Official Publication of the National Educator Program

- Special Series -

“In the Trenches”Interviews with the original founders of career academies

Publication dates: ! April 2009 - September 2010Published by: ! ! NEP Books

Series SynopsisThis landmark series was created in honor of the 40th anniversary of career academies. It explores the realities of creating the longest running school improvement initiative in the United States. The following pages have partial interviews with:

Al Glassman First career academy principal and 2009 Charles W. Bowser Award Recipient

Lee EverettCEO of the Philadelphia Electric Company

John ThompsonFirst career academy lead teacher and 2010 Charles W. Bowser Award recipient

Dr. Joseph PhillipsFirst career academy English teacher

Innovation

Al GlassmanFirst Academy Principal (1969)Charles W. Bowser Award Recipient (2009)Edison High School, Philadelphia

Published in Innovation Magazine, 2nd edition

“We wanted to give this academy something that would distinguish it in the minds of the youngsters as something different and very special that they could belong to and be part of.”

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! - Al Glassman

Mileposts in Career

Academy History

Follow the development of career academies in each issue of Innovation Magazine, as we celebrate 40 YEARS OF CAREER ACADEMIES!

Academy of Applied Electrical EngineeringThis one started them all. Housed at Edison High School starting in 1969, it was the brainchild of Philadelphia’s Deputy Mayor Charles Bowser. It was brought to successful fruition by people like Al Glassman (principal), John Thompson (teacher), Lee Everett (PECO), Henk Koning (PECO), and Fred Heldring (Philadelphia National Bank).

Edison High School’s academy began with twenty-five sophomores. Twenty-four of them returned for their junior year!

Philadelphia schools began adding one at a time in different schools in the following years. Eventually Lincoln High School in Philadelphia became the first school to implement an all-academy model, where every student enrolled in the high school participates in a career academy.

Cradle of Career Academies

A new book by Mark A. Thompson containing a comprehensive account of one of the most compelling stories in education of the twentieth century: the origin and development of career academies in Philadelphia! See how they did it, and what lessons there are for educator leaders today.

Due out in the Spring of 2009 for the 40th birthday celebration of career academies. Pick up your copy at the NEP’s 7th annual SLC Success Conference in Houston!

The First Career AcademyEdison High SchoolPhiladelphia, PA1969

It was the fall of 1969 when the culmination of a year of intense, community-wide planning came to fruition. A creative spark from the mind of Charles Bowser, the Deputy Mayor of the city of Philadelphia, ignited a fire that has lasted four decades and engulfed every state in America. Career academies are thriving in the 21st century here in the United States and starting to take root across the Atlantic in the United Kingdom.

In an age where educational reforms

come and go every two to five years, one that lasts forty is astonishing. Career academies are the longes t runn ing educational reform initiative in America. As the National Educator Program (NEP) and the Philadelphia Academies, Inc (PAI) prepare to celebrate the 40th birthday of career academies this spring in Houston, the principal of the first career academy at Edison High School, Mr. Al Glassman addressed employees of PAI and NEP in Philadelphia last month at the main office of the Philadelphia Electrical Company (PECO) - a long-s tanding suppor ter of career academies. Here are excerpts of what he had to say:

“Before I started working with Charles Bowser, I was sent back to Edison High School as principal. I knew I was going back in 1968, I knew the neighborhood, and I

knew that we had to do something new and different and give these kids a better break. So when Charles Bowser came up with this idea, I said, ‘That’s what I want.’

“And he delivered it! ... We instituted the Electrical Academy. We identified 25 of the most at-risk students in the school we could. These were kids we felt if circumstances didn’t change would surely not be there for the eleventh grade...and we invited them to be part of the Electrical Academy.

“We wanted to give this academy something that would distinguish it in the minds of the youngsters as something different and very special that they could belong to and be part of. Half the day they would be in an electrical shop setting, and the other half of the day they would take their academic courses.

“We scheduled them to keep them together in their English classes and math classes. So in addition to stringent but supportive academic coursework, they were in a work setting that reflected the state-of-the-art best practices of that industry.

“To help us with that, PECO released one of their senior engineers to work with the school full time as this concept was unfolding in the school. His name was Henk Koning and he was a real gift to us. It would have been hard, if not impossible to pull this off without him.

“Each kid was given a complete tool kit for the trade worth about $200 at the time. And they were given classy varsity jackets ...”

Continued on p. 8

Al Glassman: Principal of first career academyPhoto by NEP

INNOVATION FALL 2008

7

The First Career Academy, continued from p. 7

“...with the academy name and logo emblazoned on the back.

“As we approached June, the main concern of the industry coalition and the school people was how we would insure these twenty-five youngsters would return to the school in September. The prospects were very, very grim at that time.

They decided maybe the best way would be to hire them for the summer. So they came to me and said, ‘We’d like to create an

electrical trades workplace in your building for the summer. We’ll hire the academy students to work in the program and we will provide contracts for them.’

Now I was kind of new and it never occurred to me whose permission I might have to get. I later became a high level bureaucrat in the system and I’d take umbrage with people who would do things without asking first (laughs), but I gave them a vacant shop on the third floor. Henk Koning came in and completely transformed the building pouring cement, ripping out walls and wiring, putting air conditioners in the windows. In a few days they completely

renovated this classroom without anybody from downtown knowing what it looked like (laughs) and they developed a factory in this classroom. I was scared at the time, but I’m glad I did it.”

Hear more from Al Glassman himself as part of The Human Timeline at the NEP’s 7th Annual SLC Success Conference in Houston, April 22-25, 2009.

You can also read more in the book, The Cradle of Career Academies due out in Spring 2009.

INNOVATION FALL 2008

8

Once Upon a Time . . .-Article submitted by the Philadelphia Academies, Inc.

The Philadelphia Academies, Inc. (PAI) is

celebrating it’s 40th Birthday and to kick off

the celebration they had a staff “Birthday

Rally.” The “Rally,” part kick-off celebration

and part staff development, was held at the

Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO) - one of

the first major corporate sponsors for career

academies. The theme was “Story Telling.”

C o n n i e M a j k a , D i r e c t o r o f

Communications for PAI said, “All of us have

stories to tell about our work. But, we need to

make sure that those stories are recorded and

can be told. They become not just part of our

history, but part of our heritage.” The

Philadelphia Academies, Inc. is making sure

that the staff know their history and everyone

can tell the story from their own perspective.

There were two invited guest speakers.

Albert Glassman was the principal at the

school to host the very first career academy in

1969. Mr. Glassman told in his own words

what it was like for him as the first academies

took shape. Mark A. Thompson, of the

National Educator Program, explained in very

personal terms how career academies are

perceived nationwide. “I first learned about

career academies as a second year teacher in

Florida,” Thompson said. “Now most of my

life is devoted to them. I’ve seen how they’ve

changed the lives of students and teachers

from here to the Pacific and everywhere in

between, but they are all ripples from your

pond.”

Educators and bus iness par tners

everywhere should join in the celebration. We

are a part of one of the most successful

education initiatives ever created. Let’s

celebrate!

L-R: Connie Majka, Lisa Nutter (PAI President), Al Glassman, Stephanie Smith, Nancy Campbell

Connie Majka explains the importance of story telling as a historical record.

The Philadelphia Academies staff at PECO.

Lee EverettCEO - Philadelphia Electric Company (1969)

Published in Innovation Magazine, 3rd edition

“It was absolutely a wonderful, wonderful experience for me and for the company. But the most wonderful thing was the experience for the kids.”

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! - Lee Everett

Mileposts in Career

Academy History

Follow the development of career academies in each issue of Innovation Magazine, as we celebrate 40 YEARS OF CAREER ACADEMIES!

The Philadelphia Electric CompanyPECO was one of several early supporters of Charles Bowser’s “little project.” A big sponsor of the Electrical Academy at Thomas Edison High School, Lee Everett and Hank Koening became fixtures in the growth and development of other academies in Philadelphia.

Career Academies Spread in the CityAs the academies began replicating, their focus areas included Health, Business and Automotive career fields. Temple University became involved with some of these, along with a “board” of corporations that banded together to support the youth of Philadelphia.

Connie ClaytonSoon, a new superintendent was elected by the name of Connie Clayton. Ms. Clayton saw the value of career academies and made them a centerpiece of her policy on secondary education.

The Growth of Career AcademiesPhiladelphia, PA1970s and 1980s

It was the fall of 1969 when the culmination of a year of intense, community-wide planning came to fruition. A creative spark from the mind of Charles Bowser, the Deputy Mayor of the city of Philadelphia, ignited a fire that has lasted four decades and engulfed every state in America. Career academies are thriving in the 21st century here in the United States and starting to take root across the Atlantic in the United Kingdom.

In our ongoing series, NEP talks with the founders of this initiative that became a fundamental shift in the way secondary education is delivered in America. In the last edition of Innovation Magazine, Al Glassman discussed the early days of the first academy at Edison High School in Philadelphia, focusing on 1969-70.

One of the major supporters of the career academy initiative was a gentleman named Lee Everett. Mr. Everett was CEO of the Philadelphia Electric Company. To build on what Al Glassman said in our last issue, here are excerpts of what Lee Everett had to say about how career academies built momen tum and sp read t h roughou t Philadelphia in the 1970s and 1980s:

! “The biggest boost we had was long about the beginning of the third or fourth academy. We got a new

superintendent of schools, Connie Clayton. Dr. Constance Clayton. She was a wonderful, wonderful lady. An African-American lady. And the first thing she did was call me up and say, “I want to meet with your board.” I said, “That’s great, Connie.” So, she met with us the day she was elected superintendent, she said, “I want you to know you are my flagship. You are my number one program and what ever we can do for you in the school district we will do it.” We didn’t need any money. We had money coming in from our supporters in the business community; people who were active with our academy. I got the business Academy started by talking with Fred Heldring - another Dutch ex-national, who was execut ive v ice pres ident of t he Philadelphia National Bank, of which I was the director. And he decided this would be a good thing for them to do, so the bank became a sponsor of the Business Academy. I think that was a West Philadelphia High School, one of those high schools in West Philadelphia." So, we got that when rolling fairly easily because they had enough to put it together and we had a lot of businesses that did banking and knew each other as bankers and we involved as much of the Chamber of Commerce as we could. We had all kinds of

Continued on p. 15

14 NEP

INNOVATION SPRING 2009

40Growth of Academies, continued from p. 14

businesses involved. We wanted to get a Healthcare Academy and we found that to do this we would have to put kids in hospitals. So they became orderlies and things that they could do until they got an education. Well, some of the hospitals were unionized and some weren’t. We had a problem.! I talked to the head of the osteopathic hospital connected with the medical school. He agreed to head up the Healthcare Academy but we had to work through this business of getting both the non-un ion ized hosp i t a l s and t he unionized hospitals working together without the unionized hospitals using it as a bridge to unionize the non-unionized hospitals. So, the fellow who headed up the unions (and I think still does), was a man named Henry Nicholas. As far as I know he’s still there running the Union. At least that’s what I was told. But anyway, Henk and I had a least a half a dozen breakfasts with Henry and his staff, because he wanted to know all about it before he got the union involved in it. And we described it, and they sent people up and looked at the Electrical Academy and the Automotive A c a d e m y a n d t h e B u s i n e s s Academy. ! He said, “Look, there’s one thing I do not want. I don’t want to have these kids in high school get trained for the medical profession so that they have a dead-end job.” I said, “Henry! That’s the last thing we want.” And I showed him how this worked in the Electrical Academy with kids going around to electrical courses outside of high school and finally he said, “Okay, on that basis

we’ll do it.” So, he took it over. That was at Martin Luther King High School. That was probably the academy that outshined all the rest. They took in the first class with 100% attendance. No dropouts. When that class graduated, every one of them went on to a higher education of some sort to get more training. Henry was beaming. It was just exactly what he had hoped. It was exactly what that program should’ve done.! I had a director named Bill Fishman who was chairman of the board of ARA services, a big catering company and school bus operator. I wanted Bill’s ARA ser v ices to sponsor t he f i r s t Hospitality Academy. You know, hotels, restaurants, that kind of thing. It took us almost 3 years to talk them into doing it, but they finally were involved in it and we even got the unions whose members ran the hotel dining rooms, the hotel employees union, to co-sponsor convince some of the ones who hired these unionized people that it would be a good thing for them to do. So, we got that up and running and I understand it’s doing very well. Hospitality is a business that has grown steadily. ! It was absolutely a wonderful, wonderful experience for me and for the company. But the most wonderful thing was the experience for the kids. I go to these luncheons that each academy held for their year’s end and they wanted to do something for their teachers. So they s o m e h o w s p o n s o r e d t h e s e luncheons. I didn’t ask them where they got the money, I was just absolutely delighted that the kids ran

them. The adults didn’t run the l unc heons , t he k id s ran t he luncheons. Boy, wasn’t that great. We’d go there and they would be the master of ceremonies and I could tell that these kids were not only learning skills and how to work and hold a job, but they were developing leadership skills. That was the greatest thing of all.! And when we began to get academy graduates to come back and visit their academies as alumni and talk to the kids enrolled, you can see the kids bloom when they did that. It was wonderful. That was kind of the feedback that everybody needed to know that the program was succeeding on its own. Now I read the numbers and I can hardly believe them. Thousands enrolled in t h e a c a d e m i e s , d o z e n s o f academies, one at least may be more in every high school in Philadelphia, it’s unbelievable. ! I t ’ s sp i l l ed over in to t he suburban school system and, oblivious to me, was the national growth around the country. I heard that people had come in to look at our academies and I would meet with them when they would come in. We ha ve l un c h t oge t he r o r something when they came in, but I wouldn’t get the continuity of what was happening on their end. I get snippets, but really nothing that would tell me that the academies were alive and well somewhere else as I knew they were in Philadelphia. So that’s the early days.”" " "

! ! !

NEP 15

INNOVATION SPRING 2009

John ThompsonFirst Academy Lead Teacher (1969)Charles W. Bowser Award Recipient (2010)Edison High School, Philadelphia

Published in Innovation Magazine, 4th edition

“The family as a whole stayed together and supported each other.”

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! - John Thompson

Mileposts in Career

Academy History

Follow the development of career academies in each issue of Innovation Magazine, as we celebrate 40 YEARS OF CAREER ACADEMIES!

The Academy of Applied Electrical Engineering 1969 - The one that started them all. This one opened its doors to students in the fall of ’69 at Edison High School. The Philadelphia Electric Company and Bell Telephone were the main patrons of this academy.

The Automotive Academy1970 - This was the first replication of the career academy concept at another school. The Automotive Academy began at one high school in 1970 and moved to West Philadelphia High School in 1971.

The Business Academy1971 - The Business Academy opened in the fall of 1971 at University City High School. It created momentum for academy replication throughout Philadelphia schools because the concept had been worked out at Edison High School, many of the bugs related to replication were worked out at West Philadelphia High School, and University City showed that the career academy concept could be replicated and adapted to specific school sites at will.

In the Trenches of Career AcademiesPhiladelphia, PA1969 - 1972

It was the fall of 1969 when the culmination of a year of intense, community-wide planning came to fruition. A creative spark from the mind of Charles Bowser (Deputy Mayor of the city of Philadelphia) ignited a fire that has lasted four decades .

In our ongoing series, NEP talks with the founders of this initiative that became a fundamental shift in the way secondary education is delivered in America. In the last edition of Innovation Magazine, Lee Everett discussed the growth of the first academy as it spread into a systemic change model in Philadelphia Schools during the 1970s - 80s.

Now we go into the first academy classrooms where it would finally be determined if carer academies were as good an idea in practice as they were on paper. John Thompson was one of the classroom teachers who would make it or break it. Forty years later, here is what he told NEP about their resounding success, in his own words:

! Charlie Bowser, Lee Everett, “Duke” Yaple from Bell Telephone were the movers and shakers in the industry world that wanted to bring change within the schools. At the time there were a lot of disruptions within the city and it was felt that there were too many young people unemployed. My point

at that time was, and still is, that school is not a short-term deal. It has to be addressed as a workday, and that day is full so a young person is involved in their trade or career plan after school as well as during the school day. We had to figure out how to get our content practical enough to get a kid to want to be engaged, because the attendance was so low at the time. In fact, I was pulled in in the interest of low attendance. So first I said, we need to know what kind of product we are dealing with - the “product” being the student. How do we take this raw product and massage it to get where we want to go and aim it toward our objectives? The first move that we made was to measure their math and reading abilities." Now keep in mind at that time, and it has been for some time, that vocational education (which it was called then) was the dumping grounds. Any kid who was a disciplinary problem or special needs student, they shifted them over to the vocational programs.

The average testing data showed our students were falling around the fourth grade reading level. 10th-graders were reading at the fourth grade reading level.

With that, the team of teachers that I had would determine that we couldn’t go below the fourth grade reading level, because the industries were saying they had

Continued on p. 28

NEP 27

Mr. John Thompson - Teacher in the first career academy. Photo by NEP

INNOVATION WINTER 2010

40In the Trenches, continued from p. 27

to be able to read a newspaper. Typical industry reading material at the time was at that level, the sixth and seventh grade level. That meant we couldn’t exclude so many students, but we could work toward ability level. We put the cut off at the fourth or fifth grade reading level. The same way with the math.

Now, keep in mind this was taking place among vocational teachers. There were three of us at the time, all housed in one room, and working at this to get these kids realigned and get r id of the discipline problems.By the same token I was saying to the English department head and the Math department head, “You know, you’re working close with us in some respects and distant from us in other respects. Why don’t you join us? Why don’t we team up?” We deve loped some t h i ng ca l l ed “integrated instruction.” (Now we’re going back 40 years ago.) And finally the English department head who was Dr. David Phelps, and is still alive, (I can give you his number) came to my aid. We talked and we talked and he signed on. Along with him came William Tomasco for English, and Tom Winters. They were too young English teachers, William and Tom. The math teacher was Mr. Porter. He is still alive. In fact he’s just retiring.

So with that, we managed to pull together in about the third year, integration. It started working because we as teachers, we met, talked, communicated, and the materials were integrated. That is,

before talking about ohms law, we’re talking about algebra. Well, if you’re teaching algebra one, why not take some of these samples and use them in your classroom because these students are going to be in your class. Why are these students going to be in your class? Because we’ve got the agreement of the administration of the school to bundle this group of students and have them go through a group of teachers which became part of the Academy family. ! With that, we started developing lexicons of terms that the English teacher would have. We then got in a history teacher who started developing a lot of materials that were related. We didn’t talk about the war of 1812 unless we talked about industry, how was industry involved. You had the war of 1812 but what was going on in industry? Along the same lines, social sciences came into play where the teacher taught why it is that when you go to certain sections of Philadelphia that you run into a big wall and you get chased? Back in t hat t ime Philadelphia was very shaky. So all those things that came into play in a student’s life were brought into the classroom.As we got started, we saw that our attendance started going up and we maintain 95% attendance for a year. Why? Well, we’re all talking and the student new that i f I do something here and here about it here, here, and here. So it was part of the family. If you had a punishment coming to you, then you knew there was a central process and it’s going to go on, but you’re part of the family. We didn’t send you out elsewhere for discipline, the discipline took place within the family. And that worked because

the students start looking at each other and supporting each other so it brought together teamwork.

Keep in mind in the first portion of it, it was all boys and as we move forward things got better and tighter. Then there was the injection o f f ema le s and a t t he t ime everybody got upset about girls, there’s got to be problems, disputes, so forth and so on. But we got a group of young ladies and they were surprising and nontraditional. They wanted to get into this work and learn what it was all about. They proved that they even created or brought along some adhesive that pulled it together even tighter among the students. We had a tighter family.Well someone might ask how did you relate to the rest of the school? Did you segregate the kids from the rest of the school? The answer is “no.” We also main ta ined connections to the other things in the s c hoo l : s t uden t gover nmen t , whatever was going on. We did not isolate ourselves. We participated in that. But the family as a whole stayed together and supported each other.

! ! !

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Get frequent updates on career academies and small learning commun i t i e s w i t h NEP’ s f ree electronic newsletter. Send an email to msanchez@neponline.org and ask to be placed on the NEPnews e-mailing list today!

Dr. Joseph PhillipsFirst Academy English Teacher (1969)Edison High School, Philadelphia

Published in Innovation Magazine, 5th edition

“You canʼt do everything, but you can do something.”! ! !! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! - Dr. Joseph Phillips

Mileposts in Career

Academy History

40 YEARS OF CAREER ACADEMIES!

Spread of Academies Nationwide1981 - Teams from Stanford University in California, and educational groups in Michigan, visit Philadelphia to examine the career academy concept. California is the first to adopt the model, but far from the last.

Academy Support Organizations1980s and 90s - Several organizations are created to support the implement-ation and development of academies regionally and nationally.

Federal Funding2001 - The Bush Administration provides funding on an unprecedented scale for small learning communities, including career academies, through grants a wa rd e d by t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s Department of Education. This causes a significant increase in the number of ca ree r academ ie s and a sp i r i ng academies nationally. At the turn of the century, academies could be found in all fifty American states. Nine years later, the Obama Administration continues funding, showing bi-partisan support for the academy concept.

Global Impact2009 - NEP instructs educational leaders from seven nations on the 5 Keys for Successful Career Academies at the University of Edinburg in Scotland.

In the Trenches of Career AcademiesPhiladelphia, PA1969 - 1972

It was the fall of 1969 when the culmination of a year of intense, community-wide planning came to fruition. A creative spark from the mind of Charles W. Bowser ignited a fire that has lasted four decades .

In this series, “In the Trenches,” NEP talks with the founders of this initiative that became a fundamental shift in the way secondary education is delivered in America. We have been fortunate to speak first with Al Glassman and Lee Everett. In the last edition of Innovation Magazine, John Thompson discussed what it was like to be the first career academy Lead Teacher: creating academy curricula from nothing, and the perils of being a vocational teacher marshaling support from academic teachers. In this final installment of this series, we speak with one of the earliest supporters of the career academy concept from the academic side of the hallway. Dr. Joseph Phillips was the English Department Head at Edison High School. Forty years later, here is what he told NEP about their resounding success, in his own words:

I was the department head for English when this thing got started. The first year, it stumbled along, trying to put into place something that would be beneficial in the education of these poor kids for whom the conventional, or the established educational patterns were not successful. It was very

modest. Henk Koening had an idea that if you motivate the kids with tools in their hands, have them do things with their hands, that would be good and they would have a sense that they would want to be educated. So that was his vision.

Henk didn’t have the practicality of it, but we got together in a meeting to tackle the problem that was facing everybody: the kids were having an attendance problem. We couldn’t keep them in school. But, in the first year or so as we progressed, it was clear that the kids were not coming to school except on a selective basis. They were coming to the shop. They were coming to this stuff having to do with electronics. But they weren’t going to English or math and so on. Their attendance was generally not that different from the other kids. What this indicated was, they would come to school if the electronics teachers required it.

So, we thought this thing through. We couldn’t just say, “Forget about their schooling. Just let them go to the electrical shop.” The idea came to us, when we make a program in school, conventional high school programming has to connect as often and frequently as is operationally responsible with this career goal that the academy was setting up for the kids. Over the next couple of years, we worked on developing a curriculum that integrated schooling in a way that it could be the work of the Academy. It was an interesting problem of trying to define what it was we wanted to do. It was a blank slate as far as we were concerned.

So we came up with this: If you go into a shop, if you go into work, if you go into an electronics store . . .

Continued on p. 22

Dr. Joseph Phillips - English teacher in the first career academy. Photo by NEP

21 NEP

INNOVATION FALL 2010

40In the Trenches, continued from p. 21

. . . and talk with the boss, you have to communicate well. We taught in our academy how to communicate in this thing called English. And you have to be able to do a certain amount of math. If you don’t have it, there’s a real block against your education. If you want to be an electrician, you have to know Ohms’ law. It’s as simple as that. You have to know what that means.! What I would do is work with the math teacher and ask what he would do. My understanding is, a student can’t understand the text unless you can understand 70% of the words you’re going to encounter. You can get away with maybe a few words to get the gist of something, but to understand it you’ve got to have 70 t o 8 0 % o f t h e v o c a b u l a r y understood. The students won’t be able to understand it if the teachers don’t understand it. It was a hard lesson for uss to learn. You are cooperating in what ought to be somebody else’s job, but we are all in this together in a real practical sense. The kid had to come out of ninth grade, had to come with enough math knowledge -- whatever that was -- to encounter algebra. And it’s not that easy. " We were a school within a school. We had a program of study that included a regular English and math class, and later science. If a student was able to go beyond that, he could find a place in the larger school setting. We took advantage of the larger institution, things that we could get from the larger institution we utilized. We kept some kind of a close alliance there. We did not think to cocoon the kids, or isolate them.

! In our case at Edison, the principal, Al Glassman, was very good and believed in what we were doing. He was very good at interacting with the people who could make things happen. He was an “enabler”, which is a very good role for a principal. He was a very good enabler, and when you have somebody like that, you’re in good shape. He saw it as something he should suppor t , and not jus t something he should let happen.! Disciplining was positive. We didn’t count up the misdeeds. It was, “You can do better.” That would be how we would handle it all the time. It demonstrated to the kids we cared about them.

! The guy who would become the coordinator of the Academy, John Thompson, would have a lot to do with that: finding the right fix for a particular kid. He would deal with discipline a good bit, and he also dealt with outside issues. You need somebody -- or as many people as you can get -- who would be thinkers. In our case, I believe my function was to be kind of the “idea m a n . ” J o h n w o u l d b e t h e “implementer.” He was very good at that. !! I’ve seen many changes, and most of them are not for the better. You can’t come back and do the same thing you did the year before.

Some people think that’s okay. I don’t.! You know I was an English teacher. I taught literature. If you want to teach Macbeth, you have to read Macbeth. No matter what novel it was, whether it was Great Expectations or what have you, I would always reread everything because I couldn’t remember it all. But it was a blessing to have a bad memory, because I would always have to reread everything.! In working with the teachers, and keeping them involved, I would remind t hem, “You can’ t do eve r y t h i ng , bu t you can do something.” The problem of burnout is based on failed expectations. The

teachers would say, “The kids are burned out, what can I do?” They’d say they couldn’t do anything. You see, negativity was a problem, so they would just sit around and wait for the check to come. ! I can’t imagine 30 years of going to a job I hate. That’s too much to ask. That’s why we had to become more. Not miracle workers. I’m suspicious of miracle workers. But, teaching is an ordinary part of life and you have to be successful. It’s a profession where ordinary people can do extraordinary things." " "

“ It ’s a profession where o r d i n a r y p e o p l e c a n d o extraordinary things.”

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INNOVATION FALL 2010