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P OW E R E D BY A P P T EGY

FALL 2021

Leadership & Balance

Welcoming Displaced Students Championing Your Comms Directors Building a Family-Friendly Superintendency

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Can we find balance in the midst of chaos? It’s been nearly two years now since the COVID-19 virus knocked education—and our lives—out of balance. As a school leader, you’ve made tough calls about closing schools, spearheaded the shift to online learning, fielded questions about masks and vaccines, and stood up to demoralizing criticism. But your job has always been difficult, and the same challenges you faced before still exist. You’re still working to keep staff morale up, boost your community’s perception of your schools, and ensure academic excellence—tasks only made more challenging by the pandemic. What’s more, we know you have a life outside of school. On top of your responsibilities at work, you may be juggling parenthood, elder care, and even your own mental health. Since March 2020, so many of us have been in survival mode, just trying to make it to the other side. But unfortunately, what we thought was a sprint is turning out to be a marathon. It’s clear that it will be quite some time before COVID stops affecting our schools. Knowing we’re in it for the long haul, we need to find ways of working that are more sustainable, that allow for balance.

OUR TEAM

This issue is all about that balance between the professional and the personal. We’ll introduce you to school leaders who have navigated that tension, from Dr. Bob Hunt, whose experience as the father of a cancer survivor impacted his response to the pandemic, to Dr. Jill M. Siler, who literally wrote the book on thriving through difficult times. We’ll also examine the complexities of blending family life with school leadership and envision a more accessible superintendency. Of course, this balance isn’t something you can find alone. In good times and bad, you need to share the load with a trusted team. But just as you depend on your staff, they must be able to depend on you. The pandemic has highlighted the importance of one team member in particular: the communications director. That’s why we asked comms directors across the country a simple question: How can your school administrators better support you? Though it may be a while before our next “normal” school year, there’s hope on the horizon. Pfizer estimates that as early as this month, vaccines may become available to children aged 5 to 11, a huge development for schools. Slowly but surely, we’re making progress—and the balance you cultivate in this season will serve you well on the other side.

Managing Editor: Melissa Hite Writers/Researchers: Barrett Goodwin, Brittany Keil, Marie Kressin, Corey Whaley Graphic Designer/Illustrator: Corbin Lawrence

Director of Media: Michael Cruice Art Director: Sebastian Andrei Social Media Specialist: Thiphavanh “Bri” Vongvilay Apptegy CEO: Jeston George

Video Producers: Ryan McDonald, Obatola Layiwola

Special thanks to Travelle McManus

IN THIS ISSUE Leaning Into Healing With a deep personal and professional knowledge of crisis, Dr. Bob Hunt is ready to lead his new district through the pandemic and beyond.

Capturing the Moment You don’t need to be a professional photographer to take great pictures in your schools. We’ll show you a few tricks of the trade.

Perspectives: Lesley Bruinton The former president of NSPRA shares her thoughts on the role of a school public relations practitioner.

Championing Your Comms Directors We asked school communicators across the country: How can your administrators better support you? Here’s what they said.

Super Families Is the superintendency truly accessible to parents and caregivers? We’ll examine that question and envision how to make the role more family friendly.

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Based in Little Rock, Arkansas, Apptegy is an education technology company dedicated to helping school leaders build a powerful identity for their schools. Learn more at apptegy.com

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Moving Beyond Survival Mode Dr. Jill M. Siler literally wrote the book on how to thrive through hard times as a superintendent. Here’s her advice.

Rookies of the Year Meet four newcomers to the superintendency with innovative plans and bright hopes for the future.

With Open Arms Starting at a new school is never easy—but it’s even harder for students displaced by international conflicts. Here’s how you can make them feel welcome.

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Read all these articles and more at schoolceo.com Facebook: @SchoolCEO Twitter: @school_ceo LinkedIn: SchoolCEO

Want your ideas and experiences shared in our magazine? Reach out to us at editor@schoolceo.com Vol. 4 No. 1 © 2021 by Apptegy, Inc. All rights reserved. Permission to reprint or quote excerpts granted by written request only. SchoolCEO� is published four times a year (November, February, May, and August) by Apptegy, Inc. 2201 Brookwood Dr., Suite 115, Little Rock, AR 72202. Views and opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the magazine or Apptegy, Inc. Accordingly, no liability is assumed by the publisher thereof.

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Good News in Public Education

Washington Students at Redmond’s Tesla STEM High School are having a whale of a time developing a new app that helps protect orcas. Whale Watchers is an interactive mobile app that lets users log whale sightings, which are then displayed on a shared Google Map. Commercial boats can use this map to plan or change their routes to reduce noise pollution or avoid collision with a whale. Not only are boat collisions a major source of harm for sea life, but noise pollution also affects several species’ ability to use echolocation to communicate and hunt. Boaters can also report illegal activity through the app. “Orcas are central to the Pacific Northwest, so it is important that we do all that we can to protect them,” says Runjeet, one of the app’s creators. The students hope the app, once fully developed, will be used by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. (Redmond Reporter)

Ohio Students in Westerville City School District are giving one another an invaluable gift this school year: hope. As the year began under the stressful shadow of COVID-19, several Westerville students asked the district how they could help their peers who are dealing with anxiety or depression. The district answered by starting Hope Squad, a program that trains student advisors to recognize mental health warning signs and to provide friendship, encouragement, and support to struggling classmates. The program is launching at each of Westerville’s three high schools and will trickle down to grades K-8, eventually reaching all the way to parents. “I just hope to be able to change someone’s life,” says one Hope Squad student member—“to help people get on a different path.”

Maine

(NBC 4)

After witnessing the effects of the pandemic on their small island community, the 2021 graduating class of Islesboro Central High School celebrated their achievements a little differently this year—by giving back. The 13 graduates had been planning an international trip after graduation, working small jobs around the island to save up, but decided instead to donate their earnings to help their neighbors in need. They gave $5,000 to the Island Community Fund, a local nonprofit, and also donated money to help pay the unexpected costs of the island’s vaccination program. “It felt really good to do that with our money, to give it back to the people who gave it to us,” one graduate said. (AP News)

Hawaii

Georgia

A 13-year-old student at S.W. King Intermediate School has found a creative way to help his classmates and the environment. Genshu originally started recycling to save money for college, but now he’s collecting bottles and cans so other students in Hawaii can follow their dreams. Three years ago, he started Bottles4College with the goal of collecting 2 to 4 million bottles and cans each year—enough to pay college tuition for two students. “Hawaii already has very high living costs. COVID made that even harder,” he says. An aspiring filmmaker, Genshu has also made a documentary highlighting his work as well as YouTube videos with tips on recycling. (Honolulu Star-Advertiser)

Two Atlanta teachers are helping their students see themselves in a positive light—literally. In a viral video, fourth graders shout affirmations into a mirror, one by one: “I am strong! I am smart! I am a good person!” Neffiteria Acker was inspired by her morning drives to school with her daughter, who repeats affirmations beginning with I am. “It boosts her confidence,” Acker says, “So I figured, why not add that into the classroom?” She decided to hold up a mirror to her students while co-teacher Cierra Levay Broadway captured the moment for social media. “We teach in a pretty rough neighborhood in Atlanta, and a lot of those kids don’t hear that at all,” Broadway says. “They hear a lot of negativity about themselves… It’s good to plant those seeds here.” (Today)

Leaning Into Healing When Dr. Robert Hunt began planning his convocation speech at Barrington 220 School District, he knew it had to be perfect. This wasn’t just his introduction to over a thousand of the district’s teachers and staff members—it was also the moment that would set the tone for yet another school year impacted by COVID-19. On top of all that, speeches are one of the aspects of leadership that Hunt dreads most. Still, he was determined to share his story in a way that would begin to build the trust he’d need. “A lot of times, you’ll see a convocation and the superintendent will get up and say a few words and turn it over to a guest speaker,” Hunt explains. “To carry the entire program was a little bit intimidating, I’ll be honest with you—but it was important for the district to know who I was and where I was coming from.” This past summer, Hunt took the helm at Barrington 220. Located in the northwestern suburbs of Chicago, the district is the pride of its community, known for being an innovation powerhouse. It had been on Hunt’s radar for a long time, and being its leaders is a dream come true. In his speech, Hunt wanted to get his district excited about the school year to come, but also to impress upon them that he was prepared—and eager—to guide them through another semester of pandemic-related crisis. In a moment of vulnerability, Hunt shared his story on stage to 1,200 members of his new community. He wanted to give his staff a reason to trust him not only to lead them through the end of the pandemic, but also to shepherd them through the critical process of healing—something he is all too familiar with.

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Thoroughness and Teamwork Hunt has always been interested in what it takes to lead through a crisis. As a long-time school administrator, he has definitely seen his fair share of chaos. Unfortunately, though, Hunt’s leadership philosophy was most deeply impacted not by a professional crisis, but a personal one. Five years ago, Hunt’s infant son, Hawk, was diagnosed with Burkitt Leukemia, an extremely aggressive cancer that rarely impacts young children. Hawk, in fact, was one of the youngest people ever to receive his specific diagnosis, something that made his treatment plan especially challenging for doctors. “We were told that if we had waited even a week to get him to the hospital—just a week to get it diagnosed and start treatment—we would have lost him,” Hunt shares. For seven consecutive months, Hunt rotated with his wife to spend multiple nights a week at the Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital (CCCH), helpless as he watched his son struggle through some of the most intensive chemotherapy available. “I watched his little body take on so much,” Hunt remembers. “I watched him fight and get taken down and stand back up as he fought to live.” Hunt tells us that his now 5-yearold son is his greatest hero and inspiration. During those long months in the hospital, Hunt learned many lessons, but the primary one will always be this: to recognize what truly matters and to hold it close. The combined power of teamwork and attention to detail Hunt witnessed at CCCH also impacted his leadership style. Although the experience with his son was deeply traumatic, Hunt couldn’t help but be impressed by the seamless, concerted effort of the hospital staff. “Whenever anyone came into our hospital room, they made us feel like we were the center of their world,” he says. “Even when we saw specialists only once or twice, it was obvious that they hadn’t just read Hawk’s file—they cared about us.” It was this care and compassion that served as a rare source of comfort during those hard months. Today, Hunt is glad to be miles and years away from that hospital room. Hawk is now in remission and starting kindergarten at his new district with a serious plan to become “a professional football tackler.” Naturally, though, Hunt remains forever changed by this experience. As he reflects on that dark and difficult time, he recognizes how instrumental his family’s trust in CCCH was in their ability to endure their trauma and, later, to heal. “There are 6,000 beds in their

facility, and yet, we never once doubted that being there was the best choice we could make for my son’s chance to survive,” Hunt tells us. In the most fearful moment of his life, he knew his family was in the right place. It is this focus on trust—and the attention to detail that builds it—that Hunt aims to bring to his superintendency at Barrington 220. Schools may not be hospitals, but Hunt recognizes the role that they can play in leading families through a pandemic that continues to be deeply traumatizing. Just as the staff at CCCH worked together to guide his entire family through the restorative process of healing, Hunt wants his district to provide that same sense of whole-child care to every student who walks through their doors.

A Crisis Researcher Hunt’s experience as a parent of a child with cancer is not his only tie to crisis. As a young leader, two traumatic events led him to realize that he was not yet trained to lead through tragedy. First, while Hunt was serving as a principal, one of his students took his own life only hours after speaking to another administrator. Then, his friend, a superintendent at a nearby district, experienced a school shooting. Both of these events resulted in a deep sense of personal loss for Hunt, driving his desire to better understand the psychological aspects of leading through crisis. “As I walked through that experience with my friend, I realized that we do almost nothing to prepare a leader for a crisis,” Hunt says. “There actually is research out there about how we can frame and process crises, but that is rarely a part of the training for a school administrator.” Hunt knew that while he would never have all the answers to these two tragedies, there had to be better ways for leaders to prepare for similar crises. In response to this, he focused on how leaders process trauma in his dissertation, titled The Depth of Sacrifice: A Case Study of Educational Leaders Who Have Led in the Aftermath of a Rampage School Shooting. In it, Hunt interviews a group of administrators who lived through a school shooting in an unnamed high school in the northeastern United States. He wanted to understand not only the experience of leading through a crisis and its aftermath, but also the impact this experience had on the administrators in the building. As he explores the collective trauma of a school shooting in a small community, Hunt argues in his dissertation that FALL 2021

Technical challenges are the smaller, logistical problems that leaders handle every day. Throughout the pandemic, for example, masking has been a major technical challenge. Interestingly, since these challenges give people an illusory sense of control, they are usually at the forefront of everyone’s minds. “These are the kinds of things that people want answers to—Do this or do that. Yes or no,” Hunt says. “They think that by answering these low-level issues, they will be able to solve the larger issues, but that’s not really the case.” Adaptive challenges, on the other hand, are much harder to grapple with. These are the issues which have no easy answers or clear-cut guidelines. This far into the pandemic, Hunt is much more worried about these adaptive challenges and how he can rise to meet them. “We’ve got students who’ve missed learning. We’ve got students who haven’t even been in a school building for 18 months. We’ve got social and emotional issues coming out of the crisis—our work has got to center on these adaptive challenges,” he explains. administrators in these situations are themselves victims as well. Not only are they forced to witness a violent event, they are also responsible for providing a sense of solidarity in its aftermath. Hunt recounts how these administrators, while processing their own devastation in silence, visited students in hospital rooms in the weeks after the shooting and led vigils to honor students they had lost.

Hunt realizes that leaning into these adaptive challenges is not something he can—or should—do alone. “When I was younger,” he says, “I had this mentality that if you put a challenge in front of me, it was my job as a leader to conquer it. Now, I know that being a leader is fueling teamwork so that we can all conquer a challenge behind a shared vision.”

Through careful interviews both immediately after the mass shooting and years later, Hunt wanted to know what lessons could be gleaned from a district’s path to healing. He found that because school leaders seek to calm their communities in a crisis, they often choose to prioritize others above themselves. While this could result in administrators internalizing struggles that go unaddressed, it also highlights the importance of community in the healing process. In some circumstances, Hunt found that administrators were even moved away from their positions, possibly with the intention of aiding their healing. This, however, only made the traumatized administrators feel even more isolated. Just as an entire community shares a sense of trauma, they must also share a sense of solidarity in order to heal together.

“We’ve got social and emotional issues coming out of the crisis—our work has got to center on these adaptive challenges. ”

Hunt has used this understanding of crisis while leading through the pandemic. Because of his research, he is adept at explaining different elements of crisis to others. In his convocation speech, for example, he discussed the difference between technical and adaptive challenges.

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Investing in Each Child As is true for many, Hunt became interested in education because of the careful attention he received from his own teachers. Although he describes himself as an average student, he knew early on that he wanted to impact others the way that teachers and coaches impacted him.

Hunt specifically remembers thriving under the guidance of his English teacher and his football coach, both of whom helped him believe in himself by believing in him. “Like a lot of kids my age, I was scared to death of failure in the classroom,” he shares. “As an athlete, I cared so much about how other people perceived me, and when it came down to going out on a limb to make progress, I was terrified.” It was under the guidance of his teachers that Hunt started to realize what leadership could look like in the classroom. “It’s the classic example. I was reading aloud, which was something that always made me nervous,” he says. “Of course, I mispronounced a word. I wanted to hide and be ashamed, but somehow my English teacher turned things around and made it humorous and light. Suddenly, it was fine, and I was okay. It’s amazing, the clarity with which I can remember that moment.” It was this type of leadership that Hunt would want to carry into his own career as an educator. Like many school administrators, Hunt loved his time in the classroom and is still energized by being around students. When he first began teaching, he followed in the footsteps of his high school mentors, becoming an English teacher as well as coaching various sports. Although he has now served as an administrator for over a decade, Hunt still keeps visual reminders of his time as a teacher to help center his work. Among his scattered memorabilia and trophies is an old clock, a gift from a particularly challenging student. It bears the inscription, “Thank you for believing in me.” This clock, he says, is still one of the most meaningful presents he has ever received, a reminder of the legacy he hopes to leave behind. Hunt is also grateful for the consistent support of his family, who raised him to believe in the value of hard work and persistence. “I was taught never to take no for an answer and to

always challenge myself to do my best, no matter what,” he explains. Although his family—especially his father, a veteran—prioritized perseverance above all, they now remind him to focus on himself every once in a while, too. “It’s been so interesting to hear, Hey, you need to slow down a little bit,” he says. Hunt’s roles as a father and husband continue to deepen his connection to the superintendency. He loves to joke that his wife, a high school English teacher, never lets him get too far from the classroom perspective. She and their four children provide a wellspring of ideas and motivation. Hunt’s oldest daughter, a junior in college, is currently student teaching, preparing to follow in her parents’ footsteps. While Hunt’s family has always anchored his work as a superintendent, this was especially true during the early days of the pandemic. Hawk’s status as a cancer survivor means that his immune system is unable to fight off viral infections. Because of this, Hunt was especially intentional in his decision-making, knowing drastic measures may be necessary in order to keep students like his son safe. “I was transparent Photos courtesy of Barrington 220 School Disctrict

“I had this mentality that if you put a challenge in front of me, it was my job as a leader to conquer it. Now, I know being a leader is fueling teamwork so that we can all conquer a challenge behind a shared vision.”

metrics of standardized testing? This question led him to Barrington 220. Long before Hunt took the helm at his new district, he knew of its unique stance on educational excellence. “It was definitely on my radar,” he says. “The more I started to realize that I was shifting in a new direction with how I interpreted excellence, the more I started to wonder if Barrington 220 was where I wanted to be when I lived out that vision.” Barrington 220 has a reputation for innovation and for taking risks that some school districts shy away from. Although the district consistently scores well on traditional measures of excellence, like standardized tests, they also go one step further by ensuring their programs elevate all types of skills and give students multiple paths toward productive lives. It is this broad understanding of excellence that initially inspired Hunt and now motivates him as the district’s leader. One such innovative initiative is Barrington’s Business Incubator Program, which allows students to participate in an authentic lesson in entrepreneurship. Each student plans

about how scared I was,” he says. “Sure, there were times when I got a nasty email or someone got angry with me, but I’d say, I have a son who is a cancer survivor. Even though they were angry, my authenticity helped them understand where I was coming from.”

Leading with Innovation This summer, Hunt’s transition to Barrington 220 was driven by one major goal: to work with a district that prioritizes a different kind of excellence. While Hunt understands the importance of accountability in education, he worries that the shift in the past few decades to more and more standardized testing will result in students being left behind in more substantial ways than exams can reveal. After all, adults rarely equate their own excellence with their performance on a test.

and develops their own product or service, all while being coached by world-class entrepreneurs and business experts. They go through the process of brainstorming, market research, and business plan development. Then, the learning culminates in students pitching their businesses to actual investors, vying for the chance to turn their hard work into reality. Originating at Barrington, this highly successful program has been replicated in over 100 schools across the country. Although he has only been superintendent at Barrington 220 for a few months, Hunt is already quick to list all of the ways that the district is working creatively to educate the whole child. “There is so much I love,” he says. “We’re constantly reconsidering what the student experience is here at Barrington, and that’s something I can get really excited

Hunt believes focusing too much on testing limits the playing field for both students and teachers. “Preparing kids for the real world is a scary challenge, but it’s so easy to fall into the trap of letting tests drive that work for you instead of focusing on what the kids really need,” Hunt explains. Students worry too much about their performances based on a limited amount of standards, and teachers are restricted as to what they can explore because they are focused on arbitrary measurements of their own success. What could a school district look like if it prioritized excellence outside of the strict

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about.” From programs that help students become certified nursing assistants to a flourishing chapter of Erika’s Lighthouse, a peer-to-peer mental health education program—there is something for everyone at Barrington 220.

The Restorative Conversation We may be nowhere near the end of the pandemic, but that doesn’t stop Hunt from looking forward to the conversation on the other side. Between dueling crises with COVID-19 and heightened political tension, he hopes we can eventually reconnect across the distances that have pulled us apart. “That,” he tells us, “is real leadership. That’s healing— to re-center everyone on the importance of our local public schools and rebuild our shared sense of community around what matters.” Hunt is already considering the legacy he wants to leave behind. He thinks about his own children, who have attended schools under his leadership for most of their lives. He thinks of students like the one who gave him his clock—students who were buoyed by his belief in them. And, finally, he thinks of the many teachers he has coached throughout his time as an administrator.

“As I enter the last decade of my career, I think of all the people I’ve played a part in lifting up,” he says. “It’s teachers, but it’s students, too. I’ve always loved watching people solve problems and do amazing things. If I’m remembered for anything, I hope it’s that.” In Hunt’s convocation speech, he shared a metaphor that has informed his approach to crisis. “When cattle see a storm coming,” he explained, “they run away from it, and it takes even longer for them to get through it. Buffalo, on the other hand, run toward the storm headlong so they can get through it as quickly as possible. You have a chance to choose: Will you be a buffalo or a cow?” When it comes to rising to the multitude of challenges associated with being a school administrator, Hunt has always valued facing the storm head on, and, when the time is right, leaning into the healing.

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Capturing the Moment

A beginner’s guide to taking better pictures at your schools

When you think about the miles Ansel Adams hiked to take his famous landscape photos, it makes sense that he once said, “You don’t take a photograph; you make it.” He knew from experience that it takes effort and planning, not just luck, to get the perfect image. Although you’re not trying to capture the grandeur of Yosemite, photography has become a necessary component of any school marketing effort. And while we love to see districts share their stories, the pictures they post don’t always promote their schools as intended. It sounds obvious, but if you want your photos to make your district look good, the pictures you share have to (literally) put your subjects in the best light possible. Even if they come from a well-meaning teacher sharing what they’re doing in the classroom, photos that are blurry, uninteresting, or poorly lit reflect badly on you. Of course, not every district can hire a dedicated photographer. But these days, everyone is walking around with a world-class camera in their smartphone, making it easier than ever to take and share photos. A good camera doesn’t necessarily guarantee good pictures, but, with a little bit of know-how, anyone can go from a photography novice to an amazing photojournalist for their district.

This camera is always a lower quality than the standard “Wide” lens, and you should only use it if you’re actually taking a selfie. And while we’re talking about equipment, let’s make one note about smartphones in general. While the newest models will always have the best cameras, we’re now at a point where the difference in camera quality from year to year isn’t noticeable for most users. Just make sure that your phone isn’t a dinosaur; models made in the past three to four years will give you the best results.

Consider composition. While your equipment is important, your camera is ultimately a tool. A great camera definitely makes it easier to take great pictures, but the quality of a photo ultimately comes down to the person behind the lens. What separates a great photo from a bad one is its composition: the story that the picture is telling. It’s not about the content of the photo; it’s how that content is arranged.

Take care of your phone.

A photo’s composition is determined by how the different elements are positioned in the picture and the way our eyes move between those elements. When the composition is good, all the visual elements of a photo—lighting, spacing, subject placement in the picture—work together to tell a clear story.

Before you even start to worry about taking great photos, make sure you set your phone up for success. We use our smartphones for everything, which means you’re constantly touching your phone’s camera lens, depositing dirt and oil all over it.

Even if you know nothing about composition, you’ve probably looked for it before. If you’ve ever checked a picture immediately after taking it to see if it’s “good,” you were checking its composition.

The most overlooked step toward taking great smartphone photos is cleaning your phone’s camera lens before you take a picture. Your camera “sees” through that lens, so anything on it will show up in your shot. Even Ansel Adams’ photos wouldn’t look good if there were fingerprints on his lens.

One of the best ways to train yourself in composition is to see it firsthand. John David Pittman, an award-winning photographer whose pictures have appeared in Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, and Smithsonian magazine, argues that to take good photos, you have to study good photos.

You’ll also want to make sure to use the correct camera lens. You will typically want to stick with your phone’s default— both iPhone and Samsung call this the “Wide” lens.

“If you don’t know what good photography looks like,” Pittman says, “then you won’t be able to create something that looks good. But once you start to analyze something, you can figure it out. You can mimic it. Look at good photography, and know what it looks like—so you have an idea of what is good and what is not.”

Some newer models have multiple lenses that can be used for specialty shots, like telephoto lenses for photographing subjects far away. However, no matter the model of your phone, you will want to avoid the front-facing “selfie” camera.

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Take the two images below, for example. While both have the same subject, the bottom one looks and feels better. Sometimes, you can point to specific reasons one photo looks better than another, but often you can’t. The composition is what makes those images feel so distinct despite being so similar.

Ultimately, your mindset is the biggest factor in taking better photographs. If you’re thinking about composition when you take a photo instead of just snapping the first thing you see, your photos are going to be better. So before you take a picture, ask yourself: What story am I trying to tell?

Focusing on composition enables you to move from simply documenting what’s happening to telling a story with each photo. “You have to create your images with intent,” Pittman says. “Before you get started, ask yourself: Why are we taking pictures of this? What story are we going to tell with these images? What impact do we want these photos to have?

Because composition is about creating a story, there are no hard-and-fast rules to follow, but a very helpful starting point is the Rule of Thirds. Despite the name, the Rule of Thirds is more like a helpful suggestion, one of many techniques you can use to compose a quality photograph.

Use the Rule of Thirds... sometimes.

To use the Rule of Thirds, start by dividing an image into thirds both horizontally and vertically. As you can see from

Slight adjustments to your camera angle and frame can create a better composition. Good lighting, positioning the cat according to the Rule of Thirds, and taking care to not “cut off” the ears all make the second photo a better shot.

Photos byTravelle McManus

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Photo courtesy of Richland School District Two

The action in this photo is a classic example of the Rule of Thirds. Not only are the two faces at intersections, but the positioning of the man’s arms draws your attention from his face through his arms to the little girl’s smile.

the example above, the grid lines create four intersections. When you look at a photograph, your eyes tend to gravitate toward these four points. Ideally, the points of interest in your photo should fall along one of these lines, with the most interesting aspects at the intersections. In the example above, the two subjects’ heads are placed on the top right and bottom left intersections, while the action with the tray falls along the bottom third line. Your phone manufacturer has even provided a useful tool to help you follow the Rule of Thirds. In your camera settings on your Apple or Android phone, you can find the option to add “Grid Lines.” This setting will display a grid on your screen to guide you whenever you take a picture. While this tip may be called a “rule,” you don’t always have to follow it. Many great photographs use other techniques or shirk the standard “rules” entirely. But we’re focusing on it here because it’s a very easy starting point toward taking well-composed shots with confidence.

Look at the lighting. Lighting is the most important factor in creating great photos; that’s why professionals bring along portable lighting to photo shoots. The source and direction of the light determine what will be illuminated in an image and where shadows will

fall. If your subjects have shadows covering their faces, no amount of editing will improve their appearance. The problem for schools is that lighting often feels out of your control. Inside, schools have lots of bright fluorescent lights that create a glowy appearance in photos. Outside, you’re at the mercy of the sun. But while you can’t constantly carry around portable lighting, you do have some control over the way you light your photographs. “We see backlit photos all the time—people standing together for a group shot, but they’re standing with a window at their backs,” Pittman says. “That’s not going to help anybody.” Instead, put your subjects next to a window so the natural light hits their faces and not their backs. “It’s about knowing where your light source is and maybe turning people around,” he adds. “You go from having a terrible-looking photo to a nice, brightly lit photo.” To find the best lighting direction for a photo, take a leaf out of your students’ book. Using your front-facing camera, hold your phone at arm’s length facing you. You should be able to see your face on the screen. Now, rotate your entire body. As you move, you’ll see the lighting on your face change. Once you find the angle with the best light, you can position your subjects there. Just remember, don’t actually use the selfie camera for a picture unless you are taking a selfie. FALL 2021

While it may look like a photographer is taking the same photo over and over, they’re actually making small adjustments on each shot to create as many slight variations of the same picture as they can. This usually includes moving around to get a different angle or taking the shot from a higher or lower perspective. When the photographer looks at the shots afterward, they get to pick the one with the best composition. The first shot you take will often have the most obvious composition— which may not be the most interesting. That’s why one of those extra shots usually turns out to be the best. So think like a professional and take several pictures of the same subject. Try different angles and compositions. You’ll get a bunch of pictures that you won’t use, but you’ll likely end up with a better shot than you ever could have planned.

Default to horizontal. Photo courtesy of Richland School District Two

Although horizontal images are usually best for school photography, a vertical orientation can accentuate someone’s stature or presence.

When it comes to that unflattering fluorescent lighting in a school building, “as long as it’s even, it’s fine,” Pittman says. “It might be an ugly temperature balance, but as long as it’s even light, you’re okay. Just don’t backlight people.”

Take multiple shots. If you’ve ever hired a professional photographer, you might have noticed that they always take way more pictures than seems necessary. You’ll often see them snap four to six versions of what looks like the same thing. Professionals know that despite their years of training and experience, their first picture won’t be perfect. Even if you have the best eye for composition, you’re likely going to miss things, from a stray shoulder in the frame to a flagpole that looks like it’s jutting out of someone’s head. Instead of hoping for the best, professionals take as many pictures as possible to ensure at least one shot will be perfect.

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Think about a disposable camera. The design—from the way the camera fits in your hands to the branding—leads you to take a horizontal picture. But with the rise of selfies, Snapchat, and TikTok, vertical video and images are becoming much more common. Generally speaking, you should default to horizontal. This orientation tends to include more scenery, leading to more visually interesting pictures. Additionally, most website hosting and public social media platforms require pictures to have certain pixel ratios and will resize images that do not match. Those ratios, which vary by platform, are more likely to be met if your image is horizontal, preventing Twitter or Facebook from unintentionally cutting off someone’s head. That said, vertical pictures can be amazing if they serve your story. While horizontal photographs typically offer more context, vertical ones help accentuate your subject’s stature. For example, if someone is giving a speech, a vertical photo can make the subject appear grander and more authoritative. If you’re unsure which orientation to use, just try both.

Move in, don’t zoom in. Your phone’s camera may be as good as professional cameras in many respects, but even the best smartphone camera has its limitations. Professional-grade cameras use optical zoom, which allows you to zoom in without losing any

picture quality. Unfortunately, your phone—and digital cameras in general—use digital zoom, which simply magnifies an image like you would on a computer. This creates graininess and lowers the quality of your picture. Instead of using your zoom, simply move closer physically to your subject. This allows you to “zoom in” as much as you want without affecting the quality of the image. Ideally, you should take multiple photos from multiple distances in order to vary the composition. Pittman adds that moving in closer can even help with the composition of your photo. “Get way closer than you think,” Pittman says. “Fill your frame. A photo of an in-service day from the back of the room is terrible. But get close to somebody in the meeting and get their reaction to something that’s said, or get in on details—hands taking notes, a close-up shot of the person speaking. Closer is better.” Physically moving closer might not always be realistic, like at a football game. If you are trying to photograph events that require zoom, you should consider investing in a camera with a telescopic lens or hiring a professional photographer.

Handle it in post. While cameras have become more common and powerful, the real revolution has occurred in image manipulation. Previously, it took an expert in a darkroom to do even the simplest editing, like cropping photos. Now, you can do more on your phone and in social media apps than you could have ever dreamed of in a darkroom. We won’t go into too much detail on editing, but suffice it to say that editing can help save a photo that’s not quite perfect. The most common technique is cropping, or removing some of the outer area of an image. With a small amount of cropping, you can adjust your photo so it follows the Rule of Thirds or cut out that stray arm that snuck into the side of your picture. Just a little editing can help you focus on the most important and interesting aspects of a photo. But be careful. While editing can be great, less is often more. And remember, composition is about telling a story with an image. While it’s fine to edit a photo to make it more visually appealing, it’s unethical to edit an image in a way that changes its meaning.

Avoid the cliche. We’ve said it over and over again: your picture tells a story. But if you’ve looked at school social media posts, you’ve likely seen the same overused images: headshots, students holding awards, or group shots of people posing for the camera. We get why this happens. It can be hard to remember to take pictures in the moment, especially for a teacher juggling 40 different tasks at a time. In fact, these shots have become so ubiquitous with schools that it may feel like you have to share them. But if all of your pictures are the same as every other district’s, you’re not telling your unique story. To Pittman, it’s about remembering the process and not focusing on the end result. “People want to see the process—how things happen, how it was done—rather than just a photo of a nice trophy,” he says. “Think about everything as a documentary film. All the in-between stuff is the good stuff.” For example, if you want to celebrate the quiz bowl team’s victory, don’t just show them on the awards stage. It’s the in-between shots that tell their story: a student studying before a match, someone buzzing in, kids celebrating on the bus after a victory. “If you show what people went through to win a quiz bowl trophy, then it’s a story,” says Pittman. When you must use a headshot or cliche picture, pair it with something more interesting. For example, when introducing a new principal on social media, you might share a photo of them interacting with a child alongside their portrait. Although you may not always be able to avoid it, keeping composition in mind will help you sidestep overused school photographs. If you know what you’re trying to say every time you look through the lens, you’re more likely to get a picture that actually says it. Only you know your story; now, you just have to pick up your phone and start telling it.

“Before you get started, ask yourself: Why are we taking pictures of this? What story are we going to tell with these images?” FALL 2021

Perspectives: Lesley Bruinton, APR

What Is the Role of a School Public Relations Professional?

Lesley Bruinton, APR, is the outgoing president of the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA) and a two-time past president of the Alabama School Public Relations Association. You can reach her at www.lesleybruinton.com

An Outsider on the Inside While many superintendents have been reluctant to add PR positions to their organizational charts in the past, the pandemic has caused us all to look differently at the issues at hand and ask who is best equipped to solve them. This moment in time—perhaps more so than any other in recent memory—calls for a strong communications strategy. Families are looking to your district for answers as we all continue to navigate our new reality. This gives you an opportunity to think differently about engaging and connecting with stakeholders. So with a new crop of districts hiring dedicated practitioners to help them with their communications, the big question is: How can you utilize your PR professionals to meet the moment? A school public relations professional isn’t there to make educational decisions but to serve as a guardrail for your district. Most likely, the person in this position doesn’t even hail from an educational background at all. Perhaps they have come to the district from public relations, advertising, or journalism. That was my path. My first job was in local television news in Panama City, Florida, where I cut my teeth in journalism and built a very broad portfolio. I covered five municipalities’ courts, crimes, and local schools. In the process, I met a school PR person who took me under her wing and showed me the ropes.

When I was first hired at TCS, some people treated me like the district photographer. If you look at a job description from that time—around 2007—the school PR role was largely based around the idea of going out and yielding good media relations. As a former reporter, I knew how to write news stories. I could call my friends who worked in television to get us on the air. But I also knew I brought something more to the table: a unique perspective on the issues we were facing. To solve our problems, administrators would bring the best and brightest educators to the table—former principals, teachers, curriculum specialists—but I was usually sitting in the corner, listening to their conversation and thinking, Do they know how much I can help? It took a while to gain the confidence to speak up in a group of folks who have spent their entire careers in education. But slowly and surely, I did my homework. I went to the meetings. I listened. I asked questions. The longer I was with the district, the more my voice was heard. The first step is helping administrators realize that this profession is about more than taking pictures, posting on social media, and planning parties. We are capable of far more. Now that I’ve been in school communications for about 14 years, I’ve learned that a district public relations practitioner must have a seat at the leadership table. From this vantage point, we can craft strategic responses as well as determine the appropriate communication tools needed to deliver key messages to specific audiences. We have a unique perspective that can protect our leadership teams from groupthink. Photo courtesy of NSPRA

After that experience, I thought if I ever got out of TV news, I would enjoy working in school PR. I ended up getting hired in Birmingham, Alabama, as a weekend sports reporter. But after getting married and having my first child, I wanted a schedule that would work better for my family life. So when the Public Relations Coordinator position in Tuscaloosa City Schools (TCS) became available, I put my name in the hat.

Photo on left courtesy of NSPRA

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We can pose the thought-provoking questions that could arise at board or community meetings—not to challenge your leadership but to complement it. We give you the chance to iron out all the wrinkles before you roll out a message to your district. Think of your PR person as your trusted counsel. We can only advise and anticipate if we have a strong working relationship with our school leaders.

A New Approach I worked at TCS for about 19 months before the Great Recession led to the elimination of my position. But less than two years later, I was able to return to the district with a renewed idea of what school public relations could be. As I started this journey in my own personal and professional growth, I thought: What do I want my career to look like, and how can I contribute to the larger mission of the school system? How can I use what I know as a communicator to effect change for students and families in my community?

Good, effective communication and stakeholder engagement allow you to champion your school system.

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Communications is basically a management function; you’re working to build support for your schools. Needless to say, this work is strategic—your district’s success or failure depends on it. An effective communications strategy means establishing and maintaining relationships not just with those who already like and trust you, but also with those who aren’t so sure about you yet. The best advertising is word of mouth—always. That’s why I spend a lot of time making sure parents and families have the right information, communicated in accessible ways. Good, effective communication and stakeholder engagement allow you to champion your school system and show your community the value of that investment. Today, school PR professionals have more access to their communities than ever. The news media are no longer the gatekeepers between us and the public. While moving the needle on public perceptions once required positive

Photo courtesy of Tuscaloosa City Schools

coverage through traditional outlets, that’s no longer the case. Over time, people have transitioned from appointment viewing to on-demand viewing. At the same time, school systems have more tools at their disposal to communicate with the public. With social media, we’re the gatekeepers; we keep the information. Why not use that to our advantage to make sure we’re connecting with our stakeholders? Connecting directly to your community can give you unique insights on how to build the buzz you need. Remember: Your stakeholders won’t have the same backgrounds as district administration and might not be familiar with the terminology we use around the leadership table. District leaders should frame their messaging with their communities in mind, making it easy to understand and process. That’s where school PR professionals come in. A district needs communications specialists to ask tough questions and to consistently build and manage these relationships with the public.

A Different Kind of Content Specialist Effective school communication involves so much more than a stand-alone hashtag or social media post. These things cannot yield improved results by themselves; the work has to be more strategic than that. Successful school communicators integrate their work into the district’s overall strategy, complementing major goals the same way instruction does.

Over time in this role, I started seeing the similarities between the work of strategic communicators and the work of successful educators. Strategic communicators use something known as the four-step process: Research, Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation. Teachers follow the same basic steps every day in the classroom. These similarities are easy to see once you break them down. As a communicator, research is my first step. Likewise, any good teacher is going to do a formative assessment to figure out where their students are and what they need in order to grow. My second step is planning, and for teachers, that’s writing lesson plans. Next for me is implementation— the party, the social media post, the big event, the ribbon cutting—and for teachers, it’s the fun part: instruction. Finally, I always evaluate the effectiveness of my work as a communicator; for teachers, that’s a summative assessment. Looking at communications this way not only helps me understand the work I’m championing; it also helps teachers and district staff understand what I do. When I explain to my colleagues how all this operates, I can see lightbulbs turning on. Now teachers, and even my superintendent, give me communications plans, structured exactly the way I need them to be. This makes my work faster and more streamlined, all while allowing me to build capacity in others to be effective communicators.

Similarities between communicators and educators Strategic Communicators Research Planning Implementation Evaluation

Effective Educators Formative Assessments Lesson Planning Instruction Summative Assessments

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It’s in those connections that I see the evolution in what school public relations professionals can do. Once I realized this relationship between our separate practices, it was game on. I knew I could move forward with laying the foundation to collaborate with my educator colleagues. After all, we want the same thing: to take advantage of every opportunity to promote student success.

Putting It All Together Using this four-step process, I provided my colleagues in TCS with the research necessary to create a high-interest summer learning program in 2017. While we’d always had a summer school program in the past, students weren’t enrolling or participating at the levels we desired. As an outsider, I wanted to know what prevented families from sending their children to summer school programs. I started by surveying parents and caregivers on what they sought in a summer program. They overwhelmingly wanted affordable, full-day, enriched learning opportunities. This detail led our educators to answer the call and create a hands-on learning program that, to the kids, seemed more like fun than school. Meanwhile, my office promoted their work to district families to drum up interest.

The program rollout was so successful that, before long, we needed a waiting list. What’s more, some of our community and business leaders began donating unsolicited funding so we could serve even more students. With this collaboration between communicators and educators, we created an increased demand for something that we’d always supplied. Our initiative earned NSPRA’s highest award for strategic communication in 2018. This kind of collaborative communication work is especially important to consider in the aftermath of the pandemic. The American Rescue Plan requires districts to dedicate at least 20% of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds to making up lost instructional time through evidence-based efforts. This includes “summer learning, summer enrichment, extended day, comprehensive after-school, and extended school year programs.” As you utilize available ESSER funding for this area, challenge your school public relations practitioners to help you strategize and register students. Invite them to meetings to help them understand your district’s offerings and to help you craft your messaging. Ask them for a plan to help you reach your district’s goals. They can do it; many of them have been waiting for you to ask for their expertise.

Serving the Ring My mentor gave me the best advice I have ever received in this role: “You serve the ring and not the king (or queen).” Those words have served me well as I’ve worked with four different superintendents, reminding me that my responsibility as a school public relations practitioner lies with the office rather than the officeholder. Superintendencies frequently change, but those of us in school PR often hold a fountain of knowledge with deep community roots. We have established the relationships, and we understand the needs of our districts’ stakeholders. This can be a huge asset to a new superintendent as they come aboard. Chances are, we know the folks on the local civic group and all of the little coffee shops and barber shops around town. We also often represent our school districts on local boards, so we can connect you to key leaders in the community. We can help facilitate those vital conversations.

Photo courtesy of NSPRA

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If you’re a new superintendent with an existing school public relations program, here’s my advice: Set aside some time to get to know your district’s PR person. If you’ve underutilized them, consider putting in the work to build a relationship with them. We’re here to help the current superintendent be successful and effective in communicating his or her vision. That’s our job. We need to understand what you’re trying to accomplish so we can translate it to others.

Putting in the Work Communications practitioners have to take great care to build relationships with school leaders, and we need the same from our superintendents. Whether you’ve been collaborating with a PR director or staff member for years or you’re just now hiring a communications expert for your district, the following tips can help ensure your mutual success—and, most importantly, success for your schools.

4. Support your PR staff with professional development. Like educators, communicators need continuing education. The good news is that resources are easy to come by. NSPRA is the leader in school communication with a nearly 90-year track record of providing professional learning, resources, support, and networking. This organization isn’t exclusive to school public relations practitioners either. District leaders should join and reap the benefits. Additionally, your state may have a chapter of this organization. Visit www.nspra.org/nspra-chapters to get connected.

To hear more of our conversation with Lesley Bruinton, check out www.schoolceo.com/bruinton

1. Develop a clear job description. A well-written job description will help you attract strong candidates who either have experience in school public relations or are equipped to do the work. This clarity also helps others in your district understand what this role entails and what it doesn’t. It shouldn’t be a catch-all position for “other duties as assigned.” You want this individual focused on supporting the district by clearly communicating decisions to internal and external groups. If you need help developing a clear job description, check out NSPRA’s Communication Planning Resources. 2. Give them a seat. Your communication professional needs to have access to the leadership table. That’s where decision-making happens. Regardless of the title you’ve assigned to this role, it is unlike any other in your district. To be successful, they need more than your decisions; they need to know how these decisions have been reached. This helps your comms person ensure correct messaging to avoid pitfalls and public backlash. 3. Treat them like content specialists. You likely have reading and math content specialists on staff whom you trust. Communication is no different. These individuals have a unique education, training, and expertise compared to your other staff members. Recognize these strengths, and challenge them to bring you their best guidance.

Photo courtesy of Tuscaloosa City Schools

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Championing Your Comms Directors How Superintendents Can Support Communications Professionals

Kelly Wachel, APR, joins our Zoom meeting at 10 a.m. on a Wednesday. Behind her, the beige interior of a car shifts in and out of focus as light pours down from her sunroof. She gently shrugs off our concern about whether we should reschedule our call, that maybe she has too much on her plate for the day. Instead, she insists she’s happy to answer our questions while sitting in the parking lot of the next school she intends to visit. Wachel, the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for Kansas City Public Schools in Missouri, is obviously comfortable with a busy schedule. We’re centering our conversation around a deceptively simple question: How can school administrators best support their communications professionals? Wachel admits that, when she first received our email, she thought we’d gotten the question backward. After all, she’s used to supporting school administrators, so her own needs are not too frequently discussed. But, especially during these times, this is a conversation worth having.

Libby Roof

Richland School District Two, SC

Tom Hagley

Vancouver Public Schools, WA

We don’t need to rehash the difficulties caused by COVID-19, but suffice it to say that school communications departments haven’t had an opportunity to breathe since March 2020. “I don’t think there has been any downtime in the last year and a half,” Wachel says. “With COVID communications, you’re constantly changing, reframing, and updating.” Educators are often the first to put themselves and their selfcare to the side—and school communications professionals are no exception. As the pandemic continues to take its toll on school communities, now is the time to consider what steps you can take to help your comms professionals perform at their highest and healthiest levels. So we sat down with communications practitioners from across the country to discuss what they need to thrive. Of course, your district may not have a full communications staff—or even a designated comms person—but the ideas here apply regardless of your situation. So long as someone is communicating for your district, this is for you.

Janae LaDue

Eight Mile School District #6, ND

Merry Glenne Piccolino Orangeburg County School District, SC

Kelly Wachel, APR Kansas City Public Schools, MO

Brian Nicol

Howard-Suamico School District, WI

Lesley Bruinton, APR Former President of NSPRA

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Respect Merry Glenne Piccolino, Assistant Superintendent for Communications in South Carolina’s Orangeburg County School District, tells us the field of communications is “often overlooked, and it doesn’t get the respect or resources it deserves.” When it comes to supporting your communications director, Piccolino believes you must first recognize that the role is not “fluff,” but rather one that requires expertise. “If you look at the size of a comparable company’s communications department—how big is it?” Piccolino asks. More than likely, a business about the size of your district would have a robust communications team. Though most public school districts are unlikely to have the resources necessary for this kind of set-up, that’s all the more reason to recognize the resources you do have available as important and worthy of respect. Piccolino tells us that “giving your communications person the authority to maintain the brand” is a great way to demonstrate your appreciation for their expertise. With tools like Canva now readily available to anyone with an internet

One of the best things you can do for your comms director is appreciate their skill set. Photo courtesy of Vancouver Public Schools

“There’s nothing more important than the way a superintendent communicates. That is what people hear and see. That’s their reality.” connection, it’s possible to pump out brochures, flyers, and handouts by the minute—many of which never make it across the desk of your comms person. This is a problem because some of those materials may not be in line with the story your district’s brand is telling. “Giving your communications person the authority to be the checkpoint before those things are published is important,” Piccolino says. By making your comms person the gatekeeper of your district’s brand, you’re not only strengthening that brand, but also “valuing the communications person’s expertise,” she adds. “It allows your organization to operate like a business.” Tom Hagley, Chief Communications and Public Engagement Officer at Vancouver Public Schools in Washington, sees the importance of communications in the necessary relationship between public schools and their communities. “To maintain a community’s support for public education, we need to help everyone understand and appreciate its value,” Hagley says. After all, there’s no guarantee that every member of the community will automatically see the value in your schools—and those outliers are often the deciding factor in bond elections and other school improvement efforts. “School communication is how we inform and engage all stakeholders,” Hagley explains, “including those who don’t have school-age children.” Your communications director is your expert on establishing the connection between school and community that is necessary for both to thrive—and they should be respected as such.

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Access If you expect your communications director to prepare a quick response to any given situation, it is absolutely necessary that they be one of the first in the know. Brian Nicol, Director of Communications at Howard-Suamico School District in Wisconsin, believes any communications role should “start at a cabinet-level position.” According to Nicol, “they need to have that level of input and understanding.” Similarly, Hagley believes that to stay in the loop, the district’s lead communicator should report directly to the superintendent; in fact, he says he wouldn’t work in a district without that necessary structure. Keeping your comms person in your inner circle won’t just help them do their job—it will help you do yours, too. As Nicol points out, a communications director’s ability to think explicitly about audiences makes their input particularly helpful. “There’s value in having a different voice with a different perspective at the table,” he says. Your comms person’s unique perspective should also play a crucial part in your strategic planning process. “Communications must be integral in helping to shape district plans, not just share them,” Hagley says. He also notes that communications professionals are the experts who can answer questions like: “Is what we’re proposing to do in our public’s interests? Have we considered the needs and wants of all stakeholders? Who must be engaged to make this plan a success?” Including your comms professionals in these conversations and providing them with all the facts allows them to help you identify and navigate the best possible course of action. “There’s nothing more important than the way a superintendent communicates,” Piccolino tells us. “That is what people hear and see. That’s their reality.” Not every district has an official comms director, though— such is the case for North Dakota’s Eight Mile School District #6, home to approximately 300 students. In smaller districts like Eight Mile, titles and cabinet-level seats may not be as high a priority. Not only are there fewer titles to hand out, but staff are expected to do whatever needs to be done to keep the district running—regardless of their titles. Take, for example, Janae LaDue, Business Manager at Eight Mile. Communications is just one of the many hats she wears; her responsibilities range from PR to accounts receivable to

Photo courtesy of Howard-Suamico School District

Listening to your communications director’s unique and valuable perspective can help you see district decisions in a different light.

HR to insurance benefits and budgeting. Even in her case, though, access is important—it just takes a different form. Because Eight Mile does not have a designated person in charge of communications, no one specific staff member has the necessary bandwidth for documenting all the fantastic things going on throughout their district. Instead, the Eight Mile staff works together as a team. “Teachers are really good about sending pictures when they’re doing fun things,” LaDue says. It’s with their help that she is able to communicate all the “little day-to-day stuff” that families want to know about. For LaDue, this is what access looks like: staff members working together to help her be everywhere at once. Whether you have an official comms director or an employee wearing several hats, your lead communicator must be granted the kind of access afforded to high-level district employees. “I can’t do my job if I’m not on the leadership team,”

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Nicol says. “You can’t ask me to help land a plane if I didn’t board before it took off.”

Relationships Even if your communications director has an all-access pass to the district’s inner workings, progress halts without the kind of relationship necessary for keeping communication lines open. For Wachel, being a communications director often means acting as a strategic advisor, meaning her relationship with her superintendent is a very trusted one. “My team and I translate the leader’s vision and mission and our core values to the whole district, to the whole community, and there has to be a lot of trust,” she says. “We need to have a lot of hard conversations, but that’s a good thing—we grow so much when we have those conversations.” Like trust, care is just as important to the relationship between a comms person and their superintendent as it is to any relationship. “You have to care about each other,” Nicol says, “because working this closely with the superintendent, you come to appreciate how difficult the job really is.” With any relationship, though, care must be accompanied by effort. Because superintendents and comms directors need to work together, it’s important to take the time to learn how to collaborate effectively. “Superintendents have different

leadership styles,” Hagley tells us. “Some tend to be more directive, and others are more collaborative and consultative. Understanding and adapting to a leadership style can be a challenge and an opportunity.” It may be helpful to participate in professional development that guides you in unpacking your leadership style and the specific expectations you bring to the workplace. This kind of introspection will help prepare you for conversations with your comms director about how to work together best. “Each style and approach has its own assets,” Hagley says. The mutual trust comes from recognizing the skills that both parties bring to the table and how they complement each other. Once you’ve established that trust, “it’s a partnership,” Hagley says. “You have each other’s backs.”

Life-long Learning Comms directors can’t get enough of good professional development—and it makes sense. Many school communications personnel worked outside education before moving into their districts. Even once they move into the field, many of them are the only comms person in their district. With such unique backgrounds and the position’s potential to be isolating, it’s no wonder comms directors crave opportunities to connect with and learn from others in the profession.

Photo courtesy of Orangeburg County School District

Collaborative relationships between comms personnel and school leaders make for easier and more successful collective action.

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For example, take Lesley Bruinton, APR, former president of the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA). Before making her way to school communications, she worked in broadcast journalism. “You wouldn’t just pluck anyone else off the street and give them a job without providing them with professional development,” Bruinton says. “Professional development comes in forms large and small,” she tells us. “It might be sending that person over to the school system next door to shadow a veteran PR person for a couple days. It might be connecting that person with your state school public relations association so that they can build a network.” Regardless of your approach, connecting your communications director with others in the profession is paramount—especially when your district’s communications department consists of just one person. According to Nicol, when “you’re the sole proprietor of a complex function for your school district, when you look left and right and don’t have anyone to connect to, you have to go outside the walls of your district to learn.” Whether you have a full-fledged communications team or no designated comms person at all, there are always representatives of your district communicating for you. Regardless of who they are—teacher, secretary, board member, or bus driver—it’s important to view them as communicators in need of training. That’s exactly why Eight Mile provides training for their board. As a small district in a small community, Eight Mile’s leadership is well aware of what happens when school representatives let their guards down in social situations. They know how easily information can get out before it’s supposed to and how quickly negativity can spread. Because of this, LaDue says communicating with the public is a skill their board members cultivate through intentional training. “One of the biggest things we teach the board is how to handle when a friend or relative says, This is happening at school, or, This is what your teacher did,” LaDue says. “We teach them how to stop the conversation, because it can get carried away until it’s something you can’t handle.” Actively teaching your board—or any other staff members who represent your district—how to talk about your schools in public will put you one step ahead of potential miscommunication.

Any discussion of this topic would be incomplete without one final suggestion: Connect your communications director with NSPRA. “NSPRA has been and continues to be a difference maker,” Nicol says. “There is not a problem that I could come across where I couldn’t reach out to someone who has either dealt with it or is willing to think through it with me.” Nearly every communications director we spoke with shared a similar sentiment. With a variety of professional development opportunities, a wide array of resources, and a strong network of communicators, NSPRA is a one-stop shop for positioning your communications director for positive growth.

For more information on your local NSPRA chapter, visit www.nspra.org/nspra-chapters.

Wellness Communication professionals bear a lot of responsibility in their districts—and for good reason. In a lot of ways, they’re the ones responsible for the reputation of the superintendent and the district as a whole. “We get to wield a mighty sword, but we carry so much weight on our shoulders,” Wachel says. And with that responsibility and power comes a significant amount of stress.

“In many ways, communications offices have been in emergency operation mode. We’ve been in fight or flight, and when you’re constantly on like that, if you don’t take care of yourself, your body will stop working.”

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Ultimately, if you don’t consider your comms director’s health, it won’t matter how well you keep them in the loop, how strong your relationship is, or even how qualified they are. If they’re constantly burning the candle at both ends, they’ll eventually burn out. Since March 2020, that risk has only increased. “In many ways, communications offices have been in emergency operation mode,” says Libby Roof, Chief Communications Officer for South Carolina’s Richland School District Two. “We’ve been in fight or flight, and when you’re constantly on like that, if you don’t take care of yourself, your body will stop working.” In Richland Two, Superintendent Dr. Baron Davis has encouraged his executive staff to find “self-care buddies.” Roof describes how the team partnered for the purpose of reminding one another to consider their own needs. “I just want someone to remind me: Hey, you are working really hard, and you need to take care of yourself,” she explains. In order for such a practice to work, though, it has to start from the top. When the leader prioritizes their own health, it gives the team permission to prioritize personal health as well. “Dr. Davis models it for me,” Roof says. “I then model it for my team. It’s such a great trickle-down effect.” It’s also important for “leaders to recognize that having a culture of self-care doesn’t breed laziness,” she adds. “It’s actually the opposite; it’s motivating.” Another way to be mindful of your communications director’s health is with simple verbal acknowledgement. Professionals so dedicated to their work sometimes have trouble believing they’ve ever done enough, so they just keep working and working—and that can become problematic. As Piccolino says, “acknowledging the commitment that the employee has given to the organization” could be just the thing that convinces your comms director to take some time for themselves. She believes there is value in being the type of leader who explicitly recognizes their staff’s hard work and is willing to say, Please go home and get some rest. In fact, it seems that giving your comms director permission to rest is one of the best ways to care for them—period. “Boundaries and the gift of being away have been some of the biggest benefits for our team,” Wachel says. Of course, for districts with one-person teams—or districts lacking a dedicated comms professional entirely—that may seem less attainable. In those cases, Wachel, who began her career in a small urban district, recommends having other designated 32

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staff members proactively shadow those in your district who regularly manage communications tasks. That way, even in the smallest districts, your comms person can take a day off without district communications grinding to a halt. Sometimes, though, unforeseen circumstances occur before a back-up person can be properly trained. In that case, Wachel suggests simply reaching out to a neighboring district for support. Just like all other demanding positions, the possibility of burnout is a real threat for communications directors—especially given the culture of overwork that permeates so much of the education sector already. And, unfortunately, it can be easy to allow the health of comms directors to take a backseat because so much of their role is supporting other members of the district. The bottom line is, as important as communications directors are, no one can show up for work without showing up for themselves first. Otherwise, the work, the district, and the students begin to suffer.

A Question Worth Asking During our conversations about what comms professionals need from administrators, it wouldn’t have been unreasonable to expect just one or two answers tinged with bitterness. The question is, admittedly, a little leading; the very asking of it suggests communications directors may not always get the support they need. And yet, nowhere in their answers to our questions was there even a trace of acidity or jadedness. In fact, every single conversation we had ended on a note of positivity and purpose. Now, more than ever, there is a demand in education for people who know how to communicate—who can manage emergencies, share stories, and grow relationships. There is so much happening, and it’s all happening fast, but supporting your comms director does not belong on the back burner. If we’ve learned one thing, it’s that communications professionals are a remarkably passionate and singularly driven group of people. They love what they do, and they care deeply about doing it. Every day, communications directors are asking the same question: What can I do for my district? Now, it’s time to ask what you can do for them.

What to Start Doing Tomorrow Provide your communications director access to your calendar. “Giving your communications person access to your calendar is an awesome quick tip, not because they’re your secretary, but because superintendents get so busy. It’s easiest if I plan my week according to what my superintendent is doing. If I look and see he’s presenting at Rotary on Thursday, but he hasn’t mentioned it, I’ll text him asking if we need to put together a presentation. Giving that access is really important.” —Merry Glenne Piccolino, Assistant Superintendent for Communications, Orangeburg County School District, SC Have a weekly, agenda-guided meeting with your comms director. “I benefit from intentional weekly meetings with an agenda that the superintendent and I have both contributed to. Those lead into our cabinet or leadership team meetings the next day, which we try to keep at a very high strategic level. Our weekly one-on-one meeting is a way to filter, vet, and understand what needs to be brought forward to the larger team.” —Brian Nicol, Director of Communications, Howard-Suamico School District, WI Learn how to make effective use of the Google Workspace. “Working collaboratively in the Google environment provides leadership with ready and ongoing access to information. As leaders, we’re learning the value of creating and sharing information in a collaborative online environment because everyone stays informed when they are literally working off the same page. It also assists in emergency situations. We use the C.A.N. report format—an acronym that stands for conditions, actions, and needs—so whenever an unexpected event happens, someone on the team will open up a C.A.N. report in Google, and, no matter where we are located, we can all add to it.” —Tom Hagley, Chief Communications and Public Engagement Officer, Vancouver Public Schools, WA

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Super Families The challenges of raising a family during your time as a superintendent

Dr. Andy Crozier was just 28 years old when he accepted the superintendency at Andrew School District in northeast Iowa. Most of his new staff were surprised by his age, but that wasn’t the only remarkable fact about him. Not only was Crozier younger than most of his teaching staff, he also had three young children and spent most of his personal time fulfilling family obligations. “From the beginning, we were a package deal,” he tells SchoolCEO. “My wife is also a full-time educator. We’re not the kind of family where one parent takes care of most of the parenting. For us, it’s all collaborative.” Like everything else in education, the superintendency is changing. Today’s superintendent, on average, is younger than ever before. They are also less likely to be white, more likely to be female, and more likely to be new to their district. The 2020 Decennial Study by AASA tells us a lot about the changing face of the superintendency. Although the typical superintendent is still a white man, this is slowly shifting. As of 2020, 8.2% of superintendents identified as people of color, an increase from 6% in 2010. Additionally, approximately 26.7% of superintendents in 2020 were women, more than double the 13.1% documented in 2000. The age of the average superintendent is also changing— according to the 2020 report, 59% of superintendents took a job as superintendent by 45, as opposed to 49.5% in 2010. This demographic shift may just be getting started; anecdotal data suggests that once the dust settles from the pandemic, we could see radical changes in who makes up America’s roughly 13,000 superintendents. As more professionals enter the superintendency younger, more school leaders than ever are likely to be actively raising children as they work. What does this mean for a job that virtually never ends? Traditional work-life balance may not be feasible for a position that really is, by all accounts, a 24/7 commitment. So what can be done to make the superintendency accessible and sustainable for people with pressing family roles, such as caring for children or elders?

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What’s with the gender problem? When we set out to research this topic, we wanted to explore what it is like to raise a family as a superintendent, no matter who you are. Family responsibilities, including striving to maintain a work-life balance, extend across gender, race, and age. Most of the research on this topic, however, is decidedly gendered. The majority of articles written about work-life balance are either about or targeted toward women. If family responsibilities are a universal experience, why would this be the case? The answer, unfortunately, is that women continue to be more likely than men to bear the burden of caregiving and other family responsibilities. A recent study found that in 2021, women still take on about three times the amount of child care responsibilities as their male counterparts, even when they both work outside the home. This disparity exists among other types of caregiving as well. In the field of elder care, daughters of elderly parents are more than twice as likely to provide for their parents’ care than sons.

we must acknowledge that there is a limit to what one person can do and, more importantly, what one person can do well. People function at their best, both personally and professionally, when they have strong systems of support. More specifically, people thrive when they are afforded time for regular, meaningful interactions with their family members. If the superintendency is a whole-family commitment, as many superintendents express it to be, the role must be crafted with this in mind. Understandably, many working mothers report feeling burned out by the lack of support for their dueling roles. A similar frustration is felt by fathers, too—it just looks a little different. A 2021 report showed that working fathers said they felt much happier and more fulfilled when they are able to take on a greater share of family responsibilities, including taking substantial parental leave. In fact, working fathers were more likely to be satisfied with their workplaces if they took paternity leave than if they did not. The truth is this: To be more representative of the education field as a whole, the superintendency needs to become more accessible to people with families.

What is work-life balance, anyway?

Fostering healthy workplace expectations for everyone— from bus drivers to the superintendent—requires intentionally crafted policies. The question of who crafts these policies, especially in a job that varies so widely from district to district, is the most difficult piece of the puzzle.

This imbalance in caregiving could play a role as to why fewer women than men ascend to the superintendency, despite the fact that over 80% of education majors nationwide are women. In doing this work, it’s important to recognize that there is intrinsic value in the superintendency being accessible to people with a wide range of backgrounds. After all, the U.S. education system serves a more diverse group of students now than ever—why shouldn’t the leaders of their schools reflect this? Additionally, although few superintendents would describe their jobs as being confined to the typical 40-hour workweek, 38

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When young professionals enter the teaching profession, one purported benefit of the job is how family friendly it is. How true is that, though—especially for administrators? Many of the superintendents we talked to mentioned that although their contracts include generous vacation time, it is often hard to take that time outside of major holidays. In fact, although the majority of the 10 superintendents we interviewed had welcomed new children during their tenures, only two of them had taken parental leave longer than a week. Other school leaders acknowledge that although summers are still busy for superintendents, they can use their vacation time to make the most of long weekends. Superintendent Ashley Groepper of Pilot Grove School District in Missouri says it’s easier to take time off when she acknowledges that there will always be work to do, no matter how much time she spends in her office. “I remember one of my professors telling

Photo courtesy of Ashley Groepper

deepening their connection to the district by going to school functions together. “I bring my family to almost every event,” Owoh explains. “I try to limit our time away from each other. It helps my son understand what I’m doing, but it also lets my district know who I am.” Superintendents who express the most satisfaction with their work-life balance acknowledge that getting there took a lot of effort. Andy Crozier, now of Central Lee Community School District in Iowa, emphasizes the importance of balance in being a superintendent as a parent. “You really do have to be intentional about how you spend your time,” he says. “Every minute is valuable. Even if you need rest, you have to rest in a way that is really meaningful. I know that if I don’t exercise every day, I will get stressed—so I prioritize that and make it happen.”

Ashley Groepper believes teamwork makes the superintendency manageable for families.

me that as a principal, you spend your entire day putting out fires. As a superintendent, you know there are always fires— you just have to keep things contained,” she explains. For many school leaders, teamwork plays a huge role in making the superintendency manageable for families. Multiple school leaders mention having weekly meetings with their families to go over everyone’s calendars and figure out the logistics of the week. Spouses are often key players in making the family dynamics work. Cliff McClure of Paxton-BuckleyLoda CUSD 10 in Illinois says his wife is instrumental in making sure their family’s needs are met even with their hectic schedules. McClure, who has led his district for 18 years, says that he has no regrets about serving in the role while raising a family. “Becoming a superintendent was the best decision,” he tells us. “It gave our boys so many opportunities and made our connection to the district even more unique—I was making decisions that not only affected the families around me, but my family as well.” Work-life balance is sometimes simpler when your own children attend school in your district. After all, it’s easier to make it to school events as a superintendent if you’re there supporting your kids anyway. Dr. Jeremy Owoh of Jacksonville North Pulaski Schools in Arkansas says even though his son isn’t involved in all of the activities they attend, he loves

Striving to ensure a strong work-life balance for yourself can set the tone for how your staff members regard work-life balance as well. If you foster a culture that values life beyond the workday, your staff will likely feel empowered to prioritize their home lives as well. Now, as we are focusing on students’ social-emotional health more than ever, it is only natural to extend this focus to the educators who serve them. While plenty of strategies are available to help superintendents build work-life balance, it’s worth exploring whether this high level of commitment makes the role less accessible to people with more demands on their time outside working hours. Accommodating families isn’t the only reason to make Photo courtesy of Jeremy Owoh

Dr. Jeremy Owoh sets strong boundaries to protect time with his family.

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“Becoming a superintendent was the best decision. It gave our boys so many opportunities and made our connection to the district even more unique—I was making decisions that not only affected the families around me, but my family as well.” the superintendency less burdensome. Burnout affects everyone, and with turnover rates higher than ever, we must address the causes and not just the symptoms.

Does this start with the school board? Unfortunately, reframing the superintendency is more complicated than it sounds. The practical demands of school leadership still require availability during nights, weekends, and emergencies. After all, a superintendent’s job is really to fill whatever role their district needs, be it bus driver or legislative spokesperson. Setting expectations and boundaries for your role with your board is a great place to start. While it may be easier to do so at the beginning of a new superintendency, this conversation can happen at any time. In fact, the pandemic has driven many to make their lives more reflective of their ideals, especially parents. School boards who understand this are more likely to support rebuilding a superintendency with reasonable expectations. As many superintendents know, relationships are a key component of making change at the board level because of both the complexity of the superintendent-board dynamic and the constant shift in school board membership. Not all hope is lost, though. By strategically preparing your board for 40

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conversations about work-life balance now, you may be able to open doors for a more representative pool of future superintendent candidates. When Crozier became a shared superintendent between two districts, he recommended that his school board hire a consultant to facilitate training on how to make the shared superintendency work. “Part of that was logistical, but part of it was helping them recognize my limitations to make sure that they had reasonable expectations of me,” he says. When a superintendent has a strong relationship with their board, it is also much easier to build a family-friendly culture. Superintendent Beth Burton of Stanfield School District in Oregon credits her school board with making sure she could thrive in the superintendency through the pregnancy and birth of her second child. “They hired me when I was five months pregnant with my first,” she explains. “When my husband and I struggled to conceive a second time, they were supportive of whatever I needed to do to build my family. They encourage me to do things with my family because kids are only little once.” Supportive school boards aren’t just being nice—it’s actually in their best interest to be inclusive of families. A superintendent who sends their own kids to their district is a powerful endorsement for those schools. After all, they are communicating that their district is good enough for their own children. There is another reason that school boards should work to make the position of superintendent more accessible to parents: a rapid decline in the average superintendent tenure. In 2006, the average superintendent served in a district for five or six years. There is no recent national data on superintendent turnover, but statewide studies suggest that the average superintendent tenure is now closer to three years. While there have not yet been substantive studies to support this, anecdotal data suggests the pandemic may be exacerbating this problem. We know that increased leadership turnover can result in a lack of clear direction that trickles down through schools. While the reasons for increased superintendent turnover are complex, it makes sense for school boards to do whatever they can to keep from overburdening their superintendents and ensuring they keep the best people for their district.

What can private sectors teach us about work-life balance? Although there is limited research about work-life balance for education leaders, the same topic has been well covered for years in the private sector. In many ways, the position of the superintendent functions similarly to that of a CEO; certainly, the visibility and role of the family play out in similar ways in both spheres. It’s not surprising, then, that the same problems of work-life balance and family responsibility exist in the private sector as well. For many private sector leaders, it is important to build a family-first culture that permeates an entire company. Like several of the superintendents we spoke with, many CEOs prioritize sharing at least one meal with their families each day. While dinners can be difficult for superintendents who are expected to attend school board meetings and other events at night, breakfast may be an easier meal to share. Dave Kaval, president of the Oakland Athletics, falls into this category. “My kids have a delayed start at high school, and I have breakfast with them in the mornings,” he explained in an interview with CNN Business. “It is pretty casual, unstructured time, and that is great, especially to get teenagers to open up a bit about their lives.”

While the average CEO polled by CNN admits they work long hours, doing so remotely can often make the balance more easily attainable, especially since many choose to work while their children are sleeping. This is true for superintendents as well. Owoh makes a point of avoiding working after hours until his middle school son’s bedtime. “I usually catch up on emails once he has gone to bed, but I want him to know that I am fully present for him during the few hours we have together each day,” he explains. Many CEOs also echo the importance of making sure that their company’s culture matches the ideals embodied in their benefits. Tim Allen, CEO of Care.com, realized he needed to reconcile the beliefs he wanted to foster in his company with his own choices as a father. “The problem wasn’t my paternity benefits—my company had the right policies in place,” he tells the Harvard Business Review. “The problem was the disconnect between written policy and actual culture. I was contributing to a norm that the company comes first and being a dad comes second. When I took a work call on the day of my twin sons’ birth, I was unwittingly sending a message to other dads at my office that they’d be stigmatized if they didn’t do the same.” This commitment to being present for their families is non-negotiable for most superintendents. Clay Corley of DeSoto Parish Schools in Louisiana thinks about it like this: “I love my students, but chances are, they have had superintendents before me and will have superintendents after me. My kids, on the other hand, have only one dad.”

How can super families make life better for all families?

Some private sector executives also advocate for strong limits on technology use at home. Beth Haggerty, co-founder and CEO of leadership training company Declare, limits screen time for her teenager—and also for herself. “It’s important that my son knows there are limits to technology and that he takes precedence over my phone,” she tells CNN.

In the past year, there has been plenty of discourse about how education should change as we navigate the aftermath of COVID-19. While this has mostly centered around the student experience, there is also some discussion about how to make education a more sustainable, less stressful career choice. Given that 56% of superintendents report feeling “considerable” or “very great” stress related to their jobs, they should not be left out of this conversation. After all, even CEOs, a position infamous for having virtually no work-life balance, report having dinner with their families more than ever during the pandemic. In the end, the superintendent sets the culture of their district. While hard work should be recognized and rewarded, overworked employees are rarely happy ones. Unhappy FALL 2021

employees, in turn, are rarely productive ones. Since productivity in education comes down to the real-life impact of what happens in the classroom, it falls on every superintendent to set a culture where everyone can be well-adjusted. In some ways, the struggles of the superintendency can serve as a case study of what it’s like to be a working parent in schools in general. Despite paid parental leave being a hallmark of a “good” job, many teachers and school staff only qualify for unpaid leave, including school and district leaders. Beth Burton took unpaid time through the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) twice in her career as an educator, once as a superintendent. While she credits her board and staff for being incredibly supportive, she admits that her leave was less than ideal. “I would not say that either leave was free of work,” she explains. “If I could do it all over again, I would have asked for an interim to step in during a full 12week FMLA leave. That bond you build with your baby in the early days sets the tone for their development and ability to thrive for the rest of their life. It can’t be emphasized enough.”

“Having a clear understanding and expectation for the superintendent to be a family-first leader sets a positive example for everyone in the organization to follow.” Photo courtesy of Cliff McClure

The superintendency is widely regarded as a position of prestige and power. When superintendents are able to prioritize their families, they make it possible for all of their staff to uphold the same values. While the United States’ lack of universal paid family leave makes it an outlier among developed countries, there are steps districts can take to support educators as they support their families. If we’re being honest, positions like the superintendency may never be able to model the traditional ideal of work-life balance. Still, that doesn’t mean that superintendents shouldn’t try to work toward that ideal. If school leaders—through a patchwork of personalized, deliberate actions—can reform expectations for a superintendency that is better for families, it will be better for everyone. Many of the superintendents we spoke with had been in their positions for over a decade and had few regrets about blending their lives to include both parenting and school leadership. All across the country, there are brilliant, hardworking education leaders doing their best to support children in their schools while also being there for their own children at home. There are leaders juggling after-school events and hastily packing lunches each morning. There are even superintendents trying not to embarrass their own kids during site visits. In some ways, the work of a superintendent parent is no different than that of any other parent. 42

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Cliff McClure uses a synchronized calendar to ensure his family has time for fun.

While many of the superintendents we interviewed shared the immense struggle of parenting as a district leader, they all felt the choice had been good for their families and good for their districts. They also hoped that through their own struggle, they could serve as a model for making the path easier for all families. Corley sums up his experience like this: “Having a clear understanding and expectation for the superintendent to be a family-first leader sets a positive example for everyone in the organization to follow.”

Moving

Survival Mode A Conversation with Dr. Jill M. Siler 44

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All the Hamilton fans out there will know exactly what Dr. Jill M. Siler means when she says she always wanted to be “in the room where it happens.” For those not yet on the Hamilton bandwagon, let’s just say Siler was not long into her education career before she knew she wanted to be the one making the hard decisions. With 26 years in education, Siler takes her ability to impact students’ lives seriously, especially during hard times. In fact, after nearly 10 years as superintendent of Gunter ISD in Texas, Siler authored the book Thrive Through the Five: Practical Truths to Powerfully Lead Through Challenging Times. Now, as she transitions into her new role as the Deputy Executive Director of Professional Learning with the Texas Association of School Administrators (TASA), she is seeking to extend her influence as a leader even further. Direct and driven in her leadership, Siler is passionately devoted to her work. And while it would be tempting to describe her as fearless, she would say good leadership is less about the absence of fear and more about the ability to act despite it. We had the opportunity to speak with Siler about her book, her experience navigating the superintendency as a mother, and how—with a little bravery and openness—leaders can not only survive hardship, but thrive in the midst of it.

What inspired you to write your book, and what led you to title it Thrive Through the Five? The superintendency is, of course, a male-dominated role, and in Texas the average tenure for a superintendent is around four years. We serve somewhere for a little while; then we’re called to move on to the next district, which may be bigger or have different kinds of challenges. I didn’t feel compelled to leave, though. We love the Gunter ISD community, and we wanted to stay here. We wanted our kids to grow up in a school where they could know others and be known. But after six years in this role, I felt like I was being called to something more. I loved my district, and I loved the things we were doing, but I started questioning what was next for me.

Dr. Jill M. Siler Eventually, I realized I didn’t have to leave in order to lead the way I was being called to. I began wondering what it would look like to stay here and do the work that I love for this community, but also to expand my impact to other leaders across the state and, by extension, the 5.5 million students in Texas. Ultimately, those are the things that led me to write this book. As far as the book’s title goes, I tell people all the time that I love my job—95% of it. I love that I get to set the tone. I love that my why is inherent. You get to see it in front of you each and every day: young people—and not so young people— growing and becoming better versions of themselves. But we don’t talk enough about the 5% that is really challenging, whether it’s a tragedy, the unavailability of funds, or negative viral social media posts. The weight of the job—that’s the 5%. Of course, there are definitely seasons where that 95:5 ratio is true in concept, but not in reality. I turned in my manuscript in November 2019, before the pandemic hit. Now, after having led through COVID-19, I might retitle it Thrive Through the 55 or When the Five Becomes the 95. This has been a truly difficult time, but I think the basic question is more relevant than ever: How do you lead through challenging times?

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In your book, you write about feeling unprepared for the superintendency. How did you evolve into the role? One of my mentors who has impacted me greatly is a phenomenal woman named Dr. Jenny Preston, who served as superintendent in both Graham ISD and Allen ISD in Texas. When I first met with her, I just wanted to be an assistant superintendent; that was the next step on my path. But, after we got a chance to visit, she said, Jill, I’m telling you there’s a district out there in need of your leadership, and I hope you’re open to that call. Shortly after, the Gunter ISD position opened, and I became the superintendent there. I think it’s true that you don’t know what you don’t know—and there were so many things that I didn’t know. I definitely was not ready. I could count the number of board meetings that I had been to from start to finish on one hand. I was sitting in my first meeting as superintendent thinking, Am I supposed to vote? Does a superintendent vote? Or just the board members? I should have known, but I just didn’t. There were so many things I wasn’t ready for. There’s no way, though, to be fully prepared for the role until you step into it, and even then something’s always coming

Photo courtesy of Texas Association of School Administrators

around the corner that you haven’t yet faced. But good leadership is good leadership. If we allow ourselves to step into what we’re being called to do, incredible things can happen.

What advice would you give to women in education looking for mentorship? When it comes to finding a mentor, the goal is to become a better leader, teacher, and human being. That’s what mentorship is about. Sometimes, we take a passive role when it comes to mentorship, but we can’t do that. We can’t just wait for that one special person to appear and open up all the doors or help us find the right job. We have to ask. Jenny Preston became my mentor because I sought her out. When I met her, she was leading AASA’s Aspiring Superintendents Academy for Educational Leaders. I decided I wanted to be like her when I grew up.

“If we just allow ourselves to step into what we’re being called to do, incredible things can happen.”

When the Academy ended, I went up to her and asked if she’d meet me for coffee. She was so gracious, and she said yes. She lived in Dallas, and I lived in Austin, so I drove hundreds of miles round-trip to have a cup of Starbucks with her. That’s the piece I want to get at: If we want mentors, we have to pursue them. I’ll also say that mentorship is easy to find in the early stages of your leadership journey. When you’re a teacher and you want to become an instructional coach or an assistant principal, the opportunities for mentorship are abundant. As you go further into your journey, those people who were mentoring you become your colleagues and friends, so finding a mentor becomes more difficult. That makes it even more important to be aggressive about going after mentorship. Over the course of my time as superintendent, a huge passion of mine has been investing in aspiring leaders, especially women. We have a tremendous leadership organization in Texas called TCWSE, the Texas Council of Women School Executives, and we’ve been able to do so much work with that group of women—empowering them to take the steps that they are equipped and called to take. Being mentored is fantastic, and mentoring others is such a great opportunity, but the beauty happens when both are occurring at the same time—when you are pouring into others and people are pouring into you.

How did your family’s relationship with your role as superintendent change over time? Right now, my daughter is a junior in high school, and my son is in seventh grade. For the most part, this is the only life they’ve known. When I started, my daughter was going into second grade and my son was 3 years old. That was a challenge for me. You barely see women in the superintendency, especially when I started 10 years ago. You certainly didn’t see moms with young kids. When you don’t have that model, it makes you question whether you can do this work—or whether you should. Of course, those are two entirely different conversations, each with their own set of emotions. When I started the superintendency, though, my kids were young, so they didn’t know anything except “Mom as superintendent.” In the beginning, there were plenty of things that I was able to move the needle on. They very much had this idea of me as a superhero: Mom is the superintendent, she’s the best, everyone

loves Mom, and it’s fantastic. Not everyone loved Mom, but in their eyes everyone did. Over the years, it has become more difficult, especially as my daughter has gone into high school. You cannot lead effectively without making very hard decisions, but that’s really challenging. There is fallout and there are consequences— and that comes back onto your family. As I’ve transitioned out of the superintendency, both my family and friends have commented on my being “a different person.” The kind of life you have to live as a superintendent is different from the life of just a mom, just a parent. You have to live life from afar a little bit because the decisions you make have real implications and there can be hurt from that. So while I love this community and pouring into this community, there’s also that sense that I can’t truly be myself because the job is the job.

How can the superintendency be more accessible to moms? Let’s take COVID-19 and the current political climate out of the equation. Even without all that, when it comes to leading as a mom, the job is challenging. I’ve held leadership positions all the way from assistant principal to superintendent, but none of them have been like the superintendency. Part of our work is creating boundaries—saying, I am going to turn my phone off—and part of it is reconceptualizing what balance looks like. Say you have this image in your mind of a perfectly balanced day. You wake up in the morning; you have your personal time of study and devotion; you spend some time outdoors; you make breakfast; you walk the kids to school; you have a great day at work; you’re involved in the kids’ activities; you make dinner; you play board games; you read stories. None of that is realistic—but when our real lives don’t meet that impossible standard, we feel this guilt and shame. Balance is a constant struggle because real life is not balanced. So what does my family’s real life look like, and how can we create boundaries to support that? How can my kids feel that I am with them? Back in my day, if my dad was at the office or if my mom was at work after hours, they were gone because they were physically gone. Then, when they got back, they were really home. Now, it’s totally different. It doesn’t matter where you are because your phone is attached to you 24/7.

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The hardest part about being a superintendent, though, is not just the hours we keep or the work we do. It’s the weight we carry that stays with us all the time because, at the end of the day, the livelihoods of so many people rest in our hands. We can have full lives with our whole selves and our families by creating boundaries and understanding that there are seasons. The first six months that you go into the superintendency are not reflective of the next six years, but the first six months have to be what they are. When COVID happened and we began to shut down schools, you better believe my job did not look like it normally does. There are seasons in this work when the job does take the forefront. That’s the role of the leader. It’s sacrificial in nature—but for seasons. I make this joke that if you asked my kids what August, October, April, and May have in common, they will say, For mom, August is busy, October is really busy, April is crazy busy, and May is just insane. As a family, though, we also have this discussion about how November, December, June, and July are barren in comparison—and there is balance in that. Yes, I have this job that is 24/7 and 365 in nature, but I also have this incredible executive position that still gives me Thanksgiving, spring break, Christmas, and summer off—and there’s balance in that, too.

To hear more from Jill Siler, check out our full conversation at www.schoolceo.com/siler

How does your family cope with the level of visibility that comes with the superintendency? Superintendent after superintendent will tell you that having your family prepared for this role is so incredibly important, especially your spouse. If they aren’t all in, this job is a no-go. In my very first year as a superintendent, I changed the dress code, and that decision was very controversial in the community. My husband was approached at a donut shop by some folks expressing how thankful they were for the change. He responded by saying he couldn’t believe some of the negative comments others had been making. Immediately, I knew that we were not prepared for this. Who knows who else was in that donut shop? We had not had the necessary conversations about what to say and when. We’ve done a lot of work over the years since then regarding what we can talk about, what we can’t, and how we have to be careful with what we say to our kids. They tell us what they’re hearing at school, and, of course, I can’t confirm or deny anything—but we can have a conversation with them. We can say, Here’s what you need to really think about when you’re talking, and, by the way, please don’t talk about this. It’s just a matter of getting them to understand that there’s a bigger picture, that there are two sides to everything, and that what they’re hearing is not necessarily the whole truth. It’s really challenging, but open communication and being clear about your expectations are really helpful.

“I still count it a privilege to have been the person in that role. My proudest moments were the things that were difficult, but that we led through and led through well.” 48

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Reflecting back on your superintendency, what has been your proudest moment? I went into the superintendency with these visions of going to Friday night football games with my family, thinking about strategic planning, and bringing our district to new places. But when I think back on my proudest moments, they’ve been the hardest ones. Even though those were the hardest decisions that I’ve ever had to make as a leader—or even as a human being—I was so thankful to be in that seat because I loved that community so much.

Thrive Through the Five is now available for purchase online through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. For more information, visit jillmsiler.com/book.

The last 18 months of my superintendency were so incredibly difficult, but I still count it a privilege to have been the person in that role. My proudest moments were the things that were difficult, but that we led through and led through well.

Why is it important for superintendents to be open about the 5% of the job they may not love? Part of the growing process is this feeling of being inadequate; it’s this feeling of being overwhelmed. It’s thinking: I must not be fully equipped for this job. I must not be the person for this job because if I were, I wouldn’t have these feelings of inadequacy. But that’s leadership. It’s stepping in and taking action, even in the midst of fear. In the first year of my superintendency, I walked into a financial crisis. I lost 20% of my staff that year. It was one of the most excruciating journeys to go through as a leader, especially as a first-time superintendent in this community that I loved, knowing that we ultimately weren’t going to be whole as a staff. Now, I recognize that as tough as that journey was, as tough as that season was, I was a much better leader after the fact—because I had experienced that hardship. Even now, we’re going through this pandemic thinking, How can this get any worse? How can we be more divisive than we are right now, with mask and anti-mask, vaccine and anti-vaccine, and all the other discussions creeping into our schools and communities? But as leaders, we will get to the other side of it and recognize the tremendous work that has been done. There is strength in recognizing that you not only made it through, but you thrived.

Image courtesy of Dave Burgess Consulting

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When you hear the word rookie, the image of a baseball player may come to mind—a young athlete standing at the plate for their first major league game, the crowd looking on from all directions. You probably know this feeling all too well. As a school leader, you’ve stood at the plate, taken swings for your team, celebrated wins, and endured heartbreaking defeats, all under the watchful eye of your entire community. Now imagine doing all that for the very first time while navigating a global pandemic. Many school leaders are beginning their superintendencies during this historically complicated time—and they’re making the field younger and more diverse. So we wanted to highlight a few “rookie” superintendents with inspiring paths into education and plans for their districts. They’ve only been in their new positions for a few months, but they’re already impacting their communities. There’s no telling what the future holds for these all-stars in the making.

age group,” she tells us. “It’s such a critical time in children’s lives—where they’re really figuring out who they are—and it was so fun.” In her fifth year of teaching, an administrator told Dietz she should consider becoming a school leader herself. While balancing being a mom and full-time teacher, she started taking credential courses on weekends. Within a couple of years, she moved into a vice principal role at one of the district’s K-8 schools. Shortly after, she served back-to-back principalships in CUESD, the last of which was at the middle school where she began her career. This past summer, after 15 years in the district, Dietz was named superintendent of CUESD. She credits the support she’s received in the district over the years for getting her where she is today. “I’ve been given great opportunities here,” Dietz says. “People have put their faith in me, and it’s worked out. I’m really thankful.” Even though she’d already spent years building connections and partnerships in the district, Dietz still kicked off her superintendency by setting up meetings with each member of her administrative team to get to know them even better. “It’s a really solid team that I’m stepping into,” she tells us. “They’ve been so good to me already.”

Tiffany Dietz - Corning Union Elementary School District, CA It was never Tiffany Dietz’s plan to become an educator, but you could say the signs were there all along. After learning American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate with her oldest son, Dietz began working as an ASL interpreter for a local high school student. Moving from classroom to classroom, she got a firsthand look at different teaching styles and the relationships educators formed with their students. She quickly fell in love with the idea of being a teacher, so she enrolled in college and eventually landed a job teaching eighth grade history at Corning Union Elementary School District (CUESD). This is where Dietz would find her calling. “Being a middle school teacher, I got to know such a great

Dietz describes Corning as a mostly rural area in northern California, filled with farms and almond orchards. These attract lots of migrant families, bringing a large population of English learners to the district. “Trying to get our kids what they need in order to learn to read and write well is probably the biggest weight I feel other than their physical safety and their health,” she says. “To me, the reading piece is the most critical area—making sure we get that right so that we can get our kids where they need to be.” Another major focus of this year for Dietz and the district is ensuring kids are in the classroom after so much interruption and confusion caused by the pandemic. “We are united in our belief that kids should be in school,” she tells us. “And our union has been on board with that as well, so that’s been helpful. Even though this is like nothing we’ve ever seen, I do think that we will get back to a sense of normalcy. We all want to just be at school and not talk about COVID all the time.” Prior to the pandemic, the district was making noticeable progress, so Dietz isn’t looking to make any drastic changes FALL 2021

to what was already working. “The superintendent before me was doing a great job, and most of our employees were happy,” she says. “We were actually climbing in our scores, and our kids were achieving better, so staying the course— and accelerating our progress—is my goal for the district.” Backed by a devoted team, a career of experience in the district she now leads, and an unwavering love for the work, Dietz is more than ready to serve the students and staff of CUESD. “I love our kids,” she says. “And I love it here.”

Andrew Gonzalez Lebanon Public School District, CT “My story is so much about connections and relationships and how they’ve intertwined to lead me where I am,” Andrew Gonzalez tells us. The father of five recently took the top spot in Connecticut’s Lebanon Public School District. But he tells us that wasn’t always the plan. He first studied business management at Sacred Heart University while playing for the school’s football team, the Pioneers. However, a post-college job in the insurance field had him doubting his career choice. As fate would have it, a family friend happened to be the director for one of Sacred Heart’s education programs. She had seen Gonzalez interacting with student athletes, so she told him to consider becoming a teacher. “It was one of those aha moments,” he says. “Why wasn’t I working in an area I felt passionate about?” Gonzalez then enrolled in graduate school to work toward his Master of Arts in Teaching. Interning and student teaching in Lisbon, Connecticut, he started running sports camps, building connections that would eventually earn him an invitation to tutor English learners in the nearby town of Sprague. After he completed his teaching certification, a school offered him a job teaching fourth grade, and the offers kept coming. “Whenever there was an opening in my school, I was always the guy they turned to,” he explains. “In the six years that I was a teacher, I taught in five different roles. At that point, I wasn’t really piecing together how beneficial that would be to me in the long run.” After earning his administrative certificate, Gonzalez moved to his first leadership role as an assistant principal in Bolton, Connecticut. “I was able to bring the experience of being in all those different grade levels,” he says. “Being fresh out of the classroom, I could really relate to the teachers.” 52

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“I wanted to come back and be a part of something like that—a district that I could really wrap my arms around, get to know, and grow with as a superintendent.” Only one year into that role, fate would intervene once again. Having heard about him from her granddaughter—a student at Bolton—the superintendent of nearby Lebanon Pubilc School District asked Gonzalez to interview for a principalship. He served in that role while working on his certificate to become a superintendent. After a brief principalship in nearby East Hampton—and with 10 years of building-level leadership experience—Gonzalez jumped at the chance to apply for the superintendency in Lebanon this past year. “I knew what a close-knit environment this was, what a family feel this town has,” he explains. “I wanted to come back and be a part of something like that—a district that I could really wrap my arms around, get to know, and grow with as a superintendent.” As Lebanon’s superintendent, Gonzalez hit the ground running. At a leadership retreat, he assigned readings tailored to the personal and district goals of each of his building-level leaders. “We all did presentations based on those readings and had a really nice back-and-forth, which served as a springboard for the work we did in developing our district goals,” he tells us. Under his guidance, the team intentionally designed each of the district’s new goals to have a direct connection to each school building in Lebanon. “Every building-level goal feeds into a district one, and their action steps align to each of those goals,” he explains. “It builds momentum for us so that we really have a collective effort working toward greatness this year.”

Establishing a manageable set of district goals and centering his entire team around that vision has been one of Gonzalez’s top priorities, especially after such a uniquely challenging year. He also attended a retreat for the Lebanon Board of Education before the school year began, where he laid out his vision. “We need to make sure we’re continuing to communicate those goals, that we’re monitoring our progress, and that we’re involving the community so that they understand where we’re going as a district,” he tells us. It’s no surprise that Gonzalez credits his time playing sports for his strong belief in teamwork. “The work ethic and collaboration that go along with being a good teammate are really beneficial in a school setting,” he says. “As a leader, it can’t be about you. It has to be about each and every one of those learners and stakeholders.” Gonzalez’s passion as a leader is earning him support in Lebanon Public Schools, and he speaks about his new role with refreshing clarity and boldness. “One thing that has gone a long way was just being vulnerable with the board and with my team,” he explains. “I told them I don’t have any superintendent experience and I’m going to be growing with them. I’m not going to shy away from leading them where I think the district needs to go, but I’m going to need critical friends. It’s going to take a team approach to do what’s best for this community.”

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Dr. Brandi-Lyn Mendham Zeeland Public Schools, MI On her very first day of school as a superintendent, Dr. Brandi-Lyn Mendham was dealing with a chemical spill at a business neighboring her district’s main campus. “That definitely wasn’t on my list, but we’ve got a great team here, and we put our heads together and figured it out,” Mendham tells us. Despite a first day filled with split schedules, students sheltering in place, and hazmat suits, she still talks about her new role with excitement and hope. Mendham was able to work closely with her predecessor to transition into the superintendency, and she also received a scholarship to attend a small conference led by education scholar Dr. Doug Reeves this past summer. “It turned out to be kind of a think tank,” she tells us. “There were just eight of us leaders from across the country sitting at a conference table. We spent three days together troubleshooting, hearing ideas, and sharing strategies. That work is invaluable. I’ve always been a strong believer in the power of networking.” She noticed immediately how isolating the role of superintendent can be, which is why Mendham takes this kind of networking so seriously. “In other roles you always have another group, a network, or someone else within the system with the same or a similar role,” she explains. “Then, all of a sudden, you’re in this spot where everybody is looking at you and you’re the only one.” Like so many leaders we’ve talked to, Mendham never saw herself as a superintendent or even an educator. She actually planned to become a doctor, spending her first two years of college studying pre-med. But after leading nature classes for children at a local state park, she fell in love with teaching. Then, after earning her teaching degree, Mendham returned

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“People are looking to me not just to be the leader of a system but to show their kids the potential they have. I think about those kids where I’m from who don’t see a way out, and it’s nice to be able to give more students that vision.” to her hometown in Lake County, Michigan, to student teach at Baldwin Elementary School. Growing up in Lake County, Mendham witnessed a wide array of hardships from a young age. “I realized that kids were dealing with a whole lot more than academics and were struggling to overcome a lot of challenges,” she says. “There was an unspoken expectation in my community that you weren’t going to amount to much.” Because Baldwin Elementary had so much turnover when she returned, Mendham was able to expedite her student teaching and get her own first grade classroom just 10 weeks into the school year. “It was so challenging, and the student behavior issues were immense, but I knew I was more than just a teacher to them,” she says. “We fed our students. We often provided clothing to them. There was a medical site on campus as well. I knew we provided far more for that community than just education, so I had a passion early on to serve in that capacity.” Mendham’s five years in the classroom were cut short when her twin daughters were born prematurely, but she was just getting started in the field of education. Once her newborns were healthy, she worked briefly as a site developer for education consulting company Atlas Communities, where she supported leaders and systems across the country. Afterward, she worked for eight years as the General

Education Services Coordinator and Early Childhood Specialist for West Shore Educational Service District. “We provided all kinds of curriculum and instruction support at the county level,” she explains. “I ended up being the administrator of their state-funded 4-year-old preschool programming. It was a phenomenal experience to be able to hire staff in those spaces, provide professional development, and work hard to elevate the status of those preschool teachers who oftentimes don’t feel as recognized.” She began her time in Zeeland Public Schools as the Director of Curriculum and Technology, eventually moving up to Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum. After seven years in that role, with such a unique experience in education already under her belt, Mendham has taken the helm in the district as superintendent. But she is well aware of the disparities between it and the districts she’s previously served. “The system I’m leading is so different from the system I worked most closely with for the longest amount of time,” she explains. “I always remind myself: Even though we have these beautiful facilities and these incredibly equipped staff members and supports, we still have kids in poverty. I always have my mind and heart on the fact that we can’t lose sight of them. So I’m working hard with our team to provide the resources needed to make sure everybody has equal access.” Mendham says Zeeland is also the best decision she could have ever made for her family—which is why her three kids attend school in the district. “It is a growing community with lots of agriculture, a strong faith base, and incredible industry,” she explains. “It’s the perfect place to raise a family, and there’s been this long-standing trust with the district that I don’t take for granted. The folks who came before me established that.” To maintain that trust and instill her own vision for the future, Mendham kicked off the year with a full-day session centered around Brené Brown’s book Dare to Lead. “I’ve always been a believer in having hard conversations and seeing vulnerability as a strength in our spaces,” she says. “So our team moved through the first three chapters of Brown’s book, and we ended that day with a call to courage. It was such a powerful experience.”

She’s following up that up with two more half-day sessions. “This is for each individual to grow and for us to grow our own culture together as a team,” she explains. “Starting that way on the heels of a tough year—and moving into what feels like an even tougher year—is grounding us in a common language and in the expectation that we’ll be stronger together than any of us are alone.” When we spoke at the beginning of the school year, Mendham was most excited about the work her staff is doing around Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). “It’s the right work,” she says. “It’s an initiative that people have passion for here. They were on fire for PLCs prior to the pandemic, so we are really eager to make that the way we do our work in this system.” Mendham is also making history in Zeeland as the district’s first female superintendent, an opportunity she speaks about with reverence and heart. “It’s such an honor, and I feel the responsibility of it in a very big way,” she says. “People are looking to me not just to be the leader of a system but to show their kids the potential they have. I think about those kids where I’m from who don’t see a way out, and it’s nice to be able to give more students that vision.”

Afterward, he co-ran the school’s credit recovery program and computer lab. “We helped about 180 students recover around 380 credits by self-motivating and building in SEL components, showing them that learning can be fun,” he says. He would also serve as Athletic Director before meeting Alfred Hogan, then the assistant superintendent in Osceola, Arkansas. “He’s a great man, a 46-year educator who believes in investing in people,” Green tells us.

Dr. Toriano Green Osceola School District, AR “People have believed in me more than I believed in myself,” Dr. Toriano Green tells us. “I’m very fortunate to be in the role I’m in today.” Growing up in West Memphis, Arkansas, Green dreamed of being an aeronautical engineer. But when he got to orientation day at Tennessee State University, he says he “just didn’t feel it.” So he went undecided for the first two years of college. During that time, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and, surprisingly enough, changed the trajectory of Green’s life all the way in Nashville, Tennessee. His university received a grant to run a monthlong camp teaching and tutoring first through sixth graders who had been displaced by the storm. Green was one of 25 college students hired for the job. “It was the life-changing moment that put me in education,” he tells us. “I absolutely loved the connections I made with the kids.” After, Green quickly declared his major in education. “I never saw myself in that world, ” he says, “but it has been a blessing ever since.” Just a few years later, Green started teaching and coaching in Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, working on his Masters in Organizational Leadership at the same time. He went on to earn an Ed.D. in Learning Organization and Strategic Change as well. “I had a blast,” he says. At first, Green’s only goal was to coach until he was about 40, but he says that plan “went awry” when someone believed in him more than he believed in himself. “Just walking around as a P.E., health, and science teacher, I had an administrator pull me aside and say, I really like how you carry yourself, and I’d like for you to have a bigger role in the building.” Green was then made Assistant Principal after just two years at Whites Creek High School.

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Hogan asked Green if he’d be interested in returning to Arkansas, something he then discussed with his wife. “I told her I’d like to go home someday with the expertise I have and try to shine that light in Arkansas—let them see that representation matters,” he says. “She got on board with the idea, too.” Green also credits his late mother-in-law, Dr. Julie Williams, for influencing his return to Arkansas. “She was a legend in education,” he says. “She served as a great mentor to me, and I miss that tremendously.” Green would get the opportunity to impact his home state when, in 2018, Hogan was promoted to superintendent in Osceola. “He made me his assistant superintendent and gave me great mentorship,” Green says. “It was a steep learning curve, but I was able to lean on him and learn quite a bit. It was almost like an old-school apprenticeship.” That relationship has continued even into Green’s superintendency. “We do things differently, but I still keep him in mind and call him for various situations in the district,” he says. Hogan announced his retirement in November 2020, and the school board voted Green in as his successor just one month later. “They took a chance on me and believed in the vision I set forth,” Green says. “I just wanted to be a coach. But once I got into this world and started studying it, I thought I might not be that bad at this. I can influence and motivate people, and if you believe in me, I’m not going to disappoint you.” Moving back to Arkansas had personal benefits for Green as well. Now in a smaller district, he’s been able to take more time for his young family. “I have a middle schooler now, and he’s in our district,” he tells us. “I’m a firm believer in my kids attending school wherever I work. If I stand here and say, This is good enough for your child, then it has to be good enough for mine, too. At the end of the day, we’ve got to get it right for everybody’s kids.” For Green, leading a school district goes beyond credentials and experience. It’s also about representation. “African

American males only make up about 2% of all educators, so my platform has become much bigger as I’ve become older and found my purpose,” he says. “Whether it’s in this role or not, I’ll be in education for as long as I can make an impact.” When we spoke in September, Green had already committed to spending about 60% of each day in classrooms around the district. “It’s rough, and some days it requires working late hours, but I can’t make decisions just sitting in my office,” he says. “The action is in the classroom—that’s where the fun takes place and the lightbulbs turn on. I need to see if our curriculum is worthwhile, if our students’ needs are being met, and if they’re engaged.” Green says this also helps him earn the trust of his teachers. “It shows them that I’m as invested in the learning process as they are, even though they’re the boots on the ground,” he says. Not only has Green engaged at the classroom level, he’s also been on the district’s school buses—all of them. In the first few weeks of school, he rode all 10 morning bus routes in the district. “Our bus drivers are important, and I like to let them

know that,” he says. “It gave me a totally new appreciation for them. We have some who drive a long country mile to pick up our kids, and it’s important for me to see that.” Green is decisive and clear about his intentions for helping Osceola continue to grow and thrive. “I’ve taken the district into some new directions as far as the teaching and learning process goes,” he explains. “We have to get back to the nuts and bolts of teaching and learning. A program can never replace a teacher, and we have to give them the best opportunities to be successful.” With a commitment to being hands-on, staying boldly supportive of his teachers and staff, and centering learning around every student’s needs, Green has started his superintendency doing what he does best: being a coach. “I’m a different kind of coach now,” he says. “I just have to do it on a grander scale. There are thousands of kids who depend on me to get the game plan right for their success.”

“I’m a different kind of coach now. I just have to do it on a grander scale. There are thousands of kids who depend on me to get the game plan right for their success.”

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With Open Arms Helping displaced students feel welcome in your schools 58

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It’s never easy being the new kid in school. Adjusting to a new routine, meeting a whole slate of different teachers, and making friends can all present struggles for any student. But these challenges are amplified for students who have been displaced. Around the world, millions of families have been forced to leave their homes and move to new communities, usually due to armed conflicts or humanitarian disasters. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, some 3 million refugees have resettled in the United States since 1975. This includes those fleeing recent high-profile conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. Even if your district isn’t receiving students who’ve escaped international conflicts, you’re likely to work with displaced students in the future. Hurricane Maria, for example, brought over 11,000 students fleeing Puerto Rico to Florida schools in the middle of the 2017-2018 school year. Many families in the continental U.S. either choose or are forced to uproot their lives after hurricanes and wildfires. Even students already within your district can become displaced at any time, whether due to a house fire, domestic violence, or the death of a caregiver. Working with this vulnerable group of students requires a deft touch, but it also presents school leaders with an opportunity to make a difference in their communities. Schools are often an important touchpoint for these families as they settle into their new homes. Fortunately, numerous districts around the country are welcoming displaced students and their families into their schools in heartfelt, innovative ways. While supporting these students can seem like a daunting task, your school community will be all the better for it.

Meeting Students Where They Are Displaced students often enter schools with several stressors weighing heavily on their hearts and minds. The trauma of being forced to leave home combined with starting over in a new school—or even a new country—can be a lot to handle. That’s why one of your top priorities should be making your displaced students feel welcome and safe. One of the simplest steps is being thoughtful about how you introduce these students to their new peers. Dr. Rob Watson, superintendent of Montana’s Missoula County Public Schools, told us his district has found success with taking the burden of those introductions off of the students themselves. Because displaced students often struggle to talk about

their homes and the circumstances under which they left them, an EL tutor will come to the classroom and talk about the new student’s home country, sometimes even in the form of a lesson. “Building the capacity of the students who are already here, so they understand a little bit more about the home country, is probably the most important thing we do,” Watson says. Once students have that background information, they can take it and run with it. One elementary class in Missoula was so excited to learn about a fellow student’s home country that they asked to be taught words and phrases in that student’s native language to make their new friend more comfortable. Missoula also pairs each displaced student with a peer for the first few weeks of the school year. This gives the student a buddy to guide them through their new school, kickstarting the process of meeting people and making friends. What’s more, having a connection right off the bat helps ease culture shock; after all, they’re adjusting not just to U.S. culture, but to your school culture as well. For example, something as common as block scheduling can be utterly confusing without a peer to explain how it works. Understanding the nuts and bolts of the school day is important, but school leaders have even bigger academic hurdles to overcome. When students are gathering their belongings from their former homes, things like report cards probably don’t make the cut. This makes it tough to piece together a transcript and place these students in the proper grades. However, this careful work behind the scenes is critical in order to set your newcomers for success. California’s San Juan Unified School District has dedicated staff to help these students thrive academically. “A teacher on special assignment looks at transcripts to make sure students are being placed correctly in classes and that they receive credit toward graduation for whatever courses they completed in their home countries,” says Cristina Burkhart, a Program Specialist for the district’s Newcomer Support Team. In many cases, students need extra attention to stay on grade level. For San Juan Unified, this takes place in Saturday Academy. Younger kids receive lessons not just in their academic subjects, but on English language acquisition and emotional regulation as well. Older kids, meanwhile, are able to pursue credit recovery for graduation in an environment where language translation is available. Elsewhere in FALL 2021

about supporting our families,” Burkhart says. “We do whatever we need to do.” The chief support for your newcomers will usually be found in the classroom itself. Teachers are the primary point of contact for any student, and setting yours up for success will go a long way. This support can take several forms. In Missoula, teachers learn basic words and phrases in students’ native languages. Doing so facilitates communication and connection, while also helping those students feel more comfortable in the classroom. San Juan Unified utilizes bilingual instruction assistants to break down learning barriers by assisting teachers with translation services.

Photo courtesy of Missoula County Public Schools

Initiatives such as Missoula’s refugee program help students feel at home in their new communities. California, Cajon Valley Union School District has had success with their Power Up after-school program, which uses activities like soccer to provide kids with language acquisition help, social-emotional learning, and even counseling. When it comes to supporting displaced students in the classroom, you have to be willing to meet them where they are—sometimes literally. Burkhart relayed just one example of what this looks like. When two Afghan sisters weren’t coming to school, members of her team visited the students at home. They discovered that the girls were intimidated by their route to campus. So what did the San Juan Unified team do? They walked the girls to school, leading them through busy intersections and intimidating crosswalks to show them they could do it. That simple act got two students back into class and showed them that the district cared. “I think our district is really good 60

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Sometimes putting teachers in the best position to succeed takes the form of actual professional development, such as workshops on general cultural responsiveness and trauma-informed practices for the classroom. All of these strategies work to make displaced students’ experiences as welcoming as possible so they can continue to learn and grow. Texas’ Austin ISD, for example, includes basic language instruction in staff training. Refugee Family Support Coordinator Salimah Shamsuddin makes a point to teach everyone she trains how to say “hello” and “thank you” in both Dari and Pashto—the two languages most commonly spoken by Afghan students. One simple step that teachers can take, Shamsuddin tells us, is learning how to pronounce their newcomer students’ first and last names correctly. It may sound like a minor detail, but it matters deeply to these students. Shamsuddin knows this personally. “So many immigrant children, including myself, have had teachers who could not pronounce their names,” she says. “Every time they called my name during roll call, I would get tense. It is important in building that relationship to just ask students how their name is pronounced.”

Serving the Whole Child Of course, education isn’t just about what goes on between the morning and afternoon bells. Schools can support displaced students outside of normal classroom instruction, too. One of the most obvious methods is devoting time and care to your students’ mental health.

Put yourself in the shoes of a displaced student: the conflict or disaster that drove their family from home; the often harrowing journey to flee and settle somewhere foreign; the stress of trying to reset life in an entirely new community. None of this is easy, to put it mildly. Fortunately, school can play an invaluable part in these students’ healing. Austin ISD brings together school counselors and the district’s licensed mental health professionals to focus on the individual needs of each student. One important aspect of this work is ensuring that students have access to culturally competent mental health providers. “Culturally competent” is a key point—students are best served by providers who have experience working with refugee families. “When you’re speaking to these families about counseling and therapy, try to focus on speaking about their wellness rather than mental health,” Shamsuddin suggests. This way of framing the conversation is more inviting, with less loaded terminology. “We found that parents are more open to the idea of therapy when we frame the conversation around their child’s well-being and how it’s going to help them,” she says.

After-school programs and extracurriculars are great opportunities to break down barriers. Photo courtesy of San Juan Unified School District

“Students don’t need to have English skills to be able to build friendships and dance. You can dance in any language.” Not every district can employ mental health providers as part of their campus or central office staff, but that’s okay. The important thing is being there for the students and allowing them to process the trauma they’ve experienced in their own time, on their own terms. “When somebody comes back from a traumatic experience, the instinct is to say, Let’s counsel you out of it—it doesn’t work that way,” says Michael Serban, Cajon Valley’s Director of Family and Community Engagement. “So it’s making everybody aware that—two weeks from now, six months from now, a year from now—this child is going to have to get this off their chest in order to process and move forward. When that happens, we want to be there to support them with all of our resources.” Part of being there for students is simply providing them opportunities to have fun like any other kid. After-school clubs, athletic teams, and other structured, school-sponsored activities are an excellent way to help new students step outside of their existing circles and meet new friends. For displaced students in particular, shared interests in sports or music can facilitate bonding with new classmates; these activities transcend language and open the door to cultural exchange. “Students don’t need to have English skills to be able to build friendships and dance,” says Amy Rovai Gregory, San Juan Unified’s Director of Family Engagement and Partnership Development. “You can dance in any language.” However, a few barriers can keep some of your newcomers from participating in extracurriculars. For example, families living in a new community may not have a car or a valid driver’s license, making it difficult to transport kids to and from campus or other locations after school. Watson tells us those challenges are compounded in a community like Missoula, which lacks viable transportation options beyond cars. Fortunately, his district has found a solution that benefits all of their families—activity buses for use during after-school hours, paid for partially through a Title I grant. FALL 2021

While transportation options are a big help for displaced families, other barriers may still remain. In many families, for example, older kids are expected to look after younger siblings while their parents work, making after-school activities inaccessible. To provide opportunities for these students, you might integrate activities into the regular school day, with club meetings and other events taking place on campus during lunchtime.

Getting Families Involved Some schools have also found ways to extend learning into the home. Everyone we talked to agreed that refugee families often find taking an active role in their child’s education intimidating; some may even think it’s not their place. That sentiment is understandable given the high status some cultures afford to educators, but schools should still try to work toward forming an active partnership with all families. In Cajon Valley, teachers work toward this goal by forming family-teacher teams. What does this look like? Imagine a back-to-school night, but with a twist—the meetings take place during the school day, with a performance or some other element involving students to encourage parents or other family members to attend. These families are then invited to take part in the learning, working with their child on one specific area of focus. All the while, parents get to

Photo courtesy of San Juan Unified School District

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discuss their hopes and dreams for their children with teachers. These partnerships then continue to build over the course of the school year as both parties regularly touch base on the student’s progress. Sometimes, equipping families with the tools they need involves a crash course in U.S. education. San Juan Unified holds workshops to go over all the information parents need to know, from how to read a report card to district graduation requirements to the steps involved in filling out college applications. While families in the States may take this knowledge for granted, making sure it’s available to newcomers can remove significant barriers to playing a more active role in their child’s education. Even after families learn how local schools operate, school and district communication efforts can still fall flat if there’s not an intentional effort to translate materials into different languages. Flyers, pamphlets, and newsletters should all be produced with different local populations in mind. San Juan Unified, for example, recognizes six official languages as a

San Juan Unified hosts workshops to share information about emergency supports available to help immigrant and refugee familes.

district and ensures that all their materials are available in those languages at minimum. During enrollment, they provide parents with bilingual picture dictionaries to help break through communication barriers. This is a valuable resource that families and teachers can all put to use right away. Admittedly, it can be difficult to find translation services for languages that are not very common in your area. But Missoula found a solution to this problem simply by turning to their community. The district hired several local Congolese refugees to translate district materials into languages their students and families could understand. Working with the local refugee community can also help to deepen ties and open new doors to collaboration. Before assuming your displaced families require a translator, though, it’s always best to ask. Parents who are unsure about their English skills may welcome the assistance, but those who are already proficient in English may not need that support. It’s important to remember that just because someone’s a refugee doesn’t always mean they don’t speak English. That isn’t to say there aren’t other communication barriers to be aware of. Nonverbal communication is oftentimes a very subtle aspect of engaging with another person, but it can make or break an interaction. Part of cultural responsiveness training is knowing what cues to watch for so you can put parents at ease. For example, things that seem normal to you—like shaking hands or holding eye contact—may not be as acceptable in another culture. Showing respect for your families’ nonverbal norms will go a long way toward making them feel at ease and strengthening their trust with your schools.

Supporting District Families For many displaced parents, making the honor roll takes a backseat to more immediate concerns for their children. This is where the necessary work of breaking down barriers and building real relationships with these families comes in. As we’ve seen over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools play a very important role in helping families in need. For starters, many refugees come to the U.S. in need of assistance finding affordable housing and employment. These can be tough subjects to navigate even without a language barrier. However, many communities have plenty of resources available to help displaced families. Schools are perfectly positioned to act as a bridge between nonprofit

organizations and district families who may not know these supports exist. “Nonprofits in general do not focus on advertising,” Serban tells us. Understandably, these organizations tend to invest their money in the supports they provide. At Cajon Valley, Serban’s department works to build relationships with refugee resettlement agencies and local health groups so they can connect these groups to families in need. This effort has culminated in resource fairs that bring local support organizations to campus. In San Juan Unified, district staff bring the community directly to families, holding events in neighborhoods with high populations of displaced students. However these partnerships work in your community, schools have a role to play in establishing those connections. Sometimes the work of bridge building takes place within the district itself. As part of their enrollment process, San Juan Unified pairs each refugee family with a district employee who speaks their native language. This employee helps with questions not just about school, but about resources available in the community as well. Cajon Valley takes this a step further and employs 16 Family and Community Liaisons who work to facilitate relationships between school staff and their students’ families. The positions were created when the district recognized the need to better interface with their growing Iraqi and Syrian communities. Combining state grants and Title I funding, Cajon Valley hired these liaisons from within the district community. For example, one liaison was a district parent who had previously worked in Cajon Valley as a student aide. The work of these trusted liaisons took on even greater importance this summer when some of the district’s Afghan families turned to them for help in a time of crisis. When several students didn’t show up for the first day of school, the district checked on each family and discovered that these students were trapped in Afghanistan during the U.S. military’s withdrawal and the Taliban’s takeover. Cajon Valley then sprang into action, helping many of these students and their families secure safe passage back to the U.S. “Our families stranded in Afghanistan were nervous to talk to anybody else,” Serban says. “They didn’t know if they were talking to the Taliban or to an American support person—but they knew their school liaison.” That relationship is what got these families back to Cajon Valley safely. ”The only reason FALL 2021

they got out was because they had connections,” he says. “We were able to tell the Marine on the other side of the airport fence to let these people go through, and we got them an escort through thousands of people to the other side.” This heroic work on the part of Cajon Valley’s two Afghan community liaisons came at a cost; the media attention endangered their own extended families in Afghanistan. “They put other families before themselves in order to get our school community’s families home,” Serban tells us. For other school districts with a high population of Afghan students, Serban has a word of advice: “Look at your attendance from Day One, and don’t feel guilty that you haven’t done this yet. Just be aware that there might be a family or two still in Afghanistan who could use your help.” Aside from district initiatives, community support is a huge factor in successfully welcoming displaced students. “We’re just one cog in the wheel,” Watson says. “We’re an important piece, but these families need a ton of support.” It starts with neighbors supporting one another. Watson has seen it in Missoula, where a refugee family recently received a brand new home constructed for them by local Habitat for Humanity volunteers. In San Juan Unified, local doctors provided displaced students with last-minute sports physicals to keep their school’s soccer program from folding. “Our community is very accepting of these families because people want to help,” Watson tells us. “They want to make them feel welcome. They want to provide resources.”

A Better World For All Students All too often, Shamsuddin says, it can be easy to fall into a deficit narrative when thinking about displaced students: focusing on what they demand of the district rather than how they enrich the school community. “We really should be focusing on the positive aspects of what these students bring into the classroom, onto campus, and into the district,” she says. “They are resilient. They’ve been through something so traumatic, and yet, they are completely rebuilding their lives here—and they’re doing a great job.” In her Supporting Afghan Newcomer Students training, Shamsuddin includes a slide with pictures of Albert Einstein and Freddie Mercury—both refugees. She does this to make a point: “Let’s bring it back to what these individuals have

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Photo courtesy of Richard Koeberlein

Cajon Valley Superintendent Dr. David Miyashiro welcomes a family back to the district after their return from Afghanistan. done in society and look at it as something we’re gaining as a community,” she says. Best practices for supporting displaced students translate to best practices for all students. Whatever your district’s population, any student and family will benefit from a stronger network of support. With a little special attention and care, your school community can be one where every student, no matter their background, feels truly at home.

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