ALTON, Ill. — We join millions of schoolchildren and their communities to express our appreciation for a group of people who are at once routine and extraordinary, at once big-picture and small-world, and at once strong and gentle: principals in our schools.
Confluence of the Mississippi (front) and Missouri (flowing from the back) rivers at Hartford, Ill.
Read Gov Pat Quinn’s proclamation here.
Here’s an email sent to principals in Illinois from the Illinois Principals Association, which represents more than 4,000 education leaders in the state:
Thank you for constantly putting off your work to meet the needs of kids, parents, teachers, your superintendent and your community.
Thank you for going to work very early or leaving very late to get your work done … and to your families who give up too many nights and weekends with you as you work to positively impact the lives of many.
Thank you for eating while standing up… assuming that you get to eat at all.
Thank you for working with the parent who is overzealous and the parent who is absent.
Thank you for attending every school and community event imaginable.
Thank you for your courageous persistence regardless of what the media or some big fat law created by people who haven’t stepped into a classroom since they were 18, haven’t seen the lack of resources you have, don’t have the guts to do anything about it, and don’t have a true understanding of the challenges your students really face has to say about the job you do.
Thank you for spending your own money on supplies and materials when your school doesn’t have enough.
Thank you for bringing shoes, gloves, coats, and supplies for kids whose families just can’t afford them.
Thank you providing the safest place some kids will ever know.
Thank you for being a parent, counselor, and friend to children who have none.
Thank you for being willing to make and stand behind tough decisions.
Thank you to Elementary Leaders for your bulletin boards, bright hallways and colorful rooms that spur on kids’ creativity.
Thank you to Middle School Leaders for being there for one of life’s greatest transitions.
Thank you to High School Leaders for persistently working with the attitude of teenagers. Molded properly, that attitude will make them special.
Thank you for being able to walk on water. 🙂
Thank you for molding, shaping, and weaving the very fabric of our society by the work you do with children every day. Our way of life and future depends on you.
Thank you for being a provider of hope. Hope for those who thirst for it. Hope that uplifts. Hope that encourages. Hope that helps the hopeless make it for just one more day.
There is little doubt that you have some of the hardest jobs anywhere. But always remember, it is the hard that makes the job great, worthwhile, and meaningful. If it were easy, anyone could do it. Heed these words from Teddy Roosevelt. “No one who lived a life of ease was ever worth remembering.”
Here’s to you and leadership worth remembering!
I’m sure all of the above gratitude is well deserved, but I observed firsthand the first two acknowledgements Wednesday when I interviewed Assistant Principal Michael Bellm at Alton High School. The school is piloting a new teacher evaluation system, which will go into place next year. School leaders in Alton are learning a great deal, especially about streamlining the evaluation process, during the pilot year.
“There’s no way a teacher can stand in front of students and not know what they’re talking about,” Mr Bellm said. “Kids would know right away.”
Evaluating teacher quality is necessary, of course, in order to ensure teachers are connecting with students, as is an effective and efficient hiring process. Although evaluations “come down to going formally into a classroom a few times and then that becoming a write-up, you hope that you’re seeing teachers and working with them each and every day in their (professional learning communities),” he said.
Doing the observations and evaluations “is a big part of our job, but it’s the most important part to make sure that the instruction is going well. … Anything else that you have to take home and work on over a weekend is just what you have to do, because when you have 2,000 students—2,000 14- to 19-year-olds under the roof—then some other things are going to come up. But this has to take priority: we have to keep our eye on the instruction and make sure it’s the best it can be.”
We extend our sincere thanks to Alton High School and to Ms Annice Brave, an English teacher there and Illinois’s 2011 Teacher of the Year, for their kind hospitality in allowing us to develop this story.
