Within School Walls

By Barbara Ries Wager

In the last quarter of the twentieth century an America which envisioned itself as the quintessential leader of the world was forced to recognize that the scholastic performance of American students was anything but laudable. Quick to identify public education as the culprit there followed a mass outcry for school reform.

Rochester, N.Y. responded with a ground-breaking teachers contract which included a 40% raise over four years and unprecedented opportunities for instructional decision-making. In the ensuing years while attempts to create break the mold
schools here and elsewhere floundered, James P.B. Duffy No. 12 in Rochester not only flourished but became a National Blue Ribbon school. Its principal reflects upon the practices and people which brought it to national attention. Told with the intimacy of a fireside chat, this is Barbara Wagers story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 26, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450012638

Barbara Ries Wager

After moving to western N.Y. from her native New York City Barbara Wager spent 30 years in various teaching and administrative positions in the Rochester School system. In l985, upon the recommendation of the school’s staff, she became the principal of School No. 12. In 1995, Barbara Wager retired from the Rochester System and became headmaster of the Boston Renaissance Charter School for the newly emerging Edison Project while at the same time pioneering the first tier of Massachusetts’ charter schools. Now retired in Rochester, Barbara describes her life as blissfully uneventful as she engages in many pastimes not least of which are snow-shoveling and gardening.

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Copyright © 2010 by Barbara Ries Wager.

Library of Congress Control Number:           2009913417

ISBN:                 Hardcover                           978-1-4500-1262-1

                           Softcover                             978-1-4500-1261-4

                           Ebook                                 978-1-4500-1263-8

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Introduction

Chapters

1    What do we Bring to it?

2    First Impressions

3    The Minutiae of the Profession

4    Finding Your Voice

5    Fannie

6    Bringing the Kids on Board

7    Ask his Best Friends: Philip

8    Sharing Leadership

9    Truth is Stranger: Sara

10   Plotting Your Professional Growth

11   The Principal as Coach

12   Learning from kindergarten parents

13   Tenure: Annie

14   Moving into Unexplored Territory

15   Pamela

16   Christmas Dinner

17   The Price of Safety

18   José

19   Playing by the Rules

20   Kathryn: A parent to die for

21   Mary

22   A Visitor of Note

23   Let’em All Come

24   Janet

25   Hurricane at the Helm

26   Sometimes You Have to Say No

27   The Problem that Could not be Solved

28   Professional Development:

Taking Responsibility for One’s Own Growth

29   Monitoring the Pulse

30   Felix—No Pillow for his Head

31   Basic Organization: Tallulah

32   Using All of the Feedback.

33   Mitch

34   Ambassadors

35   Diane

36   Special Subject Stars: Carolyn and Paul

37   Staying in Touch

38   Lena and Gretchen

39   Interviewing as Opportunity

40   The Generosity of Parents

41   Walking Through Mine Fields

42   Preparing for the Inconceivable

43   Ester

44   Lily

45   Covering All of the Bases

46   Coping with the Tragedy of Abuse

47   Paulie

48   More Stars: Music-Ed and Mary Lou

Art-June, Mary Jean and Sue

49   Being Part of the Process

50   Evelyn

51   The Book Room

52   Henry

53   Being There

54   Sally

55   Conclusion

Epilog: A Vision

DEDICATION

To the staff of School 12 who made all things possible and to

Pat Hrankowski, friend and colleague for more than forty years,

who served as both cheerleader and advisor throughout this project.

Introduction

i

I would hate to be confronted with what I wrote when as all would-be teachers and administrators, I was required to pen my philosophy of education. It was probably a questionable exercise at best, for how developed can one’s philosophy be before spending a single day as a practitioner?

Because my field has always been more practice than theory, I view a statement of philosophy as the same old rhetoric that everyone expects to read. I find the exercise both vapid and sleep inducing. But if not a philosophical construct, then what informs the principal’s day? On what basis does he make choices? Today with the luxury of time and years of afterthought I realize that there were always guiding principles. Even in 1965, as a first year teacher flying pretty much by the seat of my pants, there were certain constants within which I operated: creating an attractive and functional classroom, taking on building-wide responsibilities, collaborating with others to provide the best possible instruction, providing incentives and positive feedback to students, analyzing student and teacher performance, and being sensitive to the individual differences among people.

When recently I made a list of the central tenets of my principalship I realized that although the ideas were expressed differently, very little had changed since 1965, constants indeed. Such guiding principles emanate from our genetics, our experiences and our value systems. They form the essence of who we are. They affect the way in which we interpret the past, act in the moment and our ability to contemplate the future and ask, What if?

In 1985, I moved from vice principal to principal of a large and complex elementary school in Rochester, New York. School 12 had made significant strides in improving instruction in recent years, but our academic problems continued to embody the universal list of calamities Americans read about in the press. Performance in reading, written composition and math were mediocre at best. Students were devastated by even the most minimal challenges in science. As for social studies, few could identify the city or state in which they lived, none could name any but the current President, nor could they explain the significance of any of our national holidays. Reference skills were nonexistent; students were unable to differentiate among a dictionary, encyclopedia or an atlas. A high percentage of students were repeating grades or had to be passed on despite their ineptitude because by state regulation they were too old to repeat.

Five years later School 12 was awarded recognition of excellence by the state, and within the same year became the only Rochester city school to be named a national Blue Ribbon School. We were presented with a special banner to be flown as a pronouncement to the community that School 12 had achieved noteworthy status. But this book is more about striving than winning. Herein I describe James P.B. Duffy School # 12 in its prime, and my reflections 17 years later on our journey.

I paint this portrait of a principalship with a broad brush. It has neither the artistry nor the discipline to make a case. In schools, as in life, A and B do not necessarily add up to C. What this book is NOT, is as notable as what it is. It is not an exposé. It is not a manual for becoming a Blue Ribbon School. It is not the story of one principal, but of all principals through the eyes of one. It is about strengths, deficiencies, limitations and liabilities. It is about the integrity of a great many people who put themselves second, third, or last. It is about successes, disappointments, dropped stitches and failures. It is about the life of a principal, and it is about what goes on within school walls.

I am writing this book because first, I believe some small kernel of my experience might be worth another principal’s reflection, second because I want to show the work of the principal more fully so that school staffs, parents and communities will be encouraged to get fully engaged in the development of their schools, and lastly because there is nothing more rewarding than describing so honestly and closely the nature and character of your own group that you can all have a warm and hearty laugh.

There is little time for musing in the principal’s day, and one is continuously called to action of one kind or another. But we cannot do things in a particular way simply because that is the way it has always been done. Einstein has advised us that it is a form of insanity to repeat the same acts over and over and expect that they will achieve different results.

A husband who was watching his wife prepare dinner asked why she cut the end off the roast. She said that her mother had always done it that way. Grandma was asked why, and she said, I guess I did that if the roast was too big for the pan. In the principal’s work, self examination is critical. The questions that principals might ask themselves are, Do I know why I am operating in this way? And, Do I believe this will make a difference?

This book is also for school staffs. I would like them to understand and appreciate the demands of the principalship. What teachers see may be a person at the top of Mt. Everest waving a flag. But that climb took daring, scrambling, balancing and pain. And unlike the mountain climber, the principal has to climb it again tomorrow. Like your own jobs, it is harder than it looks. My message is that a successful educational environment requires everyone to take responsibility and sometimes leadership.

Not least of all, I am writing for parents and members of the community. A New York State superintendent’s district won the national prize for being a Blue Ribbon District. What she did was to rally every person, church, agency and business in town around the needs of the schools. People in nursing homes knitted hats, mittens and ran a gift shop the profits of which went to the school. The Kiwanis, Elks, Rotary and Masons managed sports events, recreation programs and supported sick and handicapped children. Businesses offered internships and summer jobs to the neediest students. Parents tutored and volunteered in the library, the cafeteria and as bus matrons. A local restaurant provided a free dinner twice a month for the family of an honor student. The grocery store provided cookies for PTA meetings. The kids were involved in community service as well, in order to pay back to the community for what they were receiving. If I had to do it again, I would want to spend my professional life in a situation such as this. I issue it as a challenge to all of us today. Our schools will only be exceptional if we are willing to make this kind of united effort.

What if even the superintendent of a large urban district had the vision to coalesce all of the public and private resources within every school neighborhood around each of its schools? What if every parent was asked to contribute something in the way of time and effort? The operational question central to this book is, What if?

ii

Despite the wealth of experiences one has in and outside of a school system, one cannot possibly be fully prepared for the demands, the fragmentation, the complexity, the scope, the plethora of personnel issues, and the sturm and drang involved in being the principal of a large urban school. Multiply that by ten if the principal is striving to make the school the best it can be.

I have organized this book in an unconventional way. One of two major strands deals with the principal’s creation of what I see as systems, call them what you will, operations, procedures and processes that make the school tick. The second is a compilation of stories about people. They are snapshots of life you would find in any milieu, incidents involving the experiences and behaviors of staff, parents and kids. These accounts do not necessarily go anywhere; they are not illustrative of any point, and in most cases there is no higher understanding to be extracted from them. They are simply part of the often mind-boggling range of perceptions and incidents that occur in any work environment. If I did not relate them, I would not be telling you the whole truth about what goes on within school walls. Perhaps these accounts alone are sufficient reasons for reading.

I chose to structure the book as I have, with stories about people sandwiched between chapters describing systems in an effort to illustrate the inane discontinuity of it all. The principal faces constant fragmentation, ironically, in the middle of efforts to create order. This account is as much about people as it is about the work. It could only be more realistic if I had dropped episodes of people stories within and across the chapters describing systems. To do so would have rendered it incomprehensible.

Throughout this book run a number of common threads. First is the need for the principal to be available, to listen to virtually everyone and be seriously concerned with his or her issues: the parent who has a gripe with a teacher, the custodian who does not have enough help, the bus driver who cannot keep the kids in their seats, the secretary who thinks there are too many programs, the teacher who feels an evaluation rating was too low, and the kids who may not be getting the nurturing they need in school or at home. Everyone needs to have the ear of the principal and know with some certainty that his issues and concerns will be acted upon.

Second is that everyone is responsible for making the school the best it can possibly be. Everyone needs to feel that he is a player, part of the team. Every opinion counts in the quest of making the school better. This also means that everyone has to be apprised of what is going on through every form of communication from the bulletin board to a full range of meetings, staff bulletins, newsletters, notices, agendas and memos. If everyone is responsible then everyone has to have full awareness of every program, event, problem and expectation. People cannot be left to wonder about the whys of a policy or procedure. They need to have information if there is any chance of their getting their shoulders behind the wheel.

Third is the need to be open and reasonably fearless. Schools are public places. Nothing is ever going to be perfect, and the nitpickers will bring you down once in a while, but let’em all come: the reporters, the volunteers, the auditors, the realtors, the guest speakers, the parents and grandparents, teachers from other schools, visitors from other districts and other countries, preachers, politicians, and every organization that expresses an interest in the school and wants to observe or help. We welcomed everyone and encouraged interviews with the most eloquent members of the staff.

Fourth is the need to go for it, every grant, every honor that a teacher might win, every program that a community agency might support, every opportunity that might result in supplementary funding that the district or state is unable to provide. These opportunities are delineated in the educational journals and newspapers that come to schools. They represent unexpected opportunities to garner help. The constraint is time and the sometimes superhuman effort that it takes for administrators, teachers and parents to complete the paperwork, provide the required documentation and contrive a plan that will meet the specifications of the grant or the award. It is grueling work, but the results are exponential. It is also true that the more you win, and the more success that you show, the more grantees are apt to support continuing efforts. I am told that one of my principal colleagues said, We do the same things as School 12, but the difference is they go for it. I say, if you do not go for it, you are missing an enormous opportunity to provide the support that staff and students need, not to mention the spring it puts in everyone’s step when he reads something positive about his school in the local paper.

Fifth are certain subtleties many of which come under the heading of egalitarianism. No one who worked at School 12 was exclusively in the principal’s service. That meant not buzzing a secretary to come to me but getting off my derriére and going to her. The same applied to classroom teachers. Unless privacy or an extended conversation was necessary, I mounted those two flights of stairs to the classroom. No one had special parking privileges. Everyone had a 30 minute lunch. Every student who wanted to attend the school had the same opportunity regardless of whether daddy was a bigwig or there was no daddy in the home. Every teacher who applied for a job had the same interview and the same opportunity as indicated by the contract.

Since teachers were responsible adults, they were encouraged to solve some of their own problems. If someone needed to leave early, I did not need to be asked, just told, that the teacher had arranged for the class to be covered. If teachers were dissatisfied with the thirty minute lunch periods, they could take turns ushering two or more classes to lunch. If taking a sick day, teachers arranged for their own substitutes, and because they got to know them and vice versa, students seldom had a lost day because of an inadequate sub. It was also deemed that other teachers in the cluster should welcome the substitute, give a hand in getting started, keep an ear out for trouble, and eat with the sub at lunch. We heard that in some other big city schools, subs were often unavailable because they had such unpleasant experiences. Teachers had to split up the extra class among themselves. We needed those subs and treated them like special guests. The most treasured subs in the city loved to come to the school, and everyone benefitted.

When I was on the Strong Hospital Board, I asked a Xerox vice president how he spent the majority of his time. I fill in the gaps, he said. I am sure that this was a modest oversimplification of his role, but I thought a lot about his response. Translated to the school environment this meant that no job could be too menial if somebody needed help. The custodian could not get the chairs set up for an assembly within the expected time? Grab some chairs. The bus driver needed to use the bathroom? Board the kids. A teacher’s car was stuck in the snow at dismissal? Get behind that car and push!

Sixth is the need for what I can only call appearances. The way it looks is important, and is the easiest part of the quotient. Making the environment look good often precedes its actually being good. When I was a reading teacher in my first school, the principal, Millie, and I were working toward the goal of creating open classrooms in a very old building with narrow halls and very enclosed classrooms. She bought extra tables, chairs and carrels, and we set them up in the hallways. Teachers were encouraged to use them and create their own limits for the behavior of kids outside of their visual supervision. At first we recognized that we were just decorating, but after a piece of time the principal and I walked the hallways and reveled in the fact that the spaces had moved away from merely decoration. They were being used well. Students were enjoying a little freedom and were involved in individual and small group activities that would have been difficult to manage in the classroom.

I am probably more consumed with appearances than a lot of people. I took the appearance of School 12 personally. There were standards for organization and embellishment, but I wanted to exceed those standards. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where my father was a policeman. The station houses were always old, colorless and poorly maintained. He spoke many times of how demoralizing it was to work in those environments, and how his self esteemed dropped the moment he stepped over the threshold. We cannot afford to let this happen to school staffs or students.

When once I was walking down the hall behind a grandmother visiting from Puerto Rico I heard her say to the little girl holding her hand, I am so proud. I did not know you went to such a beautiful school! It made my heart sing, and again, it was the easy part.

Last year a young teacher told me how embarrassed the staff in her school was when the female principal appeared for the graduation ceremony in jeans. Of course it was embarrassing, because it was so disrespectful. It said to everyone that this event was no more important than a day cleaning up her yard. And consider that the most financially challenged parents spend a fortune on their child’s graduation clothes, invite relatives, and throw a party. Graduation from elementary school may be a child’s only graduation ever and should be treated as a major rite of passage. Being professionally attired and making the environment attractive is the least we can do.

There was an occasion when spring had sprung and everyone was involved with lightening spirits. I bought a dozen small pots of primroses, crocuses, daffodils and hyacinths, made labels, and arranged them on a long table that kids would pass on their way to lunch. I envisioned that teachers would stop and read the names of the flowers to their classes. One of the special education teachers passed, huffed, and said, Flowers on the first floor, blood on the third floor. It was clear that she did not share my vision of what might make a difference.

Last is the need for humor. When does this not work? We all deserve a giggle when we can get one in order to achieve some balance between the awful seriousness of the work and the fact that there is a lot that is downright funny. If something hilarious happened, it needed to be told, especially when the joke was on the principal. The weekly bulletin became that voice for me. I used it as a diary of our week, and there was so much laughter as teachers gathered after school on Friday to read it that the secretaries had to shoo them out of the office and into the