Sadie Cora Community Forum

001there we are it says we are live yay and we promised that we would start at five o'clock so it is now five okay so welcome everyone and thank you for sadie for joining the amherst pelham regional schools in the fort river community today we are having four community forums and you are the first of four so staff and caregivers were given an opportunity to submit questions that they would like you to answer so in addition to the questions that were submitted i also went back to the interview questions and added a couple from there so we have a total of about 14 questions you will have an hour and 30 minutes to answer those 14 questions and if any questions coming through the live or the chat feature then you'll also have an opportunity

002if we still have time to answer some of those questions too so sadie are you ready yeah i'm so excited and really looking forward to it okay great so as you know we had changed our whole process and how we do our hiring and only the screening committee had an opportunity to review your resume and the screening committee did not know your name because your name was removed from it so this is an opportunity now for everything to come together and people to get to see oh this is that person who you're going to tell us about yourself in a second but they'll get the chance to say oh this is that person who we looked at her resume and said yes let's move it forward to the forum or to the interview and then

003the interview group now moved you forward to the forums so as usual question number one is going to ask you to please tell us about yourself what roles responsibilities or experiences and licenses you may hold that helped you prepare to be the next principal of fort river elementary great thank you so much so first of all i just want to say how excited i am to have been invited to um continue to get to know the community um so i'm so so excited to have the opportunity to continue in this process and and keep on learning what fort river is looking for in its next leader i um i've really loved fort river ever since i had the opportunity to be an intern with mrs griswold when i was completing my master's degree in elementary

004education and then that same year i continued working at fort river as a as a sub in the ames program and throughout the building i'm in building blocks and then uh continued the year after i finished my program as a long-term sub teaching spanish and esl so um that when when the opportunity came up to apply to return to fort river it really felt like an opportunity that that i was really excited about returning you're considering returning to this community um in terms of like more formally uh resume uh parts of my resume i've been teaching in northampton at jackson street elementary school for the past eight years um i've taught third grade and fourth grade i've had various formal and informal leadership roles i served as a grade level literacy coach while teaching full-time

005i was on various committees and really got really interested in how we can work together as a learning community to uh transform school so that it is a place that's affirming and welcoming and that really works for all of our students and all of our families um prior to working at jackson street i spent a year finishing my masters and spent you know probably about that year about half of that year at fort river before that i taught spanish and holyoke to third fourth and fifth grade students for two years and then before that um and this i don't include it in a in an education resume but i worked in the legal field for a couple years so that sort of gave me like a a big picture view um of things and i

006really decided that i wanted to um to be an educator um and so just a little bit of what i believe um i believe that schools need to be welcoming and affirming inclusive spaces that we need to work together as a team collaboratively to partner with families and make sure that we're responding to their needs and that we're really working together to develop a shared vision for for what we want our school to be like um and then the process of implementing that vision is one that i see as a multi-year plan again working in collaboration um i see the role of the school leader as fostering that collaboration communicating with stakeholders advocating for equity within the school um and i recently read this quote that that made me really think about fort river because

007you know i've obviously been thinking about it and had a conversation with the interview committee and it said the quote was justice is what love looks like in public and so i was thinking about like what does it mean for me to choose love and for me a big part of what it means to choose love you know love for my students love for my community um is is to advocate for justice and um stand up against racism and and uh not shy away from having conversations that feel uncomfortable uh but are so necessary for um for all of us to grow um i on a personal level i've lived in this area almost my whole life i've had some opportunities to travel outside of the area um but i feel like i have really

008strong roots um i'm really excited i feel like i'm looking for a learning community to have the rest of my career in um and i at jackson street i had a principal who has retired but who was the principal for 24 years and i saw the impact that that kind of real long-term leadership had on on the learning community and on the ability of the school to kind of carve out its identity it'd be a really safe space for growing and for everyone to grow right for educators to grow for students to grow and that's what i'm really hoping to do if i'm selected at fort river so other than that i'm just really looking forward to hearing what the questions are that came from the community i think it's really an opportunity for me

009to understand uh what fort river is looking looking for because this process is about like finding a match right for me to find a match and for uh amherst and fort river to find a match and so i i feel like i'm a good fit i feel like my leadership style i feel like my experience as an educator in the valley um i feel like my my philosophy of education is a really really good match and so i hope that after this evening all of you will feel that way as well well thank you for that uh you talked about your leadership style and it leads right into question number two which says how does your leaders how will your leadership style influence teacher instruction so first of all i will say that my leadership

010style um blends toward it leans toward collaboration i'm not a go it alone kind of leader um i i was the union president in my current district and i feel like that i really gain skill at facilitating um conversations with groups of adults making sure we're moving forward making sure that we're sort of focused on what our goal for gathering our goal for the conversation is um but i never felt like um like direction or decision making was for me to make a loan i really saw that i really saw it as a collective project and i feel the same way about school leadership um and so because i believe in collaboration and because i don't believe in positioning myself as an expert all the time who's gonna you know come in like my way

011is always the best way i approach relationships with other educators with curiosity and with a really deep belief in the strengths of my colleagues and so i want to see what people are doing that's amazing so that we can share and so that we can all be lifted up um by by things that are going really really well so i think that my approach towards improving instruction is much more of a professional learning community approach much more of an approach where we're all working together i am such a strong believer in peer coaching i think that if somebody has you know something that they want me to give them feedback on i'm glad to give feedback but i think the ways that i've always grown the most as an educator was when i got to

012go and watch a colleague that i really care about and really respect and watch their practice and learn from their practice and have opportunities to do that really frequently and so i love conversations about teaching practice i love um finding ways to have a an approach that's driven by evidence and data that's not just you know looking at summative data looking at assessment data when the cycle of teaching has ended um and so i you know i i feel like i'm gonna probably say collaboration a lot this evening but it's really really true that that is what i believe in because i believe that together we can all lift each other up and together we can all work towards our goals which is really the goal of having a school that that really works and

013that responds to every student's needs and that allows every student to be their best okay thank you for that the third question says knowing that we are coming well that there is a pandemic and students and staff are just returning to in-person instruction what is your vision for a fully thriving school committed to equity social justice and the emotional well-being of students and staff um i think i'm just writing that down so that i don't it's okay um so i think that um my vision is that we you know as we as we contemplate returning and more and more students returning in person to the buildings um this spring and i see you know next fall as being part of part of a process of returning and um i think first of all we have

014to think there's a lot of um sort of deficit thinking happening about what our students have uh lost or what they've missed and so i really hope that we can start our conversations about about what we need to do to respond to the pandemic really focusing on the amazing resilience that our students and that educators have displayed and the ways that people have redesigned redesigned their teaching and really rethought a lot of things to respond to the learning context of the pandemic and it's really my hope that that this return in starting as a new leader in the building will be an opportunity for us to really reflect on you know what what have we done in the past that's really really worked what did we do during the pandemic that really worked what were

015the things that happened that maybe unexpectedly worked really well for some students and maybe worked really well for some educators that maybe they wouldn't have thought of like an example i started using google classroom and i was sort of a reluctant adopter of that i was like i don't need that and then i started using it and i realized the ways that it actually helped my students and got their feedback on it and they said no we want you to keep doing these things so the ways that we partner with families you know knowing that there has to be this give and take um in communication constantly in a way that was really different when kids were learning at home and so i think that there are a lot of lessons that can come out

016of some of the shifts that we made during the pandemic but i think um the most important thing that we need to focus on is the community of the school and the ways that every student has a place in the community and every student is honored and valued in our school community whether they're physically in the building or whether they're learning um virtually and that we need to develop we need to develop our school improvement plan you know our annual school improvement plan reflecting on what are the things that that we want to reimagine you know what are things that we want to do differently from from how we've ever done them and what are things that we really feel need to need to be continued and all of that with a focus on um

017students and educators and community well-being and that sense of belonging that really creates the conditions for learning thank you for that we're now at question number four and this one should seem a bit familiar to you as one asked during the interview and it says at fort river we consider all groups to be critical stakeholders in our school how would you work effectively with a diverse group of families or caregivers who may have values that differ from yours how would you get input from groups that have not felt included in school decisions in the past i love this question i'm so glad that you asked it again um because i think it's a really really important thing for for us to talk about and think about um i think that um one of the things

018that i love about living and working in this area is that there are so many different kinds of people um and so many different perspectives and so my approach is really always about inviting as many perspectives inviting people who um maybe have a different opinion or people who see things a different way to share their vision and to share where they're coming from so that we can consider them as we plan um i have a lot of experience working with a very very diverse group of families and caregivers similar um you know similar and different from the fort river community part of what i've learned is that you know there there are always going to be people who are excited to share how they feel and what they think and that is wonderful and i

019welcome that and then there are some people who as you mentioned you know maybe have not felt included in the past and it's really important to me that i'm proactive that we are proactive in reaching out and hearing from people and if that means that you know we have to have conversations with folks who don't feel like we've done the best job from their view even though we were doing our best then we have to be able to have those conversations so for me um i really choose to to approach challenging conversations with empathy um in combat any defensiveness that i might feel um knowing that all of us do our best but knowing that sometimes you know we need to hear from somebody who maybe our best didn't work for and that that's not

020you know that's nothing personal it's just part of what happens when we have such a diverse community and there has to be space um for um for the the the compliments and questions and as well and concerns as well i was trying to bring up uh mrs griswold has had an awesome phrase and it was like halfway to me but it didn't come that you would end her uh newsletter with um and so just like an example of how i did how i've done that in the past last year um we started before schools before the buildings closed um and sort of continued i i convened a focus group of all different stakeholders it was educators it was caregivers representatives of community groups and we really reviewed the school's communication structures and we did a

021survey of families that we pushed out in all different ways to try to get lots of different responses to kind of find out like who's getting information from the school who is informed because i really feel like having the information really allows families and caregivers to be involved in their students education so if we have gaps in who we're reaching and we have you know groups of families who can't access communication because it's not being translated to a language that they speak where it's not it's being sent to an email address that doesn't doesn't work um or whatever it was and so we really evaluated the communication structures that we were using in the school and then brought it back to the full team of educators to sort of come up with a plan for

022how we could communicate more inclusively and the result of that was that we made a decision across the whole school to use some technology to help us translate communications and to have two-way translation between caregiver caregivers and educators and i saw you know my own group of students that i was working with how um i was able to communicate with families that i had felt disconnected from before another one was like we weren't really using text messaging and we heard from caregivers like we really need to be able to communicate with the school through text message that's the way like that's our preferred method and we would much rather send a text and so we um got text capabilities so that we could text with families and that is another thing that made a big

023difference so i think i really work to be proactive i really work to make sure that i'm reaching everyone and i really make sure that i'm really really open to feedback and that feedback could be positive it could be compliments or it could be somebody saying you know that really didn't work for me and that i can hear both of those things um and learn from both of them okay so you talked about being open to feedback and it kind of leads us into the next question and the next question is good the next question says tell us about a time when you had to make a decision that you knew would be unpopular what steps did you take prior to making this decision and how did you handle the pushback if there was any

024definitely been in that situation um and i try to um i think when you make a decision like that you kind of know you know okay um you know i understand the reason why i have to make this decision maybe it's a policy constraint maybe it's a legal constraint maybe it's you know i have information that um that i have to keep confidential and i can't share with someone like whatever the reason is there are lots of reasons and um i the way that i have approached it i think pretty much every time that i've encountered that situation is being really open and really transparent if if i'm making a decision and i know somebody is going to be upset or frustrated about it having a conversation with that person and saying you know i

025i understand that that this is frustrating let's problem solve together let's let's figure out something that works and um and then knowing that after the decision is made that people who are upset are going to need to be heard and that's something that i learned from my mentor gwen agna who was the principal of jackson street is that um we have to be able to listen to people and we have to be able to give people space to talk about the the thing that they're upset about and sometimes the space is just venting and so i approach that as i'll say you know i'm just gonna listen i'm just gonna listen to you um and not try to insert problem solving if the person doesn't want that and i find that just um listening and

026having empathy and recognizing you know that someone is upset and and i can say i i can tell you're upset about that and i understand um that that can diffuse some of the frustrations i think that a lot of a lot of times that kind of a decision you know a decision that you know you're going to get pushback on there's often history behind the situation and so understanding that history and understanding kind of the roots of the frustration has really helped me be able to be supportive of someone and um and know that sometimes i am sometimes as a leader you are constrained in your ability to respond to one individual's um situation although we can always be supportive right but maybe i'm not going to be able to change the decision but i

027always am going to be able to make space and have empathy for someone who's upset and explain as much as i can and be as transparent as possible and not in a way that dismisses their feelings or their concerns okay and then i want to add one thing because i'm still thinking about it and then also recognizing that often when there's history and if someone is feeling left out or if someone is feeling frustrated about the outcome that we can that i can figure out a way to invite that person in so say oh you know i know that you really cared about xyz issue will you join a committee that's working on something related or you know find a way for that person or that group of people to have um some productive involvement

028in the future okay so you can always stop me to add whatever you feel like you need to add because we are 24 minutes in and we're at question number six out of four i'm hoping we're gonna get some live questions also let's hope so if not we're still okay yeah we can talk about education we can do that for a long long time okay so question number six what is your ideal discipline policy and how would you develop such a policy discipline so i um i strongly believe that students behavior is is communication with the adults um i strongly believe that all students are doing the best they can um i believe that about adults also um like really deeply in my heart believe that everybody's doing the best they can and so um

029when you're asking about discipline i think you're asking about what do we do when a student's behavior doesn't match our expectations or what do we do when a student's behavior doesn't meet sort of the norms of the community and so my first response to that student um is what is that behavior what's the behavior trying to communicate is there a lot is there a support that needs to be put in place do we need to have some proactive planning for that student um do we need to bring our team together so that we can say oh you know we're noticing a pattern do we need to collect some data on it so i'm always trying to learn um from a behavior that a student is is exhibiting and if a student is calm enough and

030regulated enough involve that student in a conversation to help us understand their behavior because i have found that when i go to a student and say like hey what's going on he seemed really upset that they'll say well this and this and this happened and i really didn't like it and it made me feel upset and then we can plan around that um i believe that we need to have a restorative focus to our discipline i think that that is probably rooted in my my experience being raised by responsive classroom as a student at the at the center school um that consequences need to focus on what's logical what's related to what's going on and they need to be focused on um on repairing any harm um that has been done by behavior um i

031think that um in terms of like a school level discipline policy like responding to specific behaviors i think obviously am guided by the district's policies and and the code of conduct um that that does spell out the responses to certain kinds of behavior but i think that my approach is always about understanding the behavior protecting that student protecting their peers so that learning continues getting a student we're talking about explosive behavior which i have experience with we're talking about helping a student re-regulate so that they can return um to their classroom into the learning community as soon as it's safe for them um to return and um and then making sure that we're getting our team together and really understanding why are we seeing a behavior so that we can make sure that we're that

032we're planning um to prevent it in the future for that student and for their peers and for all of the learning community okay so it seems like you have an idea of what i'm going to be asking because you talked about restorative practices and the next question leads right into that it says um question number seven can you give a specific example of action steps you have taken to implement restorative practices in your prior roles yeah um definitely so i i have thought a lot about and reflected a lot and i you know i read all the time and i try to read new research and i try to read read theory about uh you know education and and keep on learning and growing and i did a lot of thinking over the last couple

033years of my sort of my relationship with my students and my role as a as an authority figure oh i'm sorry i just missed something um um and so i um i've really learned to move away from um dynamic students that are like power struggles or dynamic that are about control and think about you know what are the what are the norms of our community in my class agreements um that we built together and um and i shared in the interview with the committee that when we returned from remote learning my students added a fourth agreement which was the end of the best of this um and so we you know safety and respect trying our best and standing up for justice so um specific examples are um advocating for students um to be able

034to make repairs make appropriate repairs um when something has happened i had a student who um get really really upset and tear up books and so an appropriate repair that that restored um and tried to to address the harm that had been caused by that was putting the book back together and doing that together um because that allows me to rebuild that rapport with the student um another example when it comes to discipline is thinking um you know thinking more on a structural level so if there is an interaction that's happening um and it's a result of a policy or it's the result of a rule that we have i do think that if people are struggling with that rule or that policy that we need to evaluate it and make sure that it makes

035sense and that it's not um that it's not something that's that's carried over from the past it isn't currently serving um an educational goal an example of that was our hats rule no pass rule that we had after some interaction for a student of mine that were really challenging for both of us my students decided to use their class opinion writing piece to write a persuasive letter about why kids should be allowed to wear hats if they wanted to and so i took that letter that my students had written and joined the code of conduct task force that was rewriting our district um code of conduct and brought what i learned from them to get a policy that wasn't working for that case um and so i think it's the thinking on an individual level

036how do we focus on if there is harm done to the community or an individual focusing on how we can support students in repairing it in a way that's appropriate in a way that they're able to but then also looking at sort of a broader community and systems level how do we make sure that the rules and the policies that we have in place are designed also to to support students and are focused on our goals for our community and focused on on supporting learning um and not just about controlling people okay so that was question number seven and i'm going to give you an opportunity if you'd like to get a sip of water or something because i know you've been talking for for about a half an hour i try it's kind of

037funny i try i i could be like very very long-winded and talk probably for an hour about each of these questions so i try to like temper myself but maybe i'll let myself be be more long-winded yeah okay all right so we are halfway through the questions that are on my document here and we still have an hour question number eight says how ready and equipped are you to address issues of racial justice please provide examples of how you engage with this type of work and while you're answering i'm going to get my water bottle yes yes you get your water um i i really appreciate this question um i think that um being prepared to address issues of racial justice when they come up in schools is really really important um and it's not

038just important because of the specific time that we're living in right now um it's important all the time because we know that systemic racism exists in all of our institutions we know that we're all you know it's it's the air that we breathe and so we have to be um really conscious and really intentional about addressing it um and and having conversations and building stamina for conversations that that maybe some of us were told were taboo or we some of us were raised you know oh don't talk about that um i've i've never shied away from those conversations i remember and i've always had those conversations with my students and i've always had those conversations with my colleagues um i remember probably one of my first experiences talking with students about race um was in

039my first teaching job where i was a spanish teacher um and uh you know i used to dye my hair really blonde and so i was like a white woman spanish teacher with really really blonde hair and um i remember a student saying one student said you know are you white and another student like shushed them like you know don't talk don't talk about that that's that's taboo like we don't talk about that and i um decided to create a space for you know we can you can we can name my race um and we can have that conversation and it's okay that it's not racist to talk about race um and so that was sort of my first foray into it and you know now um i i it's a it's an issue that

040affects me you know as an educator but also affects me personally and so i felt like i needed to to learn and i needed to grow and i needed to seek out um spaces and create spaces where i could have those conversations um and so sometimes it's um when someone says something it's saying what do you mean by that can you explain to me what you mean by that and sort of um problematizing some of the things that we just say or that someone may just say without understanding that it's hurtful um and it is always making sure that we're centering impact um of of actions and of um of conversations and of comments that may be off the cuff but that can be really really hurtful for me um and you know with my

041with my grade level team um a big part of addressing racism you know in the third grade standards uh we're supposed to teach the history of massachusetts um and and we can't just start with the mayflower we really have to acknowledge and recognize that that we live on the land of the pacumtac and the nipmuck people and we have to make sure that we're including um indigenous history and that we're centering indigenous perspectives as we're talking and teaching students about um the settlement of this area um and teaching our students that uh that yes we are in massachusetts but yes there there were enslaved people um in massachusetts when it was founded so that's just one specific example of how i bring it into um into the classroom with my students but also that means

042conversations with colleagues um and that means looking really critically you know as a team of educators at our data we say you know yes we have we have an equity focus but what does that look like in our classrooms um and how do we make sure that we're not perpetuating or reinforcing a white supremacy culture in our classrooms as we're teaching our students i think that that that may be the most you know one of the most important um tasks that we have as we consider our pedagogy and especially as we as we seek to be inclusive and as we have such a beautifully diverse community with so many different kinds of people and so many languages and so many backgrounds and so many different stories um of people joining our learning community that we

043always have to be considering how we need to be intentional about including everyone and how we need to really respond when something happens that that harms a group of people oh you're still muted thank you so question number nine says please speak to the importance of art music physical ed tech and library instruction in our students education and in our school community i really appreciate this question i think you know the the um the special classes for some of our students those are really their opportunities to get really excited um and that can be an entry point for students um just really interested in art and that's the strength that they have and that's an area that we can um get that student really motivated and focused and give every single student opportunity for success

044the same goal is for for me this is your technology how this one goes through music i think each of those spaces is a vitally important aspect of a well-rounded institution that we offer our students and our special teachers are such an important part of our teams as educators because we each see our students within our own context and so being able to talk with the physical education teacher and hear about a whole different skill set that a student could have um that maybe i wasn't aware of um as a classroom teacher is something that just makes me think even more about how all of our roles are so important all of our roles are so connected um i also think it's really important that we make sure that that we're all collaborating um that

045we that we connect the themes and our goals of educating all of our students throughout all the content areas and so i think that that's part of why it's so important to have such a great team that's talking to each other and that everybody knows what everybody else is doing because we can make curriculum connections that will help students access content in a way that they hadn't accessed it before um i so i i think i can't really speak i couldn't say enough about how important i think it is to make sure that we protect students access to to the arts to the connections between the arts and science and technology and then we also are making sure that we're giving our students lots of different forums to be successful um and then we're talking

046about those successes so that we can we can accelerate them as a whole community um so i you know and when i taught spanish i was like a specials teacher i was a rotating teacher and that really gave me um a really profound respect um for teachers that teach lots and lots of kids um and teachers to work with the whole school because the view that they have of all of the students is amazing but also that we need to be really careful that we're protecting the specials teachers time because the the curriculum that they're juggling and the instruction that they're juggling for the whole entire school is a really really different um it's a different kind of load than a teacher who's working with you know one group of students or maybe two groups

047of students okay question number 10 out of 14 this one should also seem familiar to you it talks about the three district-wide programs at fort river caminantes the dual language program aims the specialized program for students who have high functioning autism spectrum disorder building blocks a specialized therapeutic program for students with emotional disabilities who need specific social emotional and behavioral supports right so those are the three programs that fort river houses it says can you please discuss your experience with each of these populations and your experience working with specialized program students yeah i would love to um share about that i think you know my first experience working with students in a specialized program was at fort river when i had the opportunity to to work in a classroom that had students from the programs

048and then also to sub within the programs and it gave me a real appreciation for all of the work and all of the planning that goes into making sure that kids have a school day that works for them and making sure that kids have access to their peers making sure that they have access to the curriculum and that they're able to learn um so i i just have such great appreciation for all of the work that happens in programs like aims and building blocks i in the school that i teach at now formerly had equivalent programs to both of those and they were the the model was shifted and so the programs went away and i really really missed that additional support and the proactive planning and the ability to modify a student's day so

049that they could be successful as much as possible um i really really missed that and i missed the collaboration and the co-teaching opportunities that i had with the teachers and the program and the staff in the programs um i you know my goal as a person who really really deeply believes in inclusion um is that we're supporting students in learning um alongside their peers in the gen ed classroom as much as possible i mean so that's really you know that's the goal that i come at it with um and i think that the support that's provided to students that need you know some modifications to their day or modifications to the content that they're learning work that the programs do is so so important so and then to address the the dual language program which

050was not at fort river when i was there but when i heard that that had been added at fort river i was so so so excited um i i think it's so important that we um that we cultivate by literacy um as a as a bilingual person and i you know have a daughter that is in a dual language program where i live um i think it's so so important that we make sure that we're supporting kids in you know for the students who spanish is their first language making sure that we're supporting first language literacy which i think is one of the really beautiful things that dual language programs do and then also helping students acquire a second language in a program that really values both languages um and uh is just really really

051important i do think that they're i think we need to be really really intentional when we have three different programs in the school to make sure that we are working to keep our school community unified um and that we're working to make sure that we are were taking the i was reading something that quoted bell hooks and saying we need to take like a both and approach and so these the programs um aren't like an either or thing they're part of the school um and it's one school and so i think it's really important that we that we keep that in mind as we're talking about the programs and as we're talking about how to move forward um so i think that each of each of the programs that is at fort river serves to

052enrich the whole community and that it allow the programs allow kids and families and cultures to be included in the in the whole school um in ways that would be a lot more challenging um without the programs thank you um one thing that i um you know just thinking about how i support students who have um you know big behaviors for my um you know the escalation i've always been you know i've always taught lots of different kinds of students um and so i made sure this year to complete my cpi certification i felt like that would be important to have the de-escalation training um to make sure that i that i know how to follow those protocols to make sure that i know you know where the lines are in terms of keeping students

053safe um and and so that was a another step that i am always trying to add you know add new things and build my skills and that was a way that i felt like i needed to um to continue to build my skills i'm preparing for more of a school-wide role that i need to be able to be one of the people who can respond when a situation is really escalating so camilantes once again is the dual language program at fort river how will you support the mission staff families and curriculum of this program and serve as an ambassador to the larger community and that question should be familiar to you too yeah yeah so um i you know one of the things that made me feel really excited about this opportunity was seeing that

054um the coming of this program had been started at fort river so um so like as a bilingual person it's really important to maintain and practice um the language and um and if you don't practice it it goes away um or it becomes more difficult i but i think just like the um on a basic level having uh kanye not having the content on this program and saying we have a dual language program in our school um creates automatically a space where families that speak spanish are are affirmed they see their language um in the school um and in not just in informal spaces but really on informal learning spaces as well uh with that being said i do think that it's really important that we make sure that we that we continue to honor

055and include and affirm all of the other languages that are spoken in such a diverse community um as fort river that's sort of an aside but i think that it's something that's important to continue to think about i think that there are so many advantages of of dual language of being bilingual of helping our students develop the seal of biliteracy um throughout their school career i you know the ways that it has helped me being bilingual the ways that it has helped me um travel and learn and be parts of communities with with people who were different from me and communicate directly in my professional life being able to communicate directly with families and really understand where they were coming from has been really important so i feel like i you know i just kind

056of like who i am is an ambassador for a dual language program just because i really i believe and i have lived and i have seen how important it is um and how and just how enriching to my life it has been um to be to be bilingual and the fact that kids get to start in kindergarten um learning a second language um is is just such an exciting and an amazing opportunity for our community and for our school there are you know specific needs in terms of you know training including curriculum that that a dual language program staff meet you know different needs that they have and so i think that that is important to keep in the forefront if we want to maintain the program we want the program to grow we have

057to make sure that we're supporting the students and we have to make sure that we're supporting the educators and so i think just keeping an awareness of what those particular special considerations are for the dual language program but always holding on to that both and approach that it's not it's not an either or we're all the same school we need to make sure that everybody's needs in terms of materials and trainings um are met and that we need to all make sure that we're building our capacity to meet the needs of our all of our students um it's really is really something to hold on to all the time um i also think that the dual language program is a really exciting model for our instruction for language learners um because of the way that

058it allows kids to continue to develop and grow literacy their first language and so that is a really is an exciting model to be able to offer in our school um to students as they are acquiring like a warrant okay do you need to pause here for a moment okay so you have about three more questions left and i have more things i'm sure that i have more things that i can talk about um when we finish the questions if nobody in the chat has questions we'll get to that so it says um what thoughts or ideas do you have for bringing a sense of joy compassion love and unity into fort river elementary school at the student level the staff level and for the whole school love joy unity and compassion and compassion love

059all of those words um so um i think the biggest way that that we foster um that we foster our love and our joy um is through the compassion that we that we show each other and through the community um that we foster and that we develop in our school um i think it's really important that we create spaces for talking about um we in this case being educators you know creating spaces where we talk about why we love this work why are we passionate about this work holding on to the things that bring us joy in in our school and in our calling as educators because i think for a lot of us it is really appalling it's really a passion something that we you know that we think about all the time and

060we came into this field because we wanted to make a difference for students and because we wanted to be change agents and because we wanted to create learning spaces that you know feeling like we had something to add and i know that that's part of why i wanted to become a teacher i felt like i had something to bring to the table um and so i think making sure that that when we're together you know that that we're remembering that we chose this career out of love and we need to make sure that we're really creating joyful spaces of learning for our students um and so that means that the instruction that we provide our students needs to invoke those same feelings in our students but i also think it's really important that we care

061for each other and that we take care of people's well-being and that we build relationships for me leadership is so relational and teaching is so relational um that we have to know each person the same way a teacher has to know each member of their class and what do they like what do they not like what do they care about and what it you know what makes their eyes light up um we need to do the same thing with the adult community as well um so i did some um some training and some work with chip wood um who is a responsive classroom founder and who um we used a program called leading together from the centers for courage and renewal which is based on our research about relational trust in schools and it was

062it's very much about like how do we build that supportive adult community because we we build the communities for the kids and and think really hard about you know what are our hopes and dreams for our learning communities with our students and i think that we need to have those same conversations with the adults with the educators what are our hopes and dreams what's our vision with families you know what are what are your hopes and dreams for the school what will tell you that your child your student is successful what you know and i think that those conversations that we have about our values and those opportunities that we have to hear each other and understand each other and understand what what each person really is wanting and then and hold that as the

063most important thing for that person that that is how we build trust and that is how we continue to cultivate that the learning community that's joyful and that includes and encompasses all of its different stakeholders okay so you mentioned a statement where you talked about choosing the career out of love right and so the next question basically asks you how would you support fort river staff to demonstrate their expertise oh i love this because i i know um in the time that i was at fort river and just the the amazing expertise and professionalism of the educators that work there um and so the specific ways i think i mentioned some things earlier that are ways that i see um to allow educators to to share their expertise which is that you know we're we're

064we're in a cycle of continuous improvement right so we know that each of us if we have a growth mindset we know that each of us can always try our best and then improve even more um and so i think that the model of of collaborating um around those improvement goals is the way that we can hear from each person about what their vision is um and then and then support each person in continuing to develop um and i think that you know as i mentioned earlier i don't think it's necessarily my role to come in and say to everyone like you have to teach this way i think it's my role to foster professional conversations and collaboration and then support knowing each person as an individual and knowing their hopes and dreams and strengths

065um collaborating to make sure that each person has the opportunity to shine and also has the opportunity to grow the areas where they where they have identified that they want to develop um i think we have to have opportunities to celebrate each other we have to have opportunities to celebrate our students we have to find ways you know right now it's hard to come together as a whole school but i think we have to find ways to have those bringing the whole school together even if it's a virtual assembly if we can't get all 300 plus students and the educators in the same room but making sure that we're that we're sharing and recognizing all of the awesome things that people are doing um and then something that i have learned from my mentors is

066is practices of of individual and private recognition and gratitude um which is thinking and recognizing people even if it's just writing someone a card that says you know your your teaching practice as i as i walked through and saw you explaining something to your students was really beautiful um and so i think it's that you know like big big recognition um and then small and tiny recognition the other thing that i'm really interested in is um finding ways to i think one of the ways that we can grow as educators is to be a part of educational research and so whether that's partnering you know partnering with umass to to make sure that we're having the opportunity to really study what we're doing or guiding our own action research processes that those are ways that

067we can learn from each other and learn from ourselves and learn from our students and families so that we can make sure that we're always improving um but i i just get so excited uh sitting in a room and talking with educators about practice and hearing from people about what are they thinking about what are they working on what are the steps that they're taking um to address the things that they're wondering about um and and how much we learn from each other in that context is is really really exciting for me okay so we started about an hour ago and before this is before i asked the last question or make the last statement but we started an hour ago and we didn't have this many people on the call at that time so

068if you don't mind going back to that first point and just telling the people who are on now about yourself and why you are the best person for this role as the next leader of fort river elementary please thank you i should have uh written a speech so i could read it verbatim um i always if i write a speech i always feel like a little bit right and i know they can always go back and you know watch this video over again to hear it but just because we have enough time if you don't mind going back and fading yeah i love that so um i i will just reiterate again what i said at the beginning how um how happy and excited i am to have had the opportunity to sit before all

069of you today i wish i could see the faces of the people who are here um and i hope that i will have the opportunity to see your faces at some point in the future um i um i see this process as a you know i i'm looking for the right match for me and you are looking for the right match for you um and i really believe that my my educational philosophy and my collaborative and open leadership style and my deep connection to this area will make me a really good match for fort river i love have loved the fort river community since i interned with mrs griswold in third grade when i was doing my master's and i spent some time that same year working as a substitute throughout the building and then

070i finished the year as a long-term sub teaching spanish and esl um and i always felt like you know this was like fort river was a learning community where i would really love to come back and and have um you know be for a long time um because it's just it's that kind of awesome place um i so my my sort of resume details are that for the past eight years i have been teaching either third or fourth grade at jackson street elementary school in northampton i'm working with a very diverse group of students and caregivers serving in formal and informal leadership roles such as a grade level literacy coach i was the union president i have been on lots of committees and i also have really enjoyed mentoring younger teachers newer teachers as they've

071come into our building and pre-service teachers from the local universities i shared a quote when i first earlier i shared a quote that i read which was justice is what love looks like in public um and i was that really stood out to me as i was thinking about the fort river motto if we choose love because i was thinking about you know how are the ways that i choose love in my practice as an educator and i feel like i choose love by standing up for educational justice and equity for students families and educators um because i know that within a inclusive and supportive and affirming school community each of us can achieve and i really believe that that that goes for students and educators and families i really believe in taking a strength-based

072approach um to each member of our community before the time i spent at fort river and before my time at jackson street i was a um a spanish teacher for third fourth and fifth grade students in holyoke and before that i worked in the legal field um and so i feel like all of the different experiences that i've had allow me to kind of move from like a small level to a big systems level to respond to all of the different pieces that go into a school running smoothly but also being a really joyful safe um and supporting environment for for everyone involved okay thank you and so the last question i should have said we had 15 questions just like but the last question says what is something you have done that you are

073especially proud of and it does not have to be work related not work related it does not have to be um i mean on a personal level um i'm really proud of my daughter um and the person that she is uh becoming in this world where she has such an understanding of all different kinds of people um and an understanding of gender and an understanding of race and an understanding of like what it means to include and care for people um that is um it's just really beautiful and i feel so hopeful um about the generation of kids that's being raised now because and i i tell my students all the time you know you're gonna you're gonna grow up and you're gonna you're gonna change the world and so we're helping them as educators

074we're helping them kind of envision the world that that we hope that they will have my daughter's sick so she has a long way to go she's gonna turn seven um in june and then uh professionally i um i'm really proud of the way that i've created spaces with my students um where they stand up for each other and where they have have hard conversations with me um and where they're brave um and and that is something that i that i'm really really proud of and i think that that's that's the community that we that we have built together um and so when i think about making a change from leading a smaller group of people to leading a larger group of people that's the kind of space that i want us to have together

075is a space where where each person can be who they are um and can express their truth um and feel safe and feel affirmed and that others will stick up for them um and their peers will stick up for them and i will stick up for them um and that's sort of my hope and my vision for for education you know that we have to we have to create like there's a future that we want and we have to start constructing that future now through the way that we live and through the way that we that we work together and the way that we care for each other um in our schools and so that that means you know maybe transforming some structures that that haven't lent themselves to that um but it's also to

076me really um something that's really exciting um and promising um and so that's kind of the thing that i feel proud of personally and professionally but it's also the thing that i think um i will bring to fort rivers is how do we continue to develop um as a as a community that's oriented towards inclusion and educational justice um that that seems to me to be the way the way that we have to move forward is there anything else that you'd like the ford river community to know about you i um i mean first first and foremost i just i really hope that we're gonna all have the opportunity to to work together and get to know each other and um and support each other you know we're living through a challenging time but i

077also think that these challenges are sort of an opportunity to slow down um and make sure that we're caring for each other and caring for for our students and for our kids and so i hope that this you know that this conversation is the beginning um and that again that i'll have a conversation where i can see you know see everybody's faces although it's been lovely um speaking with you to see the whole community so i you know one thing i i just see myself as a person who's always learning and always growing um i started thinking about this transition from a teaching role to to a broader um school-wide leadership role i've been thinking about it for a couple years um and i really started thinking about it when um my my principal when

078agna retired um because i saw the impact that she had on all of us and the way that she cared for everyone um and so i you know learned a lot from her um about about how to be and how to lean and how to listen to people and how to care for people but i also felt like it was really important to um to do my own learning and build my own network beyond that so i started a tags program in educational leadership which you know that's sort of like uh like jargon it's like between it's like a grad program for people who already have a master's but i felt like it wasn't quite um the right fit and so i'm going to transition to a doctoral program this year and i really hope

079that that will be an opportunity for me to continue to grow as a researcher and continue to learn and will be sort of a reflective space for me as i as i leave the school or you know facilitate the conversations and facilitate the processes that that will happen within the school um and so i just hope that that that that the way that i have the way that i have sought my own learning and my own professional growth will kind of show everyone that um i see myself as unfinished um and that i see myself as learning from all of the amazing educators and students and caregivers that i have the opportunity to collaborate with every day and so i really hope that that sort of cultivating that that love of learning and the way

080that we show our students that we're always learning and growing that that's an important part of um of of bringing a growth mindset to our work and bringing sort of a culture of continuous improvement to our work okay well thank you it sounded like you said doreen i've seen you too much now i want to see the rest of the i've been so community to see you and i have really appreciated the ways that that this process has been so thoughtful um and it made me think a lot about you know the communication aspect that we spoke about earlier like how much how much that diffuses any feelings of concern or worry to just sort of know like what's gonna happen at each step and that's i think what we try to do you know

081within within the school as well like here's what to expect at each at each step and so i've really appreciated that and it's been lovely getting seen so many times i am excited um to be able to to see everyone else and hopefully i will have the opportunity to do that soon because that i'm looking forward to that well thank you for joining us the community and everyone here in amherst schools to just talk about you and your experiences and what would make you the next best leader here in our ford river elementary school so i do want to thank you for that and um enjoy the rest of your day thank you so much do we hang out until 6 30 in case somebody comes on with a question um i think they've had

082a lot of opportunity we've been on for an hour and 17 minutes so they've had a lot of opportunity to put things in the chat but maybe you know the questions that were asked they were probably saying oh you know what those are some good questions too so let's let's just say goodbye and and um i'll talk to you again take care thanks for watching youtube everyone out there bye bye