DIS Profile

Note: Last week, we featured the first part of our Q&A with new DIS Head of School, Jacques Weber. This week, Mr. Weber shares his thoughts on the power of interdisciplinary learning, critical thinking, taking risks in order to grow and more.

The Globe: Last week, you shared a bit about the advantages of growing up learning different languages. How do you think that translates into our students showing a greater willingness to become academically ambitious?

Mr. Weber: Learning other languages means, to a certain degree, being a risk-taker. If I’m going to speak to someone in their native language—or try, at least—that means I’m probably going to make some mistakes. It happened when I traveled from Texas to India to teach Spanish and French to students who’d hardly ever heard either language. I didn’t know any Hindi either, so we were all being risk-takers. When my students heard me speak Hindi, they realized effective communication doesn’t necessarily mean grammatical perfection; we have to take risks to learn. Generally, the younger we are, the more willing we are to take risks—even learning to walk is taking a risk. We fall, then we get up and keep doing it until we’re good at it. As humans get older, for some reason—social, emotional, or otherwise—we tend to lose some of that willingness to be adventurous or stick our neck out there and maybe make a mistake in front of others. So, I think a key role of school is to keep that alive as long as possible. You have to be okay with raising your hand and getting something wrong. That’s life. And what better way to learn about that and practice that than through languages. Our kids will grow up and eventually realize, “Wow, I can speak all these languages. Imagine what else I can do.”

The Globe: In preparation for coming to DIS, you had many discussions with our previous Head of School, Dr. González, including about our three pillars: Academic Ambition, Global Citizenship & Leadership, and Community Spirit. What are your thoughts on those?

Mr. Weber: I’ve been in a situation before where I walked into a school that didn’t have a mission, that didn’t have its values and foundational elements firmly defined, so being able to walk into a school that has all of that—and clearly a lot of very intentional work has gone into wordsmithing our mission and core values—it means that we know who we are and what we stand for. We can use it to guide our decision-making. Anytime we have to ask ourselves what we should do, I’m going to point to those guiding elements and ask, “Does it further our mission?” If it doesn’t, then we’re not going to do it. It really helps us keep our sights on doing things that matter—things that serve our community. As for the three pillars, everything we do aligns very neatly with those. They’re the essential elements of who we are and what we do. We’ll be talking a lot with our community about these things throughout the year.

The Globe: What else do you want to share about your focus for the coming year?

Mr. Weber: I think it’s an ideal time given all the work that’s been done to establish a firm foundation to hone in on staying true to who we are. It’s easy in an international school to want to do a million things—easy because you have so many different viewpoints and so many backgrounds. We can’t be good if we’re working on being all things to all people, but we can be really good at paying attention to the things that we do really well—and that’s being a premier school of international education. That’s what we’re going to do because we can own that and no other school in the Metroplex can. Every high school in DFW offers classes in French and Spanish, but we’re the ones who offer a true international focus—not just in languages, but cultures, academics, and the global experience as well.

The Globe: Can you share a little bit about your hobbies and interests outside of work? Tell us something surprising.

Mr. Weber: Hmm. I’ve run with the bulls seven times in Pamplona. There’s a great photo that ran in a newspaper of me running, wearing the red belt and bandana and everything. In the picture, everyone else running has their mouth closed except for me, and I’m sure I was yelling at someone to get the heck out of the way! Otherwise, any time I have the chance, my wife and I head out and travel the world. I’ve been to more than a hundred countries so far, so I’m over halfway to visiting every country. I also have a half of a pilot’s license that I’m looking forward to completing one day.

The Globe: Rumor has it that you’re not that much into music, which seems interesting given that you’re coming from Austin.

Mr. Weber: I know, right? Austin has become a real music capitol over the years. I can remember the words to a lot of songs simply because I’ve heard them so many times, but it’s true that I don’t necessarily go out of my way to listen to a particular song. I guess it’s easier for me to know which music I don’t like than what I do like—like death metal and thrashing; that’s just noise and screaming. Once, when I was visiting a high school friend in Vietnam, I asked him to do me a favor and download all his playlists onto my iPod. And there was a bit of everything—from Christina Aguilera to Vietnamese lounge music to Rammstein. So when people hopped into my car and heard my music playing, it was pretty eclectic to say the least! For me, I really appreciate music from different parts of the world,  and having been to many of those places makes a lot of songs  so much more meaningful.