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MySpaceHats Off to Doris
Education, Volunteerism and Leadership Development: The Many Hats of One Trustee
by Beth Barbee, Communications Coordinator
“We all wear many hats, don’t we?” she asked with a grin.
Slay-Barber balances what she calls two full-time careers: her professional position as the campus support services coordinator for Northside Independent School District (NISD) in San Antonio, and her volunteer positions on many boards and organizations across the city.
Her passion and energy for both are evident.
“She is phenomenal,” said Sharon Spencer, an NISD colleague. “She balances everything across our district and acts like it’s nothing. Then she effortlessly switches gears into her volunteer mode.”
In Slay-Barber’s position at NISD, she provides technology and data services for schools including attendance technologies, which are vital to public school funding, grade reporting, and the all-important master schedule that includes everything from class requirements to graduation plans.
“No matter what your challenge or problem, when you call Doris, she is so positive and validates you and your importance to the district,” Spencer said. “You walk away feeling uplifted and confident. She treats everyone from janitors to principals this way.”
How To Learn, How To Teach
The issue of access and equality in education is close to Slay-Barber’s heart. The oldest of six children, she was the first in her family to go to college. With a dream of higher education and a $300 Future Teachers of America scholarship, she set out on her own to attend St. Mary’s.“Education is always worth it,” she explained. “If it took until I retired to pay back my loans, I was going to do it. It was that important to me.”
After Slay-Barber earned her bachelor’s in Elementary Education, her first job was teaching in the East Central Independent School District in San Antonio, thanks to a pact she’d made with the superintendent while she was a high school senior: He promised there would be a job for her after graduation if she would return to teach. She kept the pact and stayed on the faculty for 10 years before she was recruited by the Texas Region 20 Education Service Center to secure grants for science, reading and writing programs. During this time, technology was gaining importance in public schools, but districts were having a hard time getting teachers to buy in to the new processes.
“Many knew how to teach, but were afraid of the technology,” said Slay-Barber.
Recognizing the steep learning curve for some teachers, she moved to Region 20’s Technology Department and spent the next 17 years instructing teachers in technology use before accepting her current position with NISD.
Fearless of wearing too many hats, she also balanced earning her master’s in Educational Leadership from Trinity University and raising three boys with her husband, Gene Barber.
Her Second Job
In her “spare time,” Slay-Barber sits on the boards of the San Antonio Women’s Pavilion, Constance Allen Heritage Guild and Texas Business Women. She is an active volunteer, putting her heart and energy into each project she’s involved with, whether it is preparing birthday boxes for children at the Battered Women’s Shelter or facilitating jobs initiatives for women. Amid all that, she always finds the time for her alma mater.At St. Mary’s, Slay-Barber is a member of the Board of Trustees, a post she first filled as a representative of the St. Mary’s Alumni Association in 2006; she was appointed as a regular member in 2010.
“Serving on the Board of Trustees at St. Mary’s University is something I could have never imagined,” she said. “It is very humbling, and it allows me to give all that I have — my time, talents and experience.”
Now she’s adding one more board: Slay-Barber has recently been asked to be on the board of the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis.
“Once you are a teacher, you just continue to learn,” she said. “I want to encourage nontraditional fields for women. This is an exciting opportunity to encourage children and girls to explore those fields in technology, science and engineering.”
She's Got Hat-itude
With a primary focus of developing leadership skills in women, one of Slay-Barber’s most beloved organizations is Texas Business Women.She currently is that organization’s president, a post she first held in the late ’90s. It was then that she accidentally became identified as “the hat lady.”
She was about to be installed as the organization’s president in front of a large audience on the HemisFair stage, but she was suffering from a broken foot and the accompanying unattractive cast. Not wanting the attention to be on her foot, she drew the spotlight upward by wearing a purple and gold hat. Her plan worked brilliantly, and she began wearing hats to all Texas Business Women functions. Eventually, it became her social calling card.
“I always say, when you put on your hat, you’ve got to put on your hat-itude,” said Slay-Barber.
Hat-itude, of course, is a crowd-pleasing attitude in which the wearer is prepared to draw attention and be outgoing. It’s a familiar attitude to Slay-Barber, for sure. She now owns more than 300 hats and 32 fascinators — small headpieces attached with a comb or a headband — which have taken over two closets in her home and are organized by season and color.
She has won the San Antonio Women’s Organization Fiesta Hat contest, and this year, she hand-made fascinators and hats with the Women’s Pavilion out of recycled banners. The project brought awareness to their 3C Project (Community, Creativity, Collaboration) benefiting Fuerza Unida, an organization that supports gender equality and the seamstresses left unemployed after Levi Strauss closed its San Antonio plant in the 1990s.
Respected by her colleagues and peers, their compliments are as colorful as her hat collection.
“Doris is one of those rare people that no one could say a negative thing about,” said Spencer. “She is hard-working, resourceful, gracious and very kind. She is an unsung hero in our field.”
