DALLAS (WBAP/KLIF) – A traveling art show featuring photos of Dallas ISD teachers is making its way around dallas.
Time magazine recently devoted a series of magazine covers and articles revealing the despair of teachers in too many school districts: Overburdened, underfunded, under-supported and exhausted of hope.
According to the Dallas Independent School District, the district is in the midst of a celebrated turnaround, and now 158 resilient Dallas ISD teachers are participating in a photographic art exhibit called Dallas Teachers Speak. The District said in a statement that Dallas Teachers Speak will present the city’s teachers to the public in a light like never before – as superheroes, as rock stars, as changemakers.
The exhibit comes from the mind of Dr. John Gasko, the UNT Dallas School of Education dean. In collaboration with nonprofit organization 29 Pieces, and Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic artist Karen Blessen, Dallas Teachers Speak is an exhibit of poster-size, magazine-cover-style portraits set on a black background and accompanied by the words of each teacher in red type as they speak out on two questions required for participation in the project: “Why do I Teach?” and “What do I need?”
“There’s a dimension of teaching that’s elegant and beautiful that sometimes gets lost in these larger grand narratives around pay and around performance,” Gasko said.” Dallas Teachers Speak is a campaign that is going to transform, we hope, how the community sees teachers. I want them to see them as beautiful, as elegant, as powerful, as change-agents in their classrooms and their communities.”
With some 3,000 posters being produced, exhibits will pop up at numerous locales throughout Dallas during April and May.
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