Scott Davison will begin his 50th year of teaching in the fall.
Davison, who lives in East Dallas, teaches English at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.
Over the years, he has been an educator in California and Mississippi as well as Texas.
To mark this milestone in his career, he was profiled by Dallas ISD’s The Hub.
Davison grew up in Oak Cliff and by age 16, he had enrolled at the University of Dallas to study visual art. His first teaching job, which he took at age 20, was at the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi.
The students there made Davison think about where he could make a difference and help students be more curious, according to The Hub.
In the late 1970s, he received a call from Paul Baker, the founding director of Booker T., and moved back to Dallas to start working there. He helped create the first yearbook, which he and the student volunteers made with a typewriter and a mimeograph machine.
After about a decade, Davison moved to Los Angeles to work as a director, playwright, ghost writer and teacher. Some of his students there were Emily and Zooey Deschanel, Kate Hudson and Max Brooks, who wrote World War Z. He also met Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, Jackson Browne, Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft at parent conferences.
In 1998, Davison moved back to Dallas and taught one year at David W. Carter High School. Then he took a position at Booker T.
“I could have had multiple careers, but teaching always seemed to me to be the most important,” Davison tells The Hub. “We take kids of every background and level, and in four years, we transform their lives.”
Some of his former students with Dallas ties include Erykah Badu and Edie Brickell.
