“I would do it all again to know that I impacted their life in that way.”
- Dawn Reinarz
opportunities. She remembered hearing about The Parish School while at Baylor, so she went out to visit the old campus on Timberline Road.
But it wasn’t the same.
“I really missed being in the classroom the whole time,” Dawn said. “That's where you really build those solid connections and where you can really make a difference.” As fate would have it, after two years, Doug got another call to transfer. This time, they’d be moving closer to home to Dallas. Dawn began working at Plano Independent School District, where they had a co-teaching situation with both a teacher and speech-language pathologist. She, once again, enjoyed what she was doing. After one year, fate would intervene once again, as Doug was offered a position in Houston. Dawn and Doug packed their bags almost instantly, and Dawn called Margaret Noecker to see if there were any openings at Parish. The timing was perfect, as there was an opening in preschool, which she took. After three years away, the Reinarz family was finally home. As Dawn settled into her new classroom, she found out that the Reinarz family would soon be growing. Back at Parish Dawn continued working until spring break that year, then went on maternity leave when she had her daughter, Rendon. When she came back the following school year, Dawn decided to pivot, instead working part-time as Parish’s speech pathology coordinator.
“I met Robbin Parish and I was like, ‘This is Santa,’” Dawn said. “This is what I really, really want to do. And then I interviewed with Robbin, and she hired me, and then I started that summer.” In 1993, Dawn was officially an Early Childhood teacher for the Ducks class at The Parish School. Early on, the job was not easy. She felt overwhelmed, feeling as if she was thrown into the deep end. Thankfully, she had a safety net in Mitch Pengra, Parish’s former art teacher. “I just latched onto him, and he kind of, as only Mitch could, showed me what he was going to do,” Dawn said. “My mind was blown, and it was a lot of fun working with him. So, I ended up enjoying the interaction and the relationships with the kids.” After some time, Dawn got acclimated; she learned how to swim and thrived. But after three years of teaching, her husband Doug was asked to transfer to Ohio. Tears were shed, and, unfortunately, Dawn had to leave Parish. “I really feel like that’s the right move for us,” Dawn said, “even though that’s not what I wanted to do.” Leaving Houston When the Reinarz family moved to Ohio, Dawn went back to graduate school while continuing to work with early childhood-aged children as a speech-language pathologist. She would go to different schools and work with children.
During this time, Parish was beginning to transition to its current location on Hammerly Boulevard, and with that came even more
| 17 SUMMER 2025
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