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<\/p>\nMeghan Royal, nurse and safety coordinator at the School for the Talented and Gifted in Pleasant Grove, will tell you she doesn\u2019t like talking about herself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She calls herself a helper, someone who\u2019s more comfortable taking care of others than being in the spotlight. But when she starts talking about her students and her school, it\u2019s clear why she deserves recognition.<\/p>\n
National Nurses Day, on May 6, recognizes the work nurses perform every day to improve the health and well-being in their communities, and for school nurses, of their schools.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Before she ever stepped into a school clinic, Royal had a very different career. She was a systems analyst, a job she said she enjoyed very much. Still, something kept tugging at her. Healthcare was in her DNA.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI come from a family of healthcare providers,\u201d Royal said. \u201cMy father and grandfather were both pharmacists.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a while, pharmacy seemed like the obvious path for Royal, but the field was changing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was during a time when pharmacists were moving away from owning their own drugstores,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was becoming more of a CVS or Walgreens situation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Royal wanted something more personal, more hands-on, so she decided nursing was the best path. She went back to school at Texas Woman\u2019s University, finished her degree, and started out in psychiatric nursing.<\/p>\n
Then life shifted again. Royal became a mom.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy daughter is the light of my life,\u201d she said. \u201cI realized our time with our children is fleeting. What feels like a regular Tuesday to us is actually a core memory for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The idea that an ordinary Tuesday could become a core memory stayed with Royal. Hospital shifts and summers spent working didn\u2019t fit the kind of presence she wanted to have in her daughter\u2019s life. School nursing did.<\/p>\n
When her daughter started kindergarten, Royal moved into a school clinic at Seagoville North Elementary School, working with a team she described as a wonderful group of people and a campus full of little ones.<\/p>\n
She loved it; the kids, the community, and the feeling that everyone pulled together for students, she said. But then came COVID-19.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was something about that time when all the kids were wearing masks; it felt less personal,\u201d she said. \u201cThat was the saddest time.\u201d<\/p>\n
As her elementary students grew up and moved on, and as her own daughter got older, Royal started to feel like it might be time for her own change too. Middle school suddenly didn\u2019t seem so intimidating; it felt like the next step.<\/p>\n
A nurse supervisor mentioned an opening at TAG in Pleasant Grove and encouraged Royal to apply. When Royal sent in her resume, she didn\u2019t expect much right away.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cForty\u2011five minutes after my r\u00e9sum\u00e9 went out, Principal Reymundo Guajardo Cervantes called me,\u201d Royal recalled. \u201cHe\u2019s like, \u2018We\u2019d love to have you.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although she had never even seen the campus, she had heard all the wonderful things about it. Royal took a leap of faith and accepted. Now, years later, Royal knows she made the right call.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is my third year at TAG, and I just absolutely love it. It\u2019s a wonderful place,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The kids she sees there are high achievers, driven, and often hard on themselves. But their stress doesn\u2019t always look like stress at first.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cA stomachache can easily be a sign of, \u2018oh, I\u2019m so worried about taking this test,\u201d Royal said.<\/p>\n
Around big exams like STAAR, students go to her office complaining of headaches, nausea, or stomach pain. Sometimes the real need isn\u2019t medicine, it\u2019s a moment to breathe and for someone to listen.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes it\u2019s not even about nursing,\u201d she explained. \u201cIt\u2019s simply about being someone who truly sees them.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are days when a student comes in with \u201ca little headache\u201d and ends up sitting with her for 20 minutes, just talking. By the time they leave, they feel better, Royal said. She doesn\u2019t downplay it or make it sound extraordinary, because to her, it\u2019s just part of caring for the kids.<\/p>\n
Her care doesn\u2019t stop at the clinic door. Royal is also the school\u2019s safety coordinator. What started with her quietly checking medical equipment and safety kits turned into coordinating fire drills, leading safety meetings, and even starting a student safety club. She and her students walk the campus together, looking for loose bars on the playground, issues with the turf, or anything that might put someone at risk.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Their work earned the school Dallas ISD Risk Management\u2019s Safety Eagle Award in 2025 and a monetary incentive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Royal\u2019s success, whatever her title, is based on her belief that relationships are at the core of her work. She greets students in the morning, calls parents often, and wants families to feel their children are known and loved.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI want them to know I care, that we\u2019re here for their kids,\u201d Royal said.<\/p>\n
For Nurse Appreciation Week, Royal expresses her gratitude to the Health Services Department for their constant support and camaraderie.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got this. I love that we can call each other and be there for one another,\u201d she said. \u201cEspecially during COVID, we really bonded as a team. Health Services is such a great group. We\u2019re blessed to have each other, and I\u2019m very grateful for that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meghan Royal, nurse and safety coordinator at the School for the Talented and Gifted in Pleasant Grove, will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281638,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,1492],"class_list":["post-281637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}