struggling, that did not define them. “The student might be struggling now, but they can achieve their dream. Each child has a dream and we must support them,” Innocent said.