To kick off our celebrations of Black History Month, we asked the DPS Community for submissions of Black Excellence and the community has spoken!
When you think of a football player, you don’t often think of them reciting Shakespeare or having fun while wielding a wooden sword in a stagecraft class. DPS trailblazer Ben Butler defies stereotypes and teaches his students that you don’t have to limit yourself or your passions. You can be everything you want to be. For Ben, this means teaching English and theater, as well as coaching football at Manual High School.
A DPS alum himself, Ben credits DPS with his ability to dream big and pursue all of his interests. He hopes to pay it forward by giving that same type of inspiration and caliber of education to his students. Ben is living up to that aspiration in spades.
“Every kid deserves to know what it’s like to be applauded, and if that’s on the field or if that’s in the theater, so few people in this world unfortunately know what that’s like — and I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure kids who pass through Manual High School can say, ‘at some point in my life a room, a stadium, a group of people clapped for me.’”
Watch this video to learn more about Ben and the impact he has on his school community.