Origin Story - Part 3

Let Me Tell You A Story

Tales of Leadership and Creating a Personal and Professional Framework For Supporting Student Achievement

“The Origin Story”

Part 3 of 3

This is the final part of the story of my first experience in public education.?If you missed part 1 or part 2, please go back and read them before this last piece. Leadership is something that is grown over a period through our experiences.?Individuals may have natural leadership abilities and instincts, but the importance of experience cannot be overlooked or devalued.?Good teachers are lifelong learners and the same is true for leaders.?Through this journey as an educator, I have continued to learn from many mentors and have come across many individuals whom I have had the pleasure to learn from.?Through all these experiences I have also come to understand that the single act of being present every day (attendance) is the most powerful indicator of success there is.?I am dedicating the remainder of my professional life to the support of building and sustaining good attendance habits in our students, and employees and am convinced that any investment made in attendance will pay off multiple folds in future improvement.

Chapter 13 – “Consistent, Positive, and Proactive Approach”

The next week is my 4th week in the assignment, so I figure I have a couple more weeks to go, and I still have a couple of students not coming regularly to the extra sessions, so I try to take the after-school approach again.?This time, I am covering again for the basketball coach and there is also a substitute for the Football coach, so I must lock up everything (it seems I am becoming a veteran).??I had gotten the addresses of the students that I was trying to contact home with and end up catching up with the student right as he was walking through his front door.?This time the parent was home and sees me and after introductions, I am let in.?

We talk about her son a little, but I can tell she is struggling with my English. As luck would have it, while we are talking her daughter comes in and she helps translate.?I quickly learn about the fact that their father is gone, and that the son must get home to go to work to help the family.?He was embarrassed to tell me what was going on so just did not come to any tutoring sessions.?The mom starts to cry that her son is not passing my class, and I immediately am thinking that I am in over my head and have no business being there in the home.?

The daughter then saves me and teaches me something that matters.?She says that she heard I do before school as well as after school tutoring because her best friend comes then and is now almost up to a B in the class.?She says that she and her brother will come in the mornings on the days he is not working before school because they have never had teacher care about them so much before.?This meeting solidified the need for us as educators to really listen to our families and take the time to understand what they need and not make assumptions about why the student does not behave the way we want.?Trust is a delicate thing, and the best way to build trust is to be genuine and consistent.?Today, I also understand that consistency means continuing to reinforce habits and using constant messaging.?Just as I believe in the power of the story, I believe that we must continually illustrate the benefits for students of good attendance each year they are in school to ensure they stay on the correct pathway.

Chapter 14 – “Professional Learning Communities”

As week 5 is coming to an end I am starting to be a little bit nervous each day when I go to school that it will be the day, I am told I must leave because of my emergency credential.?I do not have the heart to tell the students that I would be leaving soon.?Every day I have about 30 students in my room during each of the study sessions and I find myself working in small groups while other students help each other.?About the 3rd week, I started to have non-students showing up to help their friends.?The principal had come by multiple times, stayed for the entire class period, and sometimes for 2.?The math department chair had come by and the ILT chair that I had subbed for watched a class for a while too.?I did not know what to call what was happening on the campus, but it turns out there were the beginnings of what would become a Professional Learning Community (PLC) forming among the permanent staff.?I was enjoying the connection with students and the principal told me attendance was running higher for students in my classes than in other classes within the school.?In the 3rd week, the assistant principal had come by to tell me that my classroom is out of bounds during lunch.?I assumed that meant the lunch tutorial would be over then and asked him.?He said that was his plan, but then he shared with me that the PTA president called the principal to congratulate him on his new lunch tutorial options.?The assistant principal then told me the president’s oldest son was in my period 3 class.?This was my first experience with the politics of schools, but it helped me know that every time I enter a new LEA, I take the time to learn who the major stakeholders are.

On the second day of week 6, there was a note in my mailbox to see the principal at Nutrition Break, because he knew I did the tutorials other times.?I did not get to the office like I was supposed to all the time.?In fact, I had it arranged for one of my first-period students would pick up everything for me on their way to class each morning, which was how I got the note.?I walked down to the office knowing that I was going to be told that this was my last week.?I was grateful to have had the opportunity and was thinking about how I could find a way to substitute on that campus more after this assignment ended.?It turns out all the principal wanted to tell me was that the central office required him to submit an evaluation of any substitute in a long-term position and that as part of that evaluation often the central office would have someone drop into the classroom as well.

Chapter 15 – “School District Politics and Student Achievement”?

I went back to my classroom for period 3 not really thinking about the meeting with the principal.?About 10 minutes into period 4 we were in the middle of the Pythagorean theorem and focused on translating the vocabulary and definitions for the whole group when the door to my classroom opened and 5 people walked in.?I recognized the Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources from our December meeting and of course the Principal.?The group included another man in a full suit, a lady who very much reminded me of my grandmother, and another lady.?The principal just told me to continue with what I was teaching, so I did and the students continue to work in their groups as I moved around the room.?

The two ladies sat with some of the students and talked with them as they were working in groups.?The HR person and the principal spent most of their time looking at student work that I had posted on the bulletin boards.?The other man walked around the room talking with students as well as two ladies quite a bit.?They asked the students about the tutorials that I had set up and I heard one of the students talking about when I followed them home to get them to come to the tutorial.?The ladies asked what motivated them to be there every day and they answered that they were motivated to attend because I had explained to them why the habit of attendance was important.?At the end of the class, one student simply stated, “I come every day because Mr. World (still the r) said he won’t allow me to fail if I am in class every day, and I want to be the first in my family to graduate.”?The whole group from the central office stayed for the remained of the period until lunch.

As they were leaving the man in the suit came over and said that he was glad to see how well things are going in the class and that would tell my dad that he enjoyed seeing how things were going with me.?My father was an Optometrist in the local area, and I knew one of his patients was the Superintendent of the district.?The two ladies, it turned out were the board president and the board clerk.?The board clerk let me know that her best friend was the PTA president of the school as she was leaving.??When I reflect on what made me pursue being an educational leader, I continue to return to this origin story.?When a leader takes the time to connect with all layers of the organization it is motivating.?When a teacher connects with an individual student it is motivating.?Each of these brings the power of enthusiasm that can carry us through hard times and challenges.?What I learned most from the assignment was that we must do anything, and everything to ensure that students are attending school every day.?If we do this, then everything else is possible.?

This origin story has more chapters, but as you read the future issues newsletter, I think it will become evident why I felt compelled to put this together to support local educational agencies in rebuilding good attendance habits as our gateway to improved student achievement and why just doing the old approaches to improving attendance will not be enough.

Chapter 16 – “Leaders Find Solutions Where Others See Only Challenges”

After I finished 5th period, I headed down to the school office during my preparation period to make some copies for the next day.?When I walked into the office to go to the Gestetner machine (the ones that printed in blue ink with the carbon), I saw the Assistant Superintendent was still talking to the principal.?They saw me and said they were just about to call me in my classroom to come down to the office.?

When I sat down with them, I was glad to take a quick drink of the diet coke that the principal put in front of me because all a sudden I felt a dry mouth coming over me.?I knew this was the end of the line and I waited to be told thank you for your work this past month.?What I was told next was not exactly what I expected.?The Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources asked if I remembered when we had talked about the 30-day emergency credential, and I repeated my understanding.?She then looked at me and told me that Friday would be day 30.?She then told me that I needed to call the substitute system for Monday, and right then I knew that this assignment was over. I was actually sad and don’t think I was quite listening when I replied that I will call in on Sunday night to check for my next assignment.?The HR person stopped me and stated that is not right.?Seeing that I was confused, she explained that I needed to call the system to report that I had to be absent on Monday.?

When I look back at what was happening, I learned that part of being good educational leaders are finding ways to support student achievement, even if they are very creative.?When we make it essential to be present in school for students, and when we invest in staff development for our teachers and provide outreach and education for our parents, great things can happen.?Sometimes it takes courageous leadership to make decisions that can have far-reaching implications.?As a CBO, I know that having a non-qualified teacher assigned to a class for longer than 30 days can result in a financial penalty from the state during the annual audit.?In a recent assignment as CBO, I had a situation where we had a teacher vacancy in November and after numerous starts and stops found a long-term substitute who had bonded with the students and their families.?The HR Chief and I visited that classroom with the principal and then I went into a closed session with the board and discussed the idea of keeping the teacher for the year and self-reporting the penalty.?Those students had a successful year because of this decision.?I think you can clearly see what grounded my thinking in that situation from this story.

Epilogue – “Scenes From The Sequels That Run During the Credits of The Movie”

To put closure to my first teaching assignment, I did call in a substitute for myself on Monday and quickly created some lesson plans.?The office manager told me to put staff development as the reason and the ILT chair had me attend the first AVID training with several of the staff.?The Human Resources department recorded that I ended my long-term assignment on day 30.?Two days later I was assigned to the class again as a day 1 long-term substitute.?The football coach came by that Wednesday and offered me a coaching position for the upcoming year if I would also help coach track in the spring.?On day 25 of this new assignment, I was again directed to call in a substitute to attend day 2 of the AVID training.?I started over as day 1 on the following day.?The students continued to attend the tutorials and in the end, every student did pass (several just barely) but I was able to attend the graduation to see the first-generation student walk across the stage and see his mom crying once again.?

At the end of May, the teacher called me to tell me she was ready to come back but did not want to impact the class or take me away because she was appreciative of what I had done. She asked me if she could come in for a day to see the students because she had taught many of their siblings.?She did come back and took over the class the last two weeks of school and I shifted to day-to-day subbing (all at the school for the last couple of weeks).?For those last two weeks, both the regular teacher and I did the tutorials together.?In late May a handwritten letter was in my box.?It was from the board president, who was a retired teacher herself, who encouraged me to get a teaching credential.?In her p.s. she wrote that if I do, she will make sure I have a teaching job and if it didn’t happen, she had already told the superintendent that she would not be happy.?

By then I was already hooked that education was going to be my profession.?I signed up for classes at night at National University and during the day worked as a substitute teacher then ran to the high school (on days I was not already there) to coach both football and track.?I did my student teaching in PE for the semester when that time came at the high school.?Since I had never taken any teacher credentialing courses and had to work full-time, and coach I completed two more full years as a substitute and was hired immediately in the district as a teacher beginning the journey that has been the most rewarding outcome I could have ever imagined.?

Final Thoughts

For 32 years I have been focused on student attendance.?I had perfect attendance when I was in high school, and my wife and I placed this value in our own daughter who started this fall as a high school teacher. As we have watched the changes in student attendance habits over the past couple of years through the pandemic, we have seen a change.?The reality, however, is that we have always known that attendance is the first line of defense against lost learning and that poor attendance is the leading indicator of declining student achievement.?I am proud of my educational career and see how all of my experiences have led me to this point where I hope to change the lives of many more students through ongoing support and positive messaging regarding the importance of student attendance that reaches all students and parents in forward-thinking LEAs across the country.