Decibel
A district-managed restart for Dobie means a final curtain call for many teachers
Clip | 8m 2sVideo has Closed Captions
Dobie teachers find themselves lost in the looking glass under new district-managed restart plan.
When the Dobie Players picked Alice In Wonderland for their spring play, they didn’t realize they’d be going on a journey of their own. AISD is now moving forward with a district-managed restart plan that will mean a lot of new staff in familiar roles.
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Decibel is a local public television program presented by Austin PBS
Funding for Decibel is provided in part by Texas Mutual and Roxanne Elder & Scott Borders
Decibel
A district-managed restart for Dobie means a final curtain call for many teachers
Clip | 8m 2sVideo has Closed Captions
When the Dobie Players picked Alice In Wonderland for their spring play, they didn’t realize they’d be going on a journey of their own. AISD is now moving forward with a district-managed restart plan that will mean a lot of new staff in familiar roles.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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- [Student] Wait, where are you going?
(light music) - [Interviewer] Do you have like a favorite moment from the performance?
- Yes.
The moment that all of the cards realized they had left the audience waiting.
(light music) And little Jackie, our student director, comes running across, "Go, now!
Cards, now!
Amy, put your card and go!
Hurry, hurry, hurry!"
But then, like almost immediately, Mr. Holloway saw, "Oh, okay, this is my cue."
- [Cards] Off with her head!
Off with her head!
- And he runs out there just yelling every Alice in Wonderland line he could.
Everyone backstage was peeking through the curtains.
Everyone in the audience was going wild.
That's the moment.
And I feel like it was our rallying cry to, you know, really persevere for the rest of the year.
We just got to keep going.
Okay, lights and sound is already working in the auditorium.
So props, you do know what you're doing...
I am Laney Gilbert, and I'm the proud theater director at Dobie Middle School.
(students chattering) So play selection at Dobie is, it's a democratic process.
(students chattering) I put forth like 10 good plays at the beginning of the year, and we choose which one is going to be our spring show.
Alice in Wonderland, it was like number 12.
It's a really hard show to do.
It's a full-length production, but I made the mistake of not hiding that play.
And then they started reading it, and they loved it, so.
All right, we got set up for the Mad Hatter's tea party, so I need...
Ultimately, that's how we ended up on Alice in Wonderland.
We started calling it Dobie in Wonderland for a little while because it did feel like we were lost in Wonderland throughout this process.
(pensive music) (pensive music continues) (pensive music continues) - And Dobie Middle School deserves a second chance.
Dobie si se puede.
Thank you.
(attendees clapping) - [Laney] Our students were very involved with the community meetings.
- How are the fine arts going to be?
Because Dobie has one of the best theater programs ever.
(attendees clapping) - [Student] Go, what?
- Go Dobie!
- Go Dobie!
- Go, Webb!
- Go, Webb!
- Go Dobie!
- They were going to the unity walks.
They were knocking on doors, passing out flyers, doing every single thing that they could.
So our sweet babies were exhausted.
(students chattering) There were a lot of canceled rehearsals.
(students chattering) One of the little girls, she said, "This could be my first and my last theater show."
I'm like, "No, no, baby girl.
Don't lose hope."
- [Student] Wake up, door mouse!
- [Student 2] Wake up, door mouse!
The plan is that they're going to do a district-managed restart.
So unfortunately, they let most of our staff know that they were ineligible.
(pensive music) (pensive music continues) Where I've been assured my programs will be left alone to let them thrive, I don't think they realize that the reason why we thrive is because this is not happening in a silo.
- [Teacher] You think they'll notice?
- The amount of support we get on this campus is untouched.
Like it is amazing.
And a lot of times that is our staff that are not going to be here next year, and our administrators, which right now are not going to be here next year.
And I worry that because they're going to have like weeks to come up with a plan on how they're going to academically turn Dobie around without any of the people that have been doing that work for the past couple of years, I worry that we'll be forgotten about.
(pensive music) - March Hare will be the most interesting, and perhaps, as this is May, it won't be raving mad then, at least as it was in March.
- At the state level, I think the focus has been on turning our children into test scores instead of educating them as a whole child.
(thoughtful music) Knowing how to count is great, but also knowing how to apply those numbers to real-world situations is the goal.
(thoughtful music) Let's say I need to build a set.
If they have the numbers, if they know the math, I can give my kids the information and we can watch them apply that real-world math to what they're creating, and then we can watch it come to life on stage.
- One, two, three.
- [Students] No room, no room!
- It's same with ELA, right?
We have a lot of friends who are still struggling to learn English.
I can support that big time.
Can they give me the backstory for that character?
Can they tell me what the internal monologue would be for this character?
You're going to be using, of course, all of your ELA skills, but then you're going to be using your ability to communicate with other people.
- Okay, next is?
- Roses.
- Yeah.
- Okay.
So it's not just theater, right?
(cheerful band music) It's happening in band, it's happening in dance, it's happening all over the place.
But it is so, so important that we get these kids into fine arts programs because that's how we learn where we're going to see the most growth in ourselves.
(thoughtful music) - My headband falls off.
- [Student] You want to get his ears too?
- No.
- Yes, yes, yes.
- [Laney] It's a combination of two different versions of Alice in Wonderland.
Alice falls into the rabbit hole, right?
And she's seeing all these crazy things happen.
- It's okay, it's okay.
You're done.
- But she's got to stay focused and weave her way through the Wonderland in order to get to the end where she eventually realizes, "Oh, this is all a dream."
It's supposed to be her realizing that, you know, your imagination is your key to anywhere, and you can do all of these cool things if you stay focused, but you got to stay focused and you got to make it to the end.
At least that's what my kids took from it.
That is their lesson that they assigned to it.
Up and down!
(attendees cheering and clapping) I think we're still lost in Wonderland.
I don't think we've made it out the other side yet.
Our future is undecided, but we're hopeful.
(thoughtful music) (thoughtful music continues)
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Decibel is a local public television program presented by Austin PBS
Funding for Decibel is provided in part by Texas Mutual and Roxanne Elder & Scott Borders