A legacy of putting ideas into action

When Lisa Whitaker is struck by an idea, she jumps right into action. So when she wondered earlier this year why American Sign Language classes weren’t more common in the district, she started working toward creating more opportunities to introduce students to ASL, a visual language used by many deaf and hard-of-hearing people in the United States.  

Whitaker, director of Academic Enrichment and Support, considered how to introduce ASL to elementary school students to help them gain proficiency early on. And then it came to her: the district’s first-ever ASL summer camp for elementary school students. 

“We have a health and physical education summer camp, but we don’t offer ASL until ninth grade. That gives students only four years to learn it, limiting their proficiency,” Whitaker said. “Research tells us that children learn language best because their synapses are still developing. Their brains are very malleable.”

This is not the first time that Whitaker, whose department is over health, physical education, and world languages, has turned an idea into a long-term initiative. In recent years, she has developed, among other things, a water safety curriculum for second graders, distributed first-aid kits to 245 physical education classrooms, and started health and physical education summer camps. She is currently designing lifeguarding and outdoor summer courses for district students.  

Whitaker’s influx of ideas arises from an inquisitive mind, nurtured by a family of educators. Her maternal grandparents—a principal and an instructor in a small, segregated southern town in the 1940s—both held master’s degrees at a time when advanced education was uncommon among African Americans. Upholding the family legacy, Whitaker’s mother also earned a master’s degree and taught at both Charles Rice Learning Center and what was then James Hogg Elementary School. Whitaker attended Dallas ISD schools and graduated from David W. Carter High School. She even went a step beyond her family’s academic achievements by earning a doctorate in community health and policy from the University of North Texas.  

“If I have an idea, that is a gift that is meant to be shared,” Whitaker said. “Education has been an opportunity for my family, and it’s been the opportunity that they’ve given to me. Now it’s my turn to give that gift to someone else, and it just needs to be given in a creative way because everyone has a different entry point.”

This approach to offering different entry points is how the concept for the ASL summer camp began. Held at Harry Stone Montessori, the camp, which ran June 2-26, was combined with a multi-sports camp and split into two sections.

“All of the kids who signed up for sports would now be getting the ASL experience, and I loved it,” said Whitaker.

Whitaker said that two students have especially benefited from the program—a boy who is hard of hearing and a hearing girl whose mother is deaf.

“The joy that this child, who might be going deaf, has exuded during the program was magnificent,” Whitaker noted. “We were in his world, understanding how he learns and experiences things, rather than him being in ours and having to explain why he’s different when we’re all literally the same—he just has a different way of speaking.”

Whitaker regards life as a big opportunity to learn and to impart knowledge to others, she said. Before she transitioned to her role as a director, she taught science at D.A. Hulcy STEAM Middle School and Wilmer-Hutchins High School and later worked as a campus instructional coach at Justin F. Kimball High School.

“My gift is taking something that’s super complex and making it digestible, making it something that’s practical, and that’s what I loved doing for my students,” she said.

Working with students who struggled to pass the STAAR science test, either because they had been historically marginalized or because they were new to the country was one of her greatest accomplishments as a teacher, she said.

“Having a student who’s never passed the STAAR test come to you and thank you is one of the best feelings,” Whitaker said.  

Whitaker said she believes that educators are part of a much greater story, and that even if their legacy amounts to no more than a page, it will at least be a page that others turn to. 

“We’re part of this bigger story—we have one page in a humongous book, not a chapter. If we get our page right, there are some students who are going to benefit from that information,” she said.