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LAST MINUTE MUSINGS: Celebrating success as ‘Principal for a Day’
My fortune cookie from last Tuesday had a message that hit me right in the moment.
Celebrate your success and learn from your mistakes.
Dimestore philosophy seems an inauspicious place to start talking about elementary education, but here we are.
After all, I read those words sitting next to my daughter in the cafeteria of Tzouanakis Intermediate School.
I wasn’t there simply for lunch with a charming young lady, but on the invitation of Principal Lisa Eldridge to take part in “Principal for a Day,” a program of the Indiana School Principals Association that brings community stakeholders into school buildings to see what life is like for administrators and teachers on a daily basis.
And let me say, it was an eye-opening experience.
It’s easy to play armchair educator, and I’ve done my share over the years.
For example, as important as math and language arts are, I often fear that this state’s obsession with standardized testing has squeezed out time the kids should be spending on social studies, science and the arts. I’ve seen it with my own kids.
Math and language are fundamental to all learning, but when they aren’t applied to other subject matters, they become self-referential and hollow. How can we expect kids to retain these lessons if they simply become an echo chamber with no application?
My answer: We can’t.
What I saw last week gave me hope, though. With Eldridge taking me around to the various classroom pods, we made our way into a fourth-grade pod while they were in the midst of their English language arts lessons, finding them studying what looked an awful lot to me like ... gasp ... social studies?
One class was studying a non-fiction unit as part of its ELA curriculum, but in the midst of learning to understand the text, they were also learning about Renaissance Europe and its culture.
Across the hall, in a class that I imagine was in the same unit, the students were applying their Renaissance knowledge to the creation of stained glass windows using tissue paper. How is this ELA, you might ask? Traditionally, stained glass was a form of storytelling in an era when a huge swath of the population was illiterate.
There are even plans in place for these classes to stage a Renaissance fair.
All the while, other classes in the pod were designing a map of the state of Indiana with salt dough. (Remember that stuff?)
I suppose the question should be, is this new reading curriculum, adopted just this year by Greencastle Community Schools, working?
I don’t know. I’m not really an education professional, and I did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. Time will tell. But I have little doubt that these kids were learning and will remember these lessons for years to come.
One factor that seemed to be important to Eldridge is making connections, not only between different subject matters but between the different professionals in the building. At one point, she was advising a classroom teacher on some possible strategies for her room and told her to talk to music teacher Carrie Hamilton about something she had observed recently, possibly incorporating a particular method into her own teaching.
“Everybody is with their own kids all day,” Eldridge said. “We have a lot of expertise in this building, and we need to share it.”
Sometimes Eldridge sharing her own expertise took the form of simply helping one kid who needed it.
Relatively early in the day, we came upon a sullen-looking third-grader sitting outside his classroom. Eldridge addressed him and took on a conciliatory tone.
“It’s really early in the day, and I think you can get back on track,” Eldridge said. “But you have to want to.”
With that, she escorted him back into the classroom in an attempt to reintegrate him into the learning environment. How did the rest of his day go? I have no idea. But the kid got a chance, and I think your average eight-year-old deserves that.
Later, we entered a special services classroom to find teacher Debra Sabin with a little extra on her plate, as the classroom aide was on her lunch break. Eldridge, a former special education teacher in Owen County, simply sat down with one of the kids while Sabin worked with the rest, lending a hand as needed until the aide returned.
It was also in this room that I experienced my most personally poignant moment of the day.
I had been told that one of the students, who is non-verbal, was probably not comfortable with me being in the classroom, as he doesn’t like strangers. So I kept my distance and didn’t say much, not wanting to have too much of an effect on his day.
I was just the principal for a day, after all.
As I was concentrating on something else, though, I felt the arms of a young person suddenly around me. It seems that, for reasons none of us could fully grasp, this particular student had taken a liking to me. I was getting a hug, after which he took my hands and started leading me around the room.
“I have chills,” Sabin said as she watched it. “I’ve never seen him do something like this.”
A bit choked up myself, I just followed him around the room. Eventually, he led me over to a reading area, where he had taken an interest in a book. He let go of my hands, and I was free to go. The moment had passed.
But I won’t forget that moment any time soon.
On the whole, though, my interactions with students were much more light-hearted. It just so happened that my day at Tzouanakis coincided with the first day in the building for new Assistant Principal Chris Covert.
Needless to say, the kids were confused.
“Are you the new ... ?” one kid queried early in the morning.
“No, Mr. Jernagan is our ‘principal for the day,’” Eldridge countered. “Mr. Covert is over there with Mr. Phillips.”
Covert heard it too. At about the same time, a kid asked which one of us was the new assistant principal.
Covert explained the situation before the kid came back with, “But he has a cool mustache.”
Upon hearing the story, I had to laugh and felt the need to apologize for upstaging Covert.
Indeed, the handlebar mustache felt like a bit of a distraction throughout the day, with a few kids even bidding me adieu at day’s end with “See you later, Mr. Mustache.”
What can you do? After all, Eldridge had told me of the goal to keep things fresh at the school with “surprise and delight.” I suppose that was the unintended consequence of my silly facial hair experiment, at least on this day.
Following my day at Tzouanakis, I’m confident that for Eldridge, Covert and their staff, that’s one of the goals every day. Some will be better than others, to be sure.
But, hey, what can we do if not celebrate our success and learn from our mistakes?
In the end, I know one thing is true when it comes to our local education professionals.
“We’re always here for kids — every day,” Eldridge said.
I take comfort in that, as a dad and a community member.
