Dawson, a Place for Inclusive Education

This is a petition to have a historical marker made for Dawson Elementary, 3001 S. 1st Avenue, Austin, TX 78704. 

Dawson teachers and staff led the way in culturally inclusive, pedagogically innovative and deeply humanistic programs that highlight the difference education can make in the life of a community. Dawson’s presence in Austin culture can be seen in the Texas Book Festival, dual immersion programs, multicultural content, inclusive special needs programming, and an embrace of diversity and difference across the curriculum. At a time when the Austin Independent School District is threatening to close this school in the name of equity, this is a good time to highlight what Dawson Elementary has done for equity in this state.

By bringing attention to the work people in Dawson have done to provide content that reflects the surrounding Mexican American and immigrant communities in the neighborhood and the state, this historical marker will help preserve the memory of changes in Austin that have occurred since World War II and the Civil Rights movement.

Built in the 1950s to accommodate working-class kids that came with the post WWII Baby Boom, Dawson’s open courtyards, wide windows and multiple places for outside interaction between students, staff, teachers and the surrounding neighborhood reflect an architect’s faith in people and nature.  Austin ISD built it and neighboring school Joslin to anchor the working-class neighborhood and respond to resident demands for a small school at the edges of the city. The sunlit classrooms and open-air hallways and courtyard indicate the hope and faith Austin had in a brightly lit future for all its kids – or the benefits of open air. Dawson opened the same year as Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark court case that promised an opening of American public education.

In the early 1970s, Dawson Elementary became the first school in South Austin to establish a bilingual education program, surprising many Spanish-speaking parents, who "In their day were punished in school for speaking Spanish."  The program was a success, teachers Margarita Ramirez and Nancy Fuller reported, as the “reversed emphasis, from a remedial program to an enrichment program, has brought delighted responses from parents.”[1]

In the 1970s, staff and faculty turned Dawson Elementary into a place for progressive education. Dawson initiated a Montessori-inspired approach to teaching students, or what was described as its "first individually guided education program, in which students are permitted to learn at their own rate." As a visiting reporter observed, "with students darting in and out, the teachers working with one particular group of students, and other groups of children working unassisted at their materials -- each helping the other -- the room hardly resembles the traditional classroom situation adults can remembers."[2] This sense of curiosity and experiment carried through to other kinds of programming.  The school implemented a multicultural bicentennial celebration, part of a larger NEA [National Endowment Grant] grant titled “the Magic Time Machine,” where students learned U.S History “backwards from the present time to 1776 in their studies of art, music, library skills and physical education."[3] The centennial celebration included presentations from United Daughters of the Confederacy (by Jesse E. Fox) alongside exhibitions of Mexican-American, African American, and Native American History art and history (including artists Paul Valdez, Roberto Munguia, Bertram Allen, later president of the W.H. Passon Historical Society for Black History in Austin, Obby Nwabuko, and Robert Harrington).[4]  In following years, the school organized learning around science fiction themes, incorporating material from Star Trek and Star Wars to bring its curriculum to a futurist life.

Why does all this matter?  What happens in Dawson changes the world.  First Lady Laura Welch Bush was the librarian in Dawson when all the democratic experimentation and outreach and organizing occurred, much of it organized and supported by the books and spaces of the library. She experienced first-hand how organizing a school around books and culture could transform students. Although her time at Dawson was cut short by George Bush’s marriage proposal, her time there became a touchstone for her understanding of public education. As she recalls, "Unlike other urban schools during that era, Dawson was lucky to have music, art, and physical education teachers, along with a librarian, and we were the only educators who had a chance to work with every student in the school."[5] She added, "We taught our students about American history not simply with textbooks and time lines but through the music, art, and literature of the Revolutionary period.” Her experience in this “minority urban school” with the broad ways books can be brought to life likely shaped her decision to start the Texas Book Festival and her advocacy of public education and sense that “no child should be left behind,” perhaps anchoring her husband’s broad embrace of public education. In 2010, First Lady and one-time Dawson Elementary Librarian Laura Welch Bush reflected on her time at Dawson Library: “I wanted these children to dream of possibilities of a world beyond their web of city blocks and brick school walls.”[6] Dawson Elementary is a concrete example of these ideals and their impact.

Currently, Dawson Elementary is an integrated school, drawing from students of all incomes and communities in neighborhoods across Austin, a low-income majority, a large Latina/o population, and  publicly maintaining a dual immersion Spanish language program, an embrace of students with special needs, all of which has led it to receive an exemplary school rating from the Texas Educational Association.

A historical marker for Dawson Elementary will remind people of the importance of post WWII social movements to the quality of our education, and the ways progressive neighborhood schools can have ripple effects across the city and the nation.

Please sign the petition below to encourage Travis County Historical Commission to build a historical marker for Dawson Elementary, a school that lives the values where “all means all.”

 

Sign here:

 

traviscountyhistorical@gmail.com

[1] Robert Schwab, “Bilingual Study Surprises Both Students and Teachers,” Austin Statesman, 05/20/1973, a15
[2] Robert Schwab, “Bilingual Study Surprises Both Students and Teachers,” Austin Statesman, 05/20/1973, a15
[3] Laura Welch Bush, Spoken From the Heart, (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2010), 93.
[4] Austin Statesman, “Dawson Elementary Has Bicentennial Celebration,” Austin Statesman, 05/3/1976, 11
[5] Laura Welch Bush, Spoken From the Heart, (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2010), 93, 142.
[6] Laura Welch Bush, Spoken From the Heart, (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 93.