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Q: You’ve clearly developed a passion for teaching at an early age, second grade to be specific. What do you enjoy about teaching? A: What I love is the puzzle around it. And I’m talking about the teaching of working with adults and children. As a principal, I work with the teachers and the students. Every individual person is a different puzzle to solve and has individual need. And I love the idea of getting to know people and then working to understand what’s the best way to meet their needs. Q: Many people working in the education field argued it’s hard to shut down. What do you do to take care of yourself? A: When I first started as a principal, it was very difficult. I wasn’t shutting down at all, and eventually that can take a toll on you in a lot of ways. I have a team that we partner with together, principals, and we meet regularly and visit each other in each other’s schools. The goal we set for each other was to hold each other accountable for taking care of ourselves. There’s always something else to do, but it’s going to be there tomorrow. The toughest part of the job is to prioritize what can’t wait until tomorrow. Let’s take care of that, so tonight you can go to sleep and come back well rested and take care of the next thing. I have a very set period of time where I know I’m going to work, and I shut it down for the rest of the weekend. I go bike riding and go out with friends. I have a book club that I still, very much, commit to. This job takes a lot. And if you’re tired, and you’re not taking care of yourself, you cannot give everything that you need to give.When I first started as a principal, it was very difficult. I wasn’t shutting down at all, and eventually that can take a toll on you in a lot of ways. I have a team that we partner with together, principals, and we meet regularly and visit each other in each other’s schools
Kristen Williams, Woodbrook Elementary Principal
Q: You’ve worked with [English for Speakers of Other Languages] students. What are your thoughts on people arguing it’s hard to see a child’s gift because of the language barrier? A: If you have the mindset that all children have gifts, you’re going to find a way to connect and find out their gift. You might be outside on the playground, and all of a sudden, you see a student who’s struggling with some concepts and is a super star on the basketball court. How do you build him or her up based on those strengths and bring that skill into learning? Let’s tie basketball into math. Every child has a gift. Our job is to seek that out. Nowadays, we have three ESOL teachers in our building. That is their focus. More and more assessments are available in more languages. So, we can assess kindergartners with Phonemic Awareness Literacy Screening Español and see at least in their native language how they’re developing. And if they’re having a hard time developing in their native language, then we know they might need some support in even developing in the English language. Q: You started this role July 1. What should parents, or the community at Woodbrook Elementary, expect from you? A: Our long-term goals are to continue working on closing the achievement gaps that we know exist. The biggest strategy for that is going to be family engagement, and the way that we’re putting ourselves out there that every family feels connected. And every family knows that we’re here problem-solving and celebrating their child in their journey. Just like I did at my other schools, I feel like we’re at this place right now because so much is new in terms of size and space in the school. [Woodbrook has doubled in size.] The long-term goal is to make sure that we’re putting structures in place now align with some of the newness because when you make big changes like that, the things that you’ve always done and done well may not be going as well. That’s what we’re trying to name. What are the things when Woodbrook was smaller you valued and they were working well, but all of a sudden, they’re not quite working the same way? OK. But we want to keep it because it was making a difference. How do we need to adjust it, so that it works in our new school? That’s my biggest goal. Q: What are some of the complexities of being a principal? A: It’s complexed, but it brings so much joy. What’s interesting to know about this role is that, it is not just managing a building anymore. The role of a principal has changed a lot in wonderful ways. With that comes a lot of responsibilities. The ability to prioritize what to do in any given day has become a more increasingly important skill for an administrator. How do you balance the workload and then working and not coming in tired the next day? I think of my role as a listener, listening to children and asking what’s happening and looking for ways to better serve them.We try to understand what our own biases are that we’re not even aware of and how that impacts what we’re doing in the classroom, or how it impacts how we make assumptions — perhaps engage or not engage with families because we’re really not understanding each other
Kristen Williams, Woodbrook Elementary School Principal
Q: As the face of Woodbrook Elementary, what’s your role in the hiring of teachers and, essentially, minority teachers? A: We’re lucky in the county because we have a big pool of candidates who want to work here. As a principal, what I value about HR is that they do a lot of the screening for us, because otherwise it would be overwhelming. For example, I can post that I need a teacher. And I will have over 100 applicants. When I know I’m working hard to bring in more minorities, I can communicate that with HR. It’s hard for me as a principal because I can’t necessarily see who’s a minority because we cannot ask these questions when they’re applying. I cannot see that part of their application. HR conduct screening interviews before meeting with us. They call me and might say they just interviewed an excellent minority. They might know that I’m seeking a minority candidate in that role. Hiring is one of the most important things that a principal does. We do have that autonomy of screening what HR has already pre-screened, and then interviewing and making our own decisions. It has to be a good fit for that candidate as much as it needs to be a good fit for me. Q: As a student, what was your experience like having a Black teacher? A: I didn’t have many minority teachers growing up. Probably for me, it was when I moved to Florida at the age of 13. I don’t know that I had a minority other than a male, which in the field of education, a male teacher can be a minority as well. Having a Black teacher, for me, the learning was not different. It was just an aha moment. I remember as a young child asking myself, I wonder why this was the first time I had a Black teacher. I loved all my teachers. And I probably was too young and naïve to think through the lenses of my friends who probably might have liked to have a Black teacher prior to that. And maybe they did. There’s a lot more awareness of that now than before, which is wonderful because students need to see themselves when they come to school. They spend a lot of hours with us. They need to see themselves in each of us.Our long-term goals are to continue working on closing the achievement gaps that we know exist. The biggest strategy for that is going to be family engagement, and the way that we’re putting ourselves out there that every family feels connected. And every family knows that we’re here problem-solving and celebrating their child in their journey
Kristen Williams, Woodbrook Elementary School