For over 15 years, Jenna Davis has dedicated herself to educating students and supporting her fellow teachers in the Nashville Community. We are excited to honor this inspirational educator as our April Star of the Month.
Teacher of the Year for the 2018-2019 school year, member of the Advisory Committee of the Educator’s Cooperative, and graduate student at Vanderbilt’s Learning, Diversity, and Urban Studies Master’s program, these are just a few of Davis’ accomplishments. She considers diversity in education a priority and values community partnerships with schools. “Community resources can provide access to different opportunities,” says Davis.
She also focuses on the importance of students seeing people that look like them accomplishing their dreams and goals. “When the Sounds’ new stadium opened, we were able to bring our students there as an incentive. Just having those opportunities for students that they might not have is really impactful and it would be great to bring students to a Nashville Stars game in the future. Having those options for students to see that ‘this baseball player looks like me,’ who could’ve been an EL student as well, and to look at where they are now.”
In 2020, Davis accepted a position with Metro Nashville Public Schools overseeing three schools and their English Language Development programs, including 49 teachers and over 800 English Learning students across Davidson County. She notes that there are over 25 different languages represented at her schools. “It’s really cool seeing how many different indigenous groups there are. From Guatemala, where they’re not speaking Spanish, they’re speaking different Mayan indigenous languages.”
“Athletes come from all over the world, it’s really important for kids to see people that look like them and know that they have opportunities after high school and college. There’s lots of opportunities available to you [students]…if they [students] had Nashville athletes that they could really look up to, I think that would be just so amazing for them.”
If you know of someone who is making a positive difference in our community, please let us know