STEP INTO A NEW COMMUNITY AT MARSH PREP

from 2023 February Preston Hollow Advocate

FIT FOR MARRIAGE?

Marsh Preparatory Academy focuses on connection and belonging

Story by ALYSSA HIGH

Photography by SYLVIA ELZAFON

DALLAS ISD HAS OVER 100,000 students walking through the halls of its 230 schools every day. At most middle schools, students change classes eight times a day, making it easy for a student to slip through the cracks. With about one faculty member for every five students, it wouldn’t be hard for a student to go unnoticed. Marsh Preparatory Academy seeks to remedy this by centering their school around connection and belonging.

Students at Marsh choose one of three academies: STEAM, MBA or Language and Leadership. Each academy prepares the sixth to eighth graders for high school and college in that career.

The STEAM academy partners with the Amazon engineering program Amazon Future Engineer to take programming and robotics courses, physics and algebra. These students obtain five high school credits before finishing middle school. The MBA, or Marsh Business Academy, provides courses in technology and career readiness to put students on track to go to W.T. White B-Tech High School, also obtaining five high school credits.

The Language and Leadership academy allows students to take Spanish 1 and Spanish 2 along with other high school courses to prepare them to take advanced Spanish courses in high school.

“It really just builds this steady connection with the students in an academic way,” says Dawna Dukes, principal of Thomas C. Marsh Preparatory Academy.

Every teacher at Marsh is encouraged to have a “plus one”; an extracurricular activity that they’re either starting from the ground up or supporting a district-funded program. Recently, one teacher took her plus one, a wilderness survival club, on a camping trip. For many of the students, it was their first time camping.

“Middle school is really a place where kids are still kids, but also turning into teenagers,” Dukes says. “They’re in a place where they start asking questions and start exploring things. It’s the age where sometimes the parent isn’t the first person they go to anymore. So we really try to make our middle school space to be a place where every student is con - nected to a positive adult in their life outside of the home.”

Other plus ones include district-funded sports, a ‘Principal Panel’ where students meet and discuss the student experience with the principal and provide feedback on the school’s programs and a program that allows students who require reading intervention to read to area elementary schoolers.

“Our soccer team has been the allcity champs for the past three years,” Dukes says. “That’s district, not just area. They’re completely undefeated.”

Because the school is at 95% low socioeconomic status, Marsh partnered with the North Texas Food Bank to provide a student pantry for those who are experiencing food insecurity.

“We really try to build joy into everything that we do,” Dukes says. “We lead with joy, and that is something you can’t necessarily teach. It’s something that you hire for — people that are going to choose joy even when circumstances are hard — and that has really started to transform our building.”

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