Principals I Have Known

This week, my principal at Sigonella, Sonny Bertschinger (at left), told the staff that he is being transferred to another school in Germany next year. Of course, the school was abuzz with who might be his replacement. In DoDDS, principals come and go quickly. I've already had three in just five years here. In the States, it doesn't happen as often, but even there, I had quite a few. Let's crunch the numbers.

37.5 = years in education

28.5 = years in the classroom

5 = number of schools where I've taught

14 = number of principals (10 male, 4 female)

My very first principal was A. E. Heck at Galva High School. We never knew what A.E. stood for, but everyone, even the teachers called him "Mr. Heck," anyway, which we all thought was hilarious at the time. He a a serious guy. I don't ever remember him laughing, or even smiling. Galva was a very small, rural, conservative town in the 1970s, and he seriously told me, "We don't care if you drink. That's your business. But just don't do it in town." We all went to a private club one town over every weekend. One time my mother came to visit and we went to a basketball game. My mother mistook my principal for the janitor, because he went out at halftime and swept the court with the big dustmop. In the meanwhile, the real janitor stood on the sideline in a sport coat and watched.

The very best principal I ever worked with Sherwood "Woody" Dees, at Hall High School in Spring Valley. Why was he the best? He was respectful, efficient, caring, smart, supportive, and available. We didn't always agree, but he always listened and made sure I knew he understood my point. He, like my other mentors, empowered me to become better and better, as a teacher, a coach, and a staff developer. He was strict with kids. He once told a kid whom I had caugh doing something, "We don't need a Polaroid print of you doing it. If Ms. Pienta said you did it, THAT is proof!" If coaches had to miss a faculty meeting, he held a special "make-up" for them the next morning in his office. He rewarded two or three teachers at every faculty meeting for something he had witnessed them doing and pinned a big paper medal on them. Corny, but we loved it and coveted the medals. He made the whole community shape up and behave appropriately at graduations. He saw me through two babies and came to my mother's wake. He was the best, hands-down.

Marj Lewallen (left) was my friend as well as my principal. I knew her when she was an assistant at Bitburg, when she became a principal there, and eventually had the good fortune to work for her for one year at Sigonella--her last as a principal. Marj had the best sense of humor, sense of fun, and personality of all my principals. And, as I said at her retirement, she was once of the best, in my opinion, because she had kids at the center of her focus, she listened to parents, and she took care of her teachers. This is a hard balance to achieve, but she did a pretty good job of it. Marj was another one who empowered me, and I always do my best for those kinds of people. I was empowered to take the AVID program and grow it, strengthen it, and all for the benefit of the entire school.

In my job as AVID Program Monitor for DoDDS-Europe and then with the AVID Center, I got to visit many school and meet dozens of principals. There are some really great ones out there and I was honored to meet and work with them. It really is true that the principal is the single most important influence on the climate of the school. What they don't always understand is that teachers make them look good, and that it's the people under you, not above you, that make you successful.

And they can be really bad. At one school I worked at, people would sneak in and out of school, or go up a flight of stairs and over just to not see or be seen by the principal. We dreaded getting an email from her saying she wanted to see us. In just one year, she demoralized, alienated, and mentally and emotionally abused 80% of the staff. One teacher, who was being "scolded" for the twentieth time or so, said she might as well go home and shoot herself. The principal didn't even pause, but just kept deriding her. The superintendent said, "You think she's bad? I've three more worse than her in this district!"

There was the wishy-washy principal whose decisions were based on whom he talked to last, the one who couldn't or wouldn't make any decisions, the one who locks himself up in his office, the one who can never see you because she's "in a meeting," the insecure micro-manager, the one who couldn't organize a kindergarten picnic if he had to, and the one who ran hot and cold (and you never knew which it might be). In spite of them or because of them, teachers always come through, especially in DoDDS, and rise to do their best for the kids.

My First Duty Station and German "Hometown"--Ansbach

I arrived with my family in Ansbach, Germany the first week of September, 1987. By December, we all knew we were there to stay! Our very first family roadtrip was to Neuschwanstein Castle on Columbus Day weekend (see photo left).

Having no experience at all with the military, I found it harder to get used to the Army than to get used to Germany. While DoDDS teachers are not in the military, they are bound to them in ways I never expected.

As a teacher in the States, you went to your school, did your job and maybe some extra-curriculars, and went home at the end of the day, to a totally separate life. In DoDDS, your job (and the military) become your life. They control your pay, where you live, what you drive, where and when you get mail, and how you travel. But, they also take care of you in all ways, medically, financially, socially, spiritually, and more. Right off the bat, I was assigned a military member and a DoDDS teacher to navigate the system for us until we figured things out. They were wonderful!

I learned the importance of the ID card (your entrance ticket to everything) on the first day. I quickly learned the language of military acronyms, like PX, APO, POV, HQ, IG, BDU, TDY, LQA, and a lot more. I learned to stand in line and wait--at the post office, the bank, the commissary, and the gate. I learned to shop at the one store on base along with thousands of other people and to hoard things when you found them. I met wonderful military families and the most independent teenaged kids I'd ever encountered. My family became my "dependents." My SSN and my signature had to be on everything they did. I became "the sponsor." It was a really big deal, to be your own sponsor.

My new job in DoDDS was a piece of cake. I could hardly believe the light load I had as a reading specialist. I had one period just for testing new students for their reading level when they entered our school. My reading lab classes were tiny--just a few students in each one, so I was able to individualize totally. I soon became bored because there was so little to do! I began to look around for more--I sponsored the school newspaper and became the girls soccer coach when the girls pleaded with me. I had never even seen a soccer game, much less coached one. Undaunted, I took it on and it became a wonderful experience for us all as I learned from the best players and my assistant coach. We were fourth in Europe for small schools my first year!

My new colleagues were the most interesting people with whom I'd ever worked. They had lived and worked all over the world, and most were adventurous, hard-working, and fun-loving. As ex-pats, we became "family" to each other. We traveled together, celebrated holidays together, helped each other through good times and bad, and formed bonds beyond those of normal school colleagues.

During my five years in this school, I moved slowly but surely out of reading and into English. I became the department chair. I became active in the union as a faculty representative. I attended wonderful staff development opportunities, which, in those days, were week-long events at wonderful hotels in the spa towns of Germany, like Bad Kissingen. Wow! I took kids on field trips to France. My soccer team played in the championship at the Olympic soccer field in Munich. The kids were great. Ansbach itself is a lovely medieval and Baroque Bavarian small city with everything you could want or need. We traveled every chance we got to dozens of countries. We drove to Berlin when it was still divided and Dubrovnik when it was still Yugoslavia. Life was good.

It got even better when I was introduced to AVID, but that's the next story.

Our rowhouse (in the middle) in Langenloh, outside of Ansbach.

My Three Mentors

I have been very fortunate to have had three outstanding mentors in my teaching career. I believe they are the reason I am the teacher I am today and why am where I am. (I'm beginning to sound like Popeye: I am what I am and that's all that I am . . . )

When I was a beginning teacher in Galva, Illinois, I was greatly influenced by Marge Dickinson, who was a colleague and art teacher at the high school. Marge was probably about twenty years older than I, and so "together." She and I took some grad classes at night in the same location and so we spent lots of drive-time together, which is where I think I learned the most from her. Marge taught me some very valuable things about classroom management and organization, relationships (public and personal), and learning. She had it all--intelligence, style, confidence, speaking ability, humor, ambition, and enthusiasm. She not only was a successful teacher, she had a beautiful home and family and ran her own business, a restaurant and gift shop, as well! Probably most importantly, Marge provided me with the model of a successful woman in the education field. Now in her 70s, Marge is still involved in art education in Illinois and the arts in her community.

The second important mentor in my life was Walt Westrum, who was the superintendent of Hall High School in Spring Valley, Illinois, where I taught for ten years before moving overseas. Walt, above all, was a visionary in education. He could see more than all of us of what could be, and he also made more happen than we could imagine. Our little school of 500 students in the middle of nowhere became recognized throughout the state and even nationally for pioneering the use of technology in schools. Under Walt, the school built an early working satellite dish and formed a partnership with NASA. We were the first, by far, to have computers and to use word processing to teach writing. We had computer labs before the colleges! And Walt got me involved in computers and their use in education. He paid for us to come in the summer and get trained. He got the school board to finance the purchase of personal computers (Commodore 64s) for any teacher who wanted one and deduct it from our pay without interest. He was smart, because we all started using them! He had me presenting at state conferences on the use of computers to teach writing. This was in the very, very early 1980s, before the internet even! This led to my being selected for a summer fellowship at the University of Illinois with a select group of English teachers from throughout the state for a Writers Outreach Workshop in 1985. From Walt, I learned the importance of vision and became involved early in the technology movement and in staff development. He empowered me in so many ways. Yet he was also one of the gentlest, kindest, most generous men I've ever known. When I applied to go overseas, Walt encouraged me to go for it. Unfortunately, Walt died unexpectedly in 2006. I miss him.

The third mentor to bless my life was Larry Philpot. Larry was the District Superintendent of Nuernberg and then Heidelberg. He became Director of DoDDS-Europe before retiring in the late 1990s. Larry, like Walt, was a gentle, kind, and generous man, but he was also tough as nails, straight-talking, and a guy who got things done (and done now!). Larry is the person who moved me out of Ansbach High School and into the district office. When he moved to Heidelberg, he took me and my family, too. When he moved to the Europe Area Office, he kept me under his wing. Larry, more than anyone, is responsible for the birth, growth, and success of the AVID program in DoDDS-Europe. He always took care to protect, nurture, and support it, and he did the same for me as his AVID Program Monitor. And when I took a year's leave of absence to work for the AVID Center in Atlanta, Larry continued to mentor and support me there. It if from him that I learned how to lead, coach, inspire, and get things done. He taught me how the system worked and how to work the system. He, like the others, empowered me. He basically told me, "AVID is yours; make it work." AVID was important to Larry, as it was to me, because it was all about making kids successful. If I could develop any great skill, I'd like to be a powerful speaker like Larry. One of my favorite quotes of his is "AVID grabs kids by the emotional throat and shakes them till the best in them falls out." Larry was just like that--he grabbed me and shook me and brought out the best, too. Larry lives a semi-retired life in his old hometown of Mena, Arkansas.

Thank you, Marge; thank you, Walt; and thank you, Larry. You made me who I am today.