DIS Profile

Note: Last year we began a series of weekly Globe profiles for our new faculty and staff. This year, we’ll continue sharing their stories with you, beginning first with our new Head of School, Mr. Jacques Weber. This Q&A is the first in a series designed to help you get to know our new Chef d'Établissement.

The Globe: Welcome to Dallas and to DIS. How has the transition been so far?

Mr. Weber: It’s been great. Even though I was born in France, I’ve spent much of my life—25 years of it—in Texas. I started my schooling at the Awty International School in Houston at age three and was there all the way through high school. Most recently, I spent seven years at the Austin International School prior to coming here. So, even though Dallas is fairly new to me, I feel like I have Texas roots. As for getting to know DIS, the one thing all international schools have in common is that they’re all different, and I’m loving all the little differences I see here. We had a fairly long runway for this head of school transition; Dr. González and I met and were in communication over a fairly good period of time, so it wasn’t like I had to show up and just dive in and start learning everything. We have a very good team here that is making everything go pretty smoothly. I’ve always loved getting to know new places and seeing new ways of doing things.

The Globe: You’ve spent most of your life—as a youth and as an adult—learning and working in an international school environment. What have you discovered that makes it so unique and special?

Mr. Weber: I’ve seen how being intercultural and multilingual leads to a whole new way of problem-solving, thinking about things, and working to communicate with others. In so much of the world we live in today, we have people who are expecting others to connect with them on their ground and sometimes things get lost in the translation. “I’m wanting you to speak to me in my language or see the world as I do.” For example, I’ve seen conversations between people—like Francophones and Anglophones—where they’re talking, but not on the same wavelength. And as an outsider to the conversation, I sometimes want to jump in and intervene and say, “No, no, this is what that means in that language.” So, an international school environment is designed from the outset to create people who meet other people and cultures where they are. In a school like ours, we have maybe 50 languages and cultures, so that makes for a great opportunity to make the world a much better place.

The Globe: Do you think of an international school environment like DIS as a tiny microcosm of the world?

Mr. Weber: In a very real way, it is. Our students, from a very young age, have the chance to not only hear and learn new languages, but to learn from their friends and classmates how other cultures around the world feel and function. Just as important, a school like DIS serves a valuable role as a welcoming community when families are coming from abroad. They learn about Dallas, find our international school, and then build their new lives in the city around the DIS community. So we become a central part of their connection to the international world and also to their new home city. They meet families and make friends, and that serves as their new local network. So that’s a role that an international school can play that more conventional schools don’t—and it’s a vital one.

The Globe: You’ve lived and worked in many places and traveled to many more. How has that experience shaped you as a person and as an educator?

Mr. Weber: From France and Texas I’ve moved to India, to Saudi Arabia, to Malta, then back to Texas with visits to more than a hundred countries along the way. I was just this kid who grew up in a multilingual and multicultural environment—Alsatian, German, French, Texan, American—and so I became enamored with languages and cultures from a very young age. When I got to university, I started out studying international business, but quickly shifted to anthropology and linguistics because it’s just so much more interesting to me. I became so passionate about it that when I was doing graduate studies at the University of Houston, the dean of the History department had me teaching graduate-level seminars in French History. But for me, that thirst for real knowledge and authenticity made the idea of teaching very real to me. And that’s the world you really find in international schools.

The Globe: Do you think that kids learning different languages at such a young age helps them to approach problem solving differently?

Mr. Weber: That’s a really good question and also a good point: On one hand, they’re simply communicating and learning how to interact with others who speak different languages. On the other hand, lots of research has been undertaken into the transferability of skills between languages and other subjects. Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa is a researcher who’s done a lot of work in mind, brain, and education science, and she has published research that shows that, contrary to what we may think, children aren’t necessarily more efficient at learning languages than adults are. They do have more time to focus on it, though. And so they tend to learn new languages with typically native accents; given their higher levels of neuroplasticity, phonetics and phonology come easier. But we never lose our capability to learn. On a bigger scale, the French system of education is like that, too. Instead of learning math skills sequentially like in the United States, it’s taught all at once throughout a student’s education, so it comes together much more naturally.

The Globe: What is something that you really would like the DIS community to know about you that you haven’t shared?

Mr Weber: Ah. We’ll all get to know each other much better over the coming years, but for now, I’ll share that there are three people in your life who you always want to tell you the truth even if you don’t necessarily want to hear it: your doctor, your lawyer, and your kid’s teacher. I believe in having an open, honest, and transparent community. The only time I ever close my door is if I’m on a loud phone conversation or if there is noise in the hallway, so I want people to know that my door is always open. I’m an approachable person and I want to meet everyone, to hear their hopes, dreams, desires, wishes, fears, and whatever else. I want people to ask me if they have questions; if I don’t know the answer, we’ll come up with a plan to find out. All of it helps to build authenticity, communication and, ultimately, community.

Note: Part two of this interview will appear in next week’s Globe newsletter.