Niles West High School Gets a New Dean

From the community ~

Antwan Babakhani has been named Dean of Students at Niles West High School, after the Niles Township High School District 219 Board of Education appointed him at its August 6 meeting. Babakhani joins the district from Chicago Public Schools, having served most recently as Assistant Principal of Curriculum and Instruction at Amundsen High School.
Babakhani received the prestigious Emerging Leader Award in 2009 from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). The previous year he received the Dan & Pat Jorndt “Joy of Teaching” Award at Amundsen.

“Antwan is a distinguished professional who rose to the top of an amazing crop of applicants," said Niles West Principal Kaine Osburn. "He has been a successful instructional and administrative leader, and he knows well what success looks like in a diverse community like ours. We are lucky to have him aboard."

As Assistant Principal at Amundsen, Babakhani developed a collaborative discipline model based on the principles of restorative justice. The new approach enlists the support of counselors, deans, teachers and parents. This method led to a dramatic drop in out-of-school suspensions, the school district said. He also coordinated a small learning communities grant to engineer a standards-based grading initiative to prepare teachers for 9th and 10th grade benchmarking using the Common Core State Standards.

Babakhani started at Amundsen in 2005 as an English teacher. He was also a wrestling coach for three years. He earned his Master's degree in Reading from Concordia University in Chicago and holds a Bachelor of Science in English Secondary Education from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.