Change Starts Here

Andrew Houlihan, Superintendent of Union County Public Schools, Monroe, NC, is a Doctor of Education. His formal education took him to New York and Texas before coming back to his home roots in North Carolina. The best part of Houlihan’s day is walking into the classroom of any one of the 52 schools in his Union and watching learning take place. How does the superintendent of the 6th largest school district in North Carolina find the time to sit down in all those classrooms? Scheduling.

“If it’s on the calendar, that’s when it gets done,” Houlihan said. “I’m a structures and systems person. And when he took on the superintendent role in 2016, Houlihan created a directive with his admin and staff to ensure he got scheduled to be inside of school classrooms at least once a week, if not more.

Building an education career is a journey filled with challenges, but one of the most significant for Houlihan was the credibility test. Every step of the way, someone was challenging his experience, age, ability, and where to get where he wanted to go; there appeared to be a never-ending series of invisible hoops to prove he deserved the leadership role he wanted.

“I think one of the lessons I’ve learned, and advice I give, is to young leaders,” Houlihan said. “Experience matters without a doubt, but one of the jobs you have as a district person is to listen, build relationships, and find ways in which your strengths can help whoever it is you’re trying to support.” Houlihan doesn’t care if someone hasn’t done a particular job before. What he does care about is if that person is the right fit for the job and the kind of listener and collaborator that can work across multiple departments to get the job done.

The culture within companies is widely accepted as a critical element to success, but what is the culture within a school? Dustin Odham and Phill Boyte discuss the possibilities that open up when a school caters to a welcoming environment for students and staff. According to Boyte, connecting students fosters a healthy environment. The team has more influence, and students' success extends beyond the results of tests.

Odham believes the critical takeaway from the conversation can be distilled down into “people first, professionals second.” It means that schools need to create cultures with genuine connections and investments in each other’s lives. “The work I have always done is about connection,” said Boyte. His work comes down to connecting students with staff and students with students. “I have been a connector my entire life,” said Boyte.

Boyte was inspired to work in education as early as his senior year of high school. As a senior student council member, he spent a day at a lecture series, where he was inspired to approach education nontraditionally. He believes he's been a connector from early on in his life. After a school shooting in 1993, Boyte was inspired to write his book ‘School Culture by Design’ to reconnect with the students and help them feel safe again.

“People want to feel safe with each other,” said Boyte. His program gives kids a structure to discover their commonalities. Through commonalities, people find connections. They feel a sense of community when they realize they are more alike than different. The link makes it a safer environment.

When schools create a culture, students “relax, [have] higher level of trust, engagement,” said Boyte. School culture is unique and essential to individuals. Advantages to people in education living and working this way. Student achievement and measurables over the individual. Achievement matters. We want our students to be prepared to compete in the world. Relationships lead to students wanting to be in their classrooms.

Dr. Kelvin Adams, Superintendent of St. Louis Public Schools, doesn’t have a magic formula for success, or why his leadership role within the St. Louis public school system has lasted for nearly fourteen years. If honesty, sincerity, and providing people with the correct information are magic, he’s happy to reveal those secrets. “At the end of the day, it’s always about keeping kids first and making them the priority,” Adams said. He joined Dustin Odham to talk about his journey and reveal some best practices for superintendent leadership.

Dr. Adams recognizes at its core, being a superintendent is akin to being a business leader. In his line of work, that business is education. And while there can be a lot of noise coming from many sides, it’s crucial to filter that out to ensure the best education for the kids is always top of mind.

One sage bit of wisdom Dr. Adams offered when it comes to communication. “I never put anything in emails that I could not say to people in their face. People will hide behind that little button called send. And you can’t hide behind it.” Emails can be translated differently by many people in many ways. Talking directly to people helps navigate concerns precisely and quickly.

Leadership roles kept finding him throughout Dr. Adams’ career, even while he continually denied his abilities. It took him a while to recognize within himself the leader others saw. “I think it is about mentorship,” Dr. Adams said. “We must identify people and encourage them. And we must find the right people with the right hearts to do this.” Dr. Adams believes in servant leadership, where to be a great leader, one must have served in the role they will someday lead. Superintendents are leaders who serve, and in this case, they serve the community.

Pollak’s interest in public speaking dated to her K12 years when she won a prize for reading a Shell Silverstein book. Next, a Rotary Club college scholarship requirement to give a series of Rotary Club speeches began a journey that has not ended. The speech requirement was four. Pollak did thirty-nine. “I realized maybe there was something about this that I’m starting to enjoy,” Pollak said. “And that’s how the writing and speaking thing came together.”

Finding the right career path to channel the joys of speaking and writing wasn’t always easy for Pollak. Eventually, the road revealed itself through many freelance writing opportunities and her first published book in 2007.

The key to success in any field is networking, but Pollak admits that many people, especially those getting ready to graduate from college, can find the term intimidating. “I think a couple of things hold people back,” Pollak said.

“Number one is the idea that it’s fake, and that you’re using people, and taking and not being authentic. In good networking, that couldn’t be further from the truth. But the second is, particularly for first-generation college students or whose parents maybe weren’t professionals, for those from under-represented groups, there’s this feeling that networking means you have to know important people. And that’s not true.” Sometimes, it takes guts and trust to start that networking journey.

The report aligns with the mission of JFF, founded in 1983, to create a system that benefits all students and prepares them for work in a realistic way. “The work over that time has always focused on the mission of creating and scaling up solutions that can really transform our education and workforce systems so that it achieves economic advancement for all equitably,” said Vargas.

After working within the system, he went to graduate school to study “the problem of the American high school and its lack of connection to what comes next”, especially for lower income youth or first-generation college students. Ultimately, Vargas’ work led to the research leading to the publication of The Big Blur: An Argument for Erasing the Boundaries Between High School, College, and Careers – and Creating One New System That Works for Everyone.

“Jobs of the Future, a national non-profit focused on education in the workforce, released a report that argues for a radical restructuring of education for grades 11-14. It advocates for a new kind of educational institution that is neither high school nor college starting after the 2nd year of high school. These institutions would combine coursework from the last two years of high school with more specific education and training of community college to train students for future careers,” said Odham.

But are these programs scalable? Are they practical? To answer, Vargas spoke to a program that the organization was operating when he began working there. The Early College/High School Initiative allows students to earn an associate degree by the time they graduated high school. It’s one potential version of the new American high school.

To learn if they are scalable, we need to “not be afraid to try some things out and learn real fast from them including what you are doing wrong” Vargas explained. The Early College/High School Initiative was a great example of this. The original design was in charter schools and future-forward school districts serving two to four hundred students where it was wildly successful.

However, it was not the same case when taken into larger schools with fewer resources. In fact, there were very mixed results that resulted in some very hard lessons learned. This included beginning to understand the harm programs such as these could cause if the right support network was not in place.

Listen in to enjoy a lively discussion unpacking the research while getting a glimpse at what the future of American secondary education might look like someday.

Straight A’s are not always easy to come by, but often, earning them in a traditional setting means getting to the right answer, not learning why an answer is needed or how to go about solving a problem. Sally Amoruso, Chief Partner Officer at EAB, a firm dedicated to serving educational institutions, spoke with Change Starts Here podcast host Dustin Odham to discuss how to prepare for the changes that are set to come within the educational system.

“My why is rooted in helping others, people and institutions to reach their potential. And above all else, that’s really what gives me energy,” said Amoruso. EAB serves to connect communities of interest in order to foster bold ideas and creative thinking. Through EAM, Amoruso reframes problems as opportunities.

The current challenges that higher education faces are one of Amoruso’s chief studies. She has interviewed over 100 presidents at different institutions since covid began and found that, “Some of the ever-present challenges that were with us before covid, have been amplified and accelerated, so they haven’t gone away,” said Amoruso.

Issues like mental health, affordability, and access problems, in addition to this intensifying competition within the higher education world, need solutions. While leadership teams remained agile, bold, and student-centric throughout covid, one of Amoruso’s worries was the leadership’s desire for a return to normalcy, rather than reinventing the education space based on the knowledge gained throughout the pandemic.

“If we are able to build on the lessons from the pandemic, what we’ll see across the next ten years is a greater diversification and differentiation of universities and colleges around the specific needs of the student populations that they serve,” remarked Amoruso.

Within the next ten years, there is expected to be a massive surge of collaboration across the spectrum, leading to more consortia development in higher institutions. These consortia will build strengths at each school while continuing to “innovate around different offerings,” said Amoruso.

To successfully transition to this new learning economy students must become lifelong learners, understanding why a problem exists and how to go about investigating possible answers before presenting a solution.

Garcia speaks several languages, is a speaker, a teacher, a comedian, and a world traveler who has not yet made it to Antarctica, but he’s checked all other continents off his list. His strong faith background guides him, and Garcia believes everyone is born with a purpose. And through his struggles in high school, he learned the art of simplicity. When Garcia learned how to keep things simple, he uncovered his ability to understand languages. “When I realized I had a way to make learning simple, and I could transmit that to others and do that for children in other languages, something just went off,” Garcia said.

Although Garcia may disagree with some aspects of the education system, he loves education. “We need to cut the duplicity,” Garcia said. “Because we’ll say things to kids like if you want to be successful, you have to pass my class. No, they don’t.” Fear-based education models don’t work. Honesty is essential. And Garcia said that children learn that it is okay not to be an expert in everything. If a child finds a particular subject difficult, they may not master it. Still, they could learn other lessons such as perseverance and discipline, and the ability to understand complex concepts.

To motivate kids, Garcia follows three critical principles. Garcia tells kids to find their superpower. Next, he tells children to find their stories. “It doesn’t matter what’s happening in the world; it matters what’s happening in your world,” Garcia said. And the third thing is for kids to find their team.

Mielke encourages educators to be in a space of happiness and purpose. “Every time I speak on a topic, I get to not only apply it to myself but see the shifts in people where they're not only thinking about their role as a student or a teacher, they’re looking at it through the lens of how does this impact my entire world view and it's a really and empowering thing,” he said.

The challenges teachers often face that causes a burnout stem from emotional exhaustion, to where the job demands and job resources don’t line up, or cynicism which is an extension of learned helplessness; much like teachers having goals or taking on initiatives that will eventually end. The third challenge comes from inefficacy, where a teacher's current skill sets don’t match up to their desired goals.

“When I reflect to the moments when I was burned out, all three categories I experienced. And when I thought about quitting, I told myself to apply the same rules I was teaching to myself and I did the research on the strategies to guide my thinking,” Mielke said.

Mielke’s book breaks down into ten different chapters with takeaways into different divisions such as awareness, attitudes and actions. “The most important key is that there is no quick and easy fix. There is no fantasy that you do this one strategy one-time, and you're set for life. We must habituate these actions, once you change your attitude and awareness then more motivation comes that can help change long term habits,” he said.

Within the chapters, Mielke teaches how to shift negative thinking, focus on forgiving and letting go of resentment towards things that won't matter in the long run and adapting to gratitude in different scenarios. “One of the last categories is around the findings of actions that impact our well-being, like intentional acts of kindness or having goals that are outside of education.”

These active continual habits towards positive thinking and acts of kindness Mielke suggest goes a long way into battling the burnouts and falling in love with teaching again.

Finding this gift didn’t come quick to Lawrence, but that journey to self-discovery isn’t one he’d trade away. “I learned a lot of my lessons through sport,” Lawrence said. “I used the school system and the opportunities there to participate in sport. I had some great coaches, and I gravitated towards wrestling.” And it was there Lawrence first began to cultivate the mental toughness that would serve him well years later.

Being a world-class triathlete is grueling. It takes a lot of time, effort, work, sacrifice, and suffering, but Lawrence does it because when he speaks to groups of people, be it in business or an auditorium of kids, he wants them to know that rewards are rewards not simply handed out. And it’s the hard work one puts in that is a considerable portion of that reward.

“The question I believe the young people of today need to be asking themselves is, okay, I know what I want, but what am I willing to sacrifice in order to do it,” Lawrence said. “And then they have to be patient with the process to get it.”

Lawrence believes that the world of today is one of instant gratification. People want success right away, but that is a process that builds over time. Looking for the quickest way to success is the fastest route to failure. “For long-term sustainability and success, and to truly be an expert, that takes time, energy, effort, and sacrifice.”

Fievre published her first book as a teenager, and she credited her aunt, a grammar and literature teacher, for introducing her to the understanding and importance of editing. “She could look at my manuscript and see what it lacked on the grammar side. Also, she could help me with the developmental.” Fievre quickly realized writing and editing were two essential but different crafts. Her advice to novice writers is to not worry about editing a piece while working on it. Take care of mistakes later.

Growing up in Haiti, Fievre said many elements get portrayed in the media which are true. There is crime and poverty in Haiti, but the flip side of the coin is the beauty that the rest of the world does not always get to learn. “For me, the most beautiful aspect of Haiti is her people,” Fievre said. “When I visit the country, and I’m amongst my people, I feel different. There is this openness. People will tell you what they think.”

Fievre’s journey does include challenges which She uses to shape her writing. Fievre said learning to be resourceful was a trait anyone who lives in Haiti develops when commonplace amenities such as electricity and transportation are not consistently available. Reading gave Fievre comfort as a child and allowed her to learn about other places in the world she wanted to go and stories she wanted to tell.

Fievre believes writing about one’s experiences is a great way to deal with trauma for any child who wants to be a writer and who may live in challenging environments and situations. “There is salvation in storytelling, discovering who other people are throughout the world, and discovering who you could be.”