Leading from the Middle: Secrets to Building a Student-Centered School

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een in her role since January: 2020

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And after my first year, I was the person that was selected to come and speak with the new teachers. I said a word that I hear over and over again, and I truly felt it my first year, is that this is a family. It just has a family atmosphere.

And it's what I hear from, our teachers today. It just feels like home. We support each other and, we care about each other. And so it really is just a big extension of your family.

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n the school district and we [: 00:03:00

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rview. In those questions it [: 00:04:00

How do you design lessons? Because it really should be about differentiation and individualization for kids. And that assessment is a way for us to see. What they know and how we can help them grow.

So it's really designed around those questions. And I can remember those specific seven screening questions were asked to me when I came and interviewed as a teacher in the school district. And back then, the superintendent, Use the screening questions as his interview questions. And now we do the whole battery. So it's something that's a tool that we've used for 35 years.

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e we are educating kids from [: 00:06:00

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And I'm so glad to hear that you guys are using that. That's amazing.

At what point in your career as an educator. Did someone either tap you on the shoulder or did you feel this inspiration that I want to make a difference outside and beyond the classroom?

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And it was that I had somebody that tapped me on the shoulder and said, Hey, have you ever thought about going into administration? I was working on my master's at that time. And I thought maybe that's what I will get my master's in.

But, growing up, I was always in leadership positions. I always ran for student council. I was a swimmer. I was always the captain of the swim team. In high school, I never won the most valuable swimmer award, but I always won the most inspirational every year.

I think back and I believe in God and, you get placed in these things for a reason. I'm a very faithful person I was the president of my sorority in college, But I do remember somebody tapping me on the shoulder and said, I think you ought to run for president.

I sought out. So I try to do [: 00:08:00

I was encouraged to apply for it, but everything else it's been either we're promoting you to the next position or, tapping you on the shoulder that this is what we'd like to see for you, in your path including the current position that I'm in. I never wanted to be the superintendent.

I was going to finish my career as the associate superintendent. My love is curriculum and instruction and hiring teachers. I was in charge of the hiring process. I still sit in on every interview because that's just, who I am. But this was not what I wanted to do, but obviously God had a different path for me.

And there's actually a little, a cute story about that. I don't know if you mind me sharing.

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And this hummingbird just, follows me, wherever I go. I believe it's a sign from my dad. Anytime that something, happens in my life or I feel like I need my dad's influence, this hummingbird will show up.

e will be. And In November of: 2019

e assistant, and I was like, [: 00:10:00

And I turned around and there was a hummingbird in the window.

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. I wish she would have told [: 00:12:00

And I can't imagine what it would have been like with somebody that hadn't spent 30 years here. So it was great.

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What happened when you took over and within a couple of months, you had to close the schools?

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Like literally it was half and half, down the road. Some parents that were upset with us because we weren't listening and hadn't closed down. And then, we had people that, were upset that, we were going to follow because we're in a very conservative area.

Kern County is very conservative part of California. And so we waited until the very last minute. We ended up closing on March 18th. At that time, and I knew for sure it was only going to happen for two weeks like we're just gonna we're going to do this and we're going to close down and we're going to open.

n. We started with some zoom [: 00:14:00

Many people told me, Oh, Sue, you don't even know. I have other school districts that know that I'm a teacher and they keep asking me, what have you heard? Because they know that you're communicating this out and I tend to over communicate sometimes which sometimes can be a problem because I'll have to ring it back, but during that time, I think over communicating was the right move.

ave a vaccine clinic for our [: 00:15:00

I was just trying to do what was best for kids and best for our staff. as soon as we met the metric there was a caveat that, if you declare that you're open, then, they can't close you down again, even if your metrics change, which our metrics did change, but we slowly just started bringing people back.

I was one of the first to close and first to open. if I'm ever told that I have to close schools again because of that, I am going to retire because it's not the right thing to do. Kids need to be in school and, we're suffering the consequences of that now.

e. We just do this together. [: 00:16:00

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So we sent out [: 00:17:00

th [: 00:18:00

Probably one of the hardest was the masks. There was a big group across California that didn't want masks on their kids and of course we didn't have a choice, to whether or not, to do that and that was probably even more difficult than just shutting down because, they would come to board meetings and they thought it was our decision and that was really difficult for some of our board members.

ople that are upset with you [: 00:19:00

Either way you just try to say, Hey, I understand your point of view. And I'm here to listen, but this is what I have to do right now. Here's another option for you. We can give you this option.

We definitely wanted to listen. When we had to make a decision we made a decision. We worked with groups of people. I learned very early that leadership happens in a vacuum.

And if you don't make a decision. Somebody is going to make that decision for you. And, then you have to work with those consequences. And, I tell my administrators that often that I'd rather you tell somebody that I'm going to get back to you and then you do and you make a decision I'd rather you make a poor decision than no decision.

r teachers, our parents, our [: 00:20:00

And just recently I made a decision that was probably not in one of those three areas. I think I made it too quickly. I did make that decision with the board and it came back to people were not happy. So we put a pause on that decision. Took in some impact, some information and listened. Changed the policy totally, but made some revisions to it based on the feedback that we got. I think that's also a part of leadership too. We're not always going to get it right. You have to be willing to apologize and take a step back and maybe change the original decision.

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made that decision already. [: 00:21:00

And even if the decision was made with the best possible decision made with the limited information at hand, the outcome could still be wrong. But that doesn't make it a bad decision at the point when you've made it. One of the themes that we've seen is that failure is an important aspect of leadership how do we embrace failure before even becoming a leader? And that trains us up to deal with failure when you are a leader and that failure is a lot more visible and public. Yeah, thank you for sharing that.

I was gonna ask how you thought that the pandemic and your experience through that baptism of fire, if you will, how did that impact your leadership today?

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So it is about you learn just as much from doing something wrong than you do doing it correctly the first time. We really have a growth mindset and I try to model that, I am not perfect. And I make mistakes. But I'm going to tell you when I do.

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How do you see this with your executive cabinet? And it trickling down all the way to like the principles at VP level. How do you do this systematically?

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When I took over this job, I was the associate superintendent, and there was one assistant sup underneath me, and he was retiring at the end of that year when I took over. Then we had one chief administrator So I wanted to do things differently and, looking at the budget I could have three more chief administrators instead of replacing assistant superintendents.

ring chief administrators. I [: 00:24:00

with them, side by side and [: 00:25:00

That chief administrator is working with them, and then, also with the VPs. We model the same thing on our school sites by having school leadership teams. And so there's representation from, every single grade level or department and, they meet monthly.

Then we also meet district wide with those school leadership teams. So when they meet monthly, they're talking about things on their campus, but we meet three times a year and we work on things that are district wide initiatives or priorities and over the past three years, it's really been about the social, emotional and behavior expectations and positive behavior supports and building those multi tiers.

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And I want most of those decisions are the ones that we're going to make together. But sometimes, I have to make a decision and I hope that I've built the trust and people have that faith in me that, okay, that's Sue's decision and we're going to go with it.

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re able to disagree, but yet [: 00:29:00

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we started down the path of [: 00:30:00

It's just communicating a lot. And just having that objective of, this is what we're going to do, and not behavior expectations. A lot of people say, that's just Peebus, and Peebus had a negative connotation. But there's a lot of good things about positive behavior supports and building that.

We weren't going to argue whether or not we were going to do it. We're doing this, but we're going to seek your input along the way.

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ey've come to that decision, [: 00:32:00

And then I would also tell myself, trust your gut. I feel like I have a really good gut instinct and you can listen to input, you can ask questions but if it doesn't feel like it, trust your gut.

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