portraits

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9

PROFILE OF A GRADUATE 

Jenn Waterman /

 

Collaborator

Just as she helps her clients fi nd the perfect hairstyle, Jenn 

Waterman had to try out a few educational paths before she found the 
right fi t. “College wasn’t my thing. I felt like a failure and it just wasn’t 
me,” says Jenn, who left a traditional college for cosmetology school. 
“But in any fi eld you go into, there’s going to be work and there’s 
going to be education necessary.”

A professional hair stylist for more than 15 years, Jenn has worked 

her way to the top of her craft as a Redken artist, one of only 400 or 
so in the country. After an extensive training program, Redken artists 
are presented with the fi eld’s most elite opportunities. In both 2015 
and 2016, Jenn was chosen to style hair at the Miss America pageants 
where she coiff 

ed contestants and celebrity judges including 

Olympian Gabby Douglas and actresses Sara Foster and Laura Marano. 
Then, after competing against other Redken artists in Redken’s Next 
Big Thing contest, Jenn won a trip to the NYX Face Awards, where she 
collaborated with hairstyling icon Robert Lobetta. 

When she’s not globetrotting, Jenn fi nds her Zen in Amarillo at 

home with her family and behind the styling chair at Cut Salon and 
Blowout Bar. “I’ve just had all these insane opportunities,” says Jenn. 
“I love to say that even if you’re in little ol’ Amarillo, Texas, you can do 
big things and go big places. There’s a lot of hard work that goes into 
it and I still have to study all the time. But it’s so rewarding. When you 
fi nd the right thing, it’s so much easier.”

“I love to say that even if 
you’re in little ol’ Amarillo, 
Texas, you can do big things 
and go big places.”

I routinely peruse a document titled, “Creating a New Vision for 

Public Education in Texas: A Work in Progress for Conversation and 
Further Development.”

Before convening our Profi le of a Graduate work, sentences in that 

document haunted me:

The core business of schools is to provide engaging, appropriate 

experiences for students so that they learn and are able to apply 
their knowledge in ways that will enrich their lives and ensure their 
well-being.

Accountability systems of themselves do not produce excellence. 

Excellence can only come from commitment and meaning.

The shift in power in setting education policy from the local 

community to the state and federal government has resulted in 
a system where schools feel more accountable to the Legislature 
than to their students and their communities.

As I thought more about the phrase, “...where schools feel more 

accountable to the Legislature than to their students and their 
communities,” I wondered if that was true for AISD and if our 
community members would work alongside us and embrace the 
important task of raising young people.

Enter “Profi le of a Graduate” work.

Working with our community was an exceptional learning 

experience for me as a leader. It was enlightening to hear parents 
voice their wishes and dreams for their children. It was encouraging 
to hear business leaders express the value of a combined commitment 
to academic, social and emotional skills. It was heartwarming to 
listen to servant leaders from our own city talk about the importance 
of everyone in a community valuing the diversity of those we live 
among, as well as possessing the grit necessary to “roll up one’s 
sleeves” and make a diff erence in areas that aren’t necessarily tied to 
one’s paycheck.

While I often refer to that document titled, “Creating a New Vision 

for Public Education in Texas,” our Profi le of a Graduate endeavor 
gave wings to our own vision for public education in Amarillo. We 
proved that “excellence does come from commitment and meaning.” 
While we remain cognizant that our state and federal leaders will 
continue to set expectations for public education, we also have a true 
understanding that our local community partners with us, as well as 
counts on AISD, to empower scholars to be thinkers, communicators, 
collaborators and contributors.

Creating Amarillo’s “New 
Vision for Public Education”

DR. DANA WEST 

Superintendent