Community

I tried to get the film crew that came to visit our school this week to switch dates. We had been out the day before due to the snow, we were on a 2-hour delay which threw off all of my original plans and I had several other great excuses why it needed to be moved. They were having none of it. When they walked in right on time on Tuesday, I asked them, "So what do you want to see?" I've done plenty of visits over the years that are specific to the visitors learning about a program or instructional style, but this was different. It was supposed to showcase me in the school and that seemed much more difficult. We talked about what kinds of shots they wanted and they even suggested staging a leadership team meeting or something like that. Perplexed, I suggested that we just start taking a walk around to visit some of the classes, and along the way, I would explain some of the more unique aspects of Greene Central. We visited several rooms and several different groups. Some knew that I might swing through and others had no idea. They stopped along the way to film artwork in the halls and even got a few unsolicited comments from kids that wanted 15 seconds of fame when they saw the camera. It was a great few hours and I probably couldn't have scripted it better if I had tried. As we walked back to my office to film some final interview questions, I got the comment that I loved. The lady that has organized every one of these videos for years said, "This is such a community school." Perfect. Now she gets it. 

Thanks to everyone that let us invade your classrooms on Tuesday. Thanks for letting us steal some of your students so that they could explain what they do. Thanks to those that prepped a lesson that I wasn't able to see when the schedule changed. But most importantly, thanks to all of you for being the community. You make me look much better than I really am.

Culture Wins

When Mrs. Willis tells me that something belongs on a t-shirt, I generally give it some thought. So let me set up the stage for you. As many of you know, I work with a group of principals from throughout the state that facilitates conversations and serve as mentors to other principals. We hold small group meetings about once a month and quarterly, we all get together (virtually) to discuss some larger issues and talk through some professional development. Think of it as one large PLC for principals. This week we had one of those large virtual meetings and I was leading a breakout room that was brainstorming root causes of why so many 9th graders were missing school unrelated to quarantines. When we finally got around to what we could start to do about it, I realized that I might not be as relatable to the rest of the group. 

We all had similar ideas about after-school programs where students could make up missed days and get tutorial help. It's not a particularly revolutionary idea, but more of a way to rectify some prior decisions that resulted in a loss of credits. At our school, we were quickly able to have counselors meet with every student that lost credit due to attendance and we had a plan for what steps they would need to go through to earn that credit back. Most of those students have already engaged in the process of doing what they need to do. Again, literally, anyone could have done this. It's not that groundbreaking. But when we talked about it in our group, the other principals quickly jumped to say that none of their teachers were willing to work after school to help with it and none of their bus drivers were willing to drive second routes to get kids home from it. I interrupted, "But you know, we do pay ours to be there." They told me that their staff thought that it wasn't worth their time and stress to take the money. They had tried to pay them and still no one was willing to do it. I shut up. My inner voice quickly told me that the solutions that I had were only exposing problems that I was not familiar with. 

So what's the difference? Was our plan so well thought out and communicated to students and their families that it just couldn't fail? Were we paying our staff double or maybe triple what others were willing to pay? Nope. The difference is culture and it has everything to do with all of you and very little to do with planning an afterschool program. Something intrinsically motivates our staff to help out when extra dollars aren't going to do it alone. Some people call it relationships, some call it a feeling of family and others call it a sense of importance. But really it's a culture. We want to see them succeed and we want to see them learn. This isn't new to us and doing something extra to get them there isn't either. Literally, everyone in education is tired right now and we all manage it in different ways. The teachers at those other schools are not bad teachers. Not at all. But something is different. They aren't us. And I have no words to tell you how much I appreciate you for being exactly who you are. 

So what does Mr. Willis think I should put on the t-shirt? Culture Wins When Programs Fail. Who knows. I'll keep working on it.

The Singing Teacher

As the father of two teenage daughters, I've learned that the fear of embarrassment is very real. They are at the age where you want to attract the right kind of attention to yourself, but not too much attention. There is a very fine line and I don't always know where it is. I laugh because I know it's a normal part of adolescence. Hopefully, they grow up and become more comfortable in who they are and less concerned about what others think of them. But if they happen to grow up to be very comfortable, then they might just have the ability to be a great teacher. Here's why...

I love to pop my head into a class when I hear good noise. So when I walked past Mrs. Galue's ESL classroom this week and heard noise from what is a very small group of students, I had to figure out what was going on. The group was learning English through music, specifically a Bruno Mars music video. I quickly saw that my presence changed the atmosphere, so I ducked out. But I listened from the hallway for the next 30 minutes. I got to hear a great concert from Mrs. G. She was singing her heart out with the video and the kids were eating it up. Now while I don't want to cast stones at anyone that is making a joyful noise, I can reassure you that I won't be asking Mrs. G to fill in as a chorus teacher anytime soon. But that's the point. She didn't pause at all to consider it to be uncool or even unflattering. Her singing created a teachable moment and her kids fed right in. 

The School Improvement Team has tasked me to acknowledge teachers that are doing a great job with instruction this semester and so I thought this was a fitting first step. Thanks to Mrs. G and all of the other teachers that are willing to be uncool or do whatever else it takes to get through to students. They might be laughing, but they are also learning. 

The Opposite Problem

I've taken a strong interest this year in how rural schools are managing instruction during the pandemic versus larger and more affluent schools and districts. I've mentioned in my blog posts before that I believe that in some ways we are better equipped to deal with the limitations and stressors that we are all experiencing right now. But where does that ability come from? It's not a financial advantage. It's certainly not centered around resources or close proximity to more community support. So what is it? This week I decided that it is a cultural phenomenon and the events halfway across the country told me why. 

This week, as schools across the nation, reopened from Christmas break we faced the increased challenge of a COVID surge. It's literally hitting us all right in the face. We left in December optimistic that things were getting better and that's just not the case. In Chicago, the teacher's union is deadlocked in a battle with the mayor's office over how to reopen schools. The COVID numbers there have prompted the teacher's union to call for a return to virtual learning and the mayor's office refused. As a result, teachers have refused to come into work this week. The schools have opened as places for emergency childcare, but teaching and learning are not present. As a principal, I would feel so helpless if I was there. You are torn between wanting to provide for students while empathizing with the safety of your staff. It's a lose-lose situation. 

But I don't have that problem. I have the opposite problem. Throughout his year, as I have had to send teachers home to quarantine, I get apologies. It is easy to see feelings of guilt and sometimes embarrassment at having to leave their classes to a substitute or for other teachers to cover. And while I admire their dedication, that's a problem. Unless you are a fool, none of us went out looking to be COVID positive. We didn't send our children or spouses out to contract the virus and while I'm certain that there are a few people somewhere in the world that have manipulated the quarentine rules to get some time off, I've never suspected it here. Unfortunately, no matter how hard we all try to avoid COVID impacting ourselves and our families, it is just going to find its way in sometimes. That's life right now and it's no one's fault. 

Teachers in rural schools are used to putting themselves last. We know how important we are to our students and our communities.  We know the roles that we play extend far beyond curriculum and instruction. Those feelings existed before the pandemic and were only increased as we have fought to reengage our kids. We know the importance of our work and that is why we feel guilty placing that responsibility on hold or in the hands of someone else, even temporarily. As we fight through the next few weeks of the latest COVID surge I want to combat this problem. No matter how good of a teacher you are, you are no good to students if you are sick or are distracted by the sickness of a family member. Just as each of you have stepped up to help in someone's absence, someone else will step up for you. I always had a phrase that I've asked our staff to keep in mind: "Take care of yourself, and take care of each other." The first part is just as important as the last.  

A Long December

Twenty-five years ago, I was a high school kid in the 90s, and in most summers, I used whatever money could manage to save from working to get to as many concerts as I could. I first saw Counting Crows in the summer of '97 and I was hooked. I liked how their style incorporated parts of lots of different types of music. I learned to play a few of their songs on the guitar and quickly found that the lyrics could hook a teenage girl's attention as well. Adam Duritz is the lead singer and songwriter for the band and after visiting a friend in the hospital that had been hit by a car one night, he scratched out the lyrics to Long December on a napkin on his way home. The song is a melancholy ballad that looks back at a tough year but also embraces the idea that the next "year will be better than the last." How appropriate. 

I'm not usually one for thinking that things magically change on a New Year's Eve or that the number of a year brings more luck than another, but somehow this December does bring about a bit of optimism that others haven't. Maybe we are turning a corner, but not just going back to the way things were. We learned a lot about ourselves and about each other. We learned what makes people tick and what makes them give up. We learned when we could be strong and when we've had enough. It's only the 17th, but it's been a Long December, and we've all had the feeling "that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls." Maybe it was full hallways and fights or phone calls to parents that were sometimes tough that made it difficult to get through, but as things started to get back to normal I started to feel better about what I was doing again. And while I know we all have our tired days of figuring out how to make things work again, we are all starting to see glimmers of hope as kids figure out how to get to where we know they can be. 

When I first came to Greene Central nine years ago, I had delusions that I was going to fix everything that I thought was wrong overnight. Six years later I started to see some of the changes happen that I expected. Change didn't happen then as quickly as I wanted it to and the same is true for right now. It takes work. Hard work. But there is optimism when we see things go the way that we want them to, and this time around I can see it coming. Thanks for showing up and for doing the hard work. I genuinely appreciate you all. "It's been a long December, but there's reason to believe, maybe this year will be better than the last."

(I realize that I'm getting older and that a lot of our staff were children or may not have even been around in 1997. If you're young or just unfamiliar with the song, here's a link to it and a glimpse of the summer of my freshman year in high school.)

Why Do We Do This Job - Part 3

Kristin White is a loud teacher. That's why Emily Lahr tells her kids that they will learn her curriculum at the same time. You can't help but hear her if you teach across the hall. Her natural enthusiasm is intensified by her passion for what she is teaching and that comes out as loud and exciting. So why is she that excited? The answer lies in a decision that she made years ago and she had me hooked in the very first sentence of her story. "I wanted to do more in life than be a doctor." 

For as long as she could remember, Mrs. White dreamed of being a doctor. She worked hard in school in Kentucky where she grew up. She finished high school there with an aunt when her family moved to North Carolina. After graduating she moved to be with them and continued to work toward her goal of attending medical school. Along the way, her father contracted the West Nile virus and became permanently epileptic. Maybe it was family events that changed her mind, but somewhere along the way, she was miserable in school. She came to the realization that if she was going to be a doctor, focusing on school and school alone was all that she could do. Kristin White had a lot more to offer than that so she told her parents that she had decided to be a teacher. Like good parents, they were worried and even made her talk with a counselor. Kristin wanted to help people and she had a passion for science and while being a doctor would let her pursue both, Kristin had found a way to follow her passion while making an impact in so many other ways. 

Kristin did her student teaching at Greene Central and never left. When she was the young teacher in her department she contributes a lot of help from teachers like Kathy Wegmann and Lisa Wilson. They had been at the school for a while and decided to take her under their wing. As she stayed the science department underwent some turnover and she continued to make connections beyond her hall. She learned that a good teacher doesn't have to be strong in every area, but the school collectively has enough strong teachers to be great overall. It wasn't long before she wasn't the youngest teacher anymore and she found herself supporting new teachers in the same way that she was helped. 

Today, she's still helping everyone with the many talents that she has. Her husband, Stan, joined Greene County Schools as a teacher as well and everyone knows their children. So I asked her if a young person today told her that they were considering becoming a teacher, what she would tell them. She had another great quote,  "Make the decision that feels right for your life." Kristin's life would be very different if she had not made the decision to be more than just a doctor. And if you know anything about her, you know that our school would be very different as well. 

It's Not Political

One of the job hazards of being a principal is that people often recognize you in public and want to ask you questions. At a register this week, the person taking my money gave me that look and asked, "Where do I know you from?" Politely, I responded, "I'm the principal at Greene Central." "I thought so," he responded. That led to a full-blown conversation about "schools today." I chose to engage in the conversation because I've always thought that if you're not promoting the truth about your school, you're letting others promote the version that they believe and this was the perfect case. The clerk at the register had not set foot in our school (or any other) in a long time. Like many people, their understanding of schools today is based on what they hear. The store clerk told me that he was worried about what kids were learning in schools and if they were being "indoctrinated." 

I know that the media, politicians, and Facebook posts love to pick schools apart right now for the same things that the store clerk was worried about. But for those of us that work in a school every day, it's a little hard to figure out what they are even talking about. While we do teach the curriculums that our courses require, the real progress that I see every day involves teaching students how to be better people and how to figure out what they want to do when they leave us. There's no room for indoctrination in college prep, career development, or motivation against apathy and those things are what is really being pushed in schools today. And while it's hard sometimes to see your progress, just think back to the first month of school and compare it to now. It is working and politics or political ideology had nothing to do with any of it. Being an educator rises above those things if you're one that truly cares about kids and their development and success beyond your classroom. 

By the end of the conversation with the store clerk, he told me that I had restored his faith in the local education system. Maybe that's one win. Maybe we can think of it as growth for the public. Because at the end of the day, it's not political to grow a teenager into a productive young adult. It's just education.