WEBVTT

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My name is Irene Williams.

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I am principal of Fairfield Court Elementary School,

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Richmond City Public Schools located in Richmond, Virginia.

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One of the first challenges that I really faced was a school that felt they had been forgotten,

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just tucked away in a corner of the city.

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The first thing we had to do was to build morale, staff morale, and how do we do that?

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I think the first thing that you have to do is listen to the staff because you have

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to feel the pulse of your organization and the heartbeat.

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That took a good year, it really did and with us working together.

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I had an open door policy.

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I made sure that they could come in whether it was early morning or-I am a late person,

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so I work in the building late-and so my office door was always open

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to them to hear their suggestions.

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And then we began to plan activities, basically team building activities.

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How are we going to get this done?

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And I would let them know that I was here to support them.

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I was here; I was not going to ask them to do anything that I wouldn't do.

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In addition, I was going to supply them with all the tools they needed

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to be successful, and I kept saying it.

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I was just relentless in what I was saying to them, "I know what it looks like.

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I know what our data looks like, but we are going to make it.

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We are going to do that."

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And if you tell people that so long they begin to believe it as you put actions with your words.

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So if I am going to be here working with you,

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if I am going to give you everything that you are going to need

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to be successful, then I am going to support you.

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Then my expectation is that we will see student achievement improve,

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that we will have a building of people who are really becoming a professional learning community

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and teachers who are willing to work to make sure children understand that they can do.

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Because once you get the teachers on board, children love their teachers,

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they will do just almost anything for them.

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And so once the teachers began to believe that then we had students

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who really began to make a lot of progress.

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I did make some changes with staff.

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Some teachers decided they were going to leave and that was fine because I think

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in an organization if people cannot get on board, they need to try to do something different.

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So I encouraged that, I supported that because I wanted to make sure that everyone was

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in the same place and we were all on board.

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We have master teachers who are coaches, who are grade-level coaches.

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So they go in and support teachers even-I think about evaluation when I come

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in to evaluate-but there they are first so they can talk to their peers.

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So you put teams together according to...

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You put a very strong team leader, which we could consider a coach or grade-level chair,

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and there are still lot of strong members on that team,

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but they support the weakest link bringing that link up to where they should be.

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And so we put them together by grade levels,

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and then we plan together I think that's a critical piece.

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This school is an open school wherein teachers and children can just come in

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and enjoy what's here, and what's here is a lot of love and nurturing

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and a lot of beliefs that they can do.

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So that was a paradigm shift in teachers' belief about students.

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There was a paradigm shift in what teachers believed about themselves.

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They realized, yes, I can be successful.

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And teamwork: the cliche "teamwork makes the dream work" is really true here

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because we work as a team.

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And there are no secrets.

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If you are doing something good everyone in the building needs to know about it,

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not only everyone in the building, everyone downtown, everyone everywhere.

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We celebrated the small victories, okay.

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We don't have to wait to be accredited,

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celebrate that we had gained 20 points in an area, that was great.

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We did kudos and in kudos, I give

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out a weekly memo-the principal's weekly memo-and we highlight successes,

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personal or educational, that teachers have done.

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So the kudos was great because teachers were always looking for their names.

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I would have a spotlight on instruction

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where at any given time-they don't know when-I will put it

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in the principal memo or state it over the intercom.

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I went into Ms. Jones's class and this is what we saw, all her students were on task.

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They were involved in activity where she had small groups,

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one group was doing this, one group was doing that.

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So they want to hear their names; everyone wants to be successful.

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And we did drops in the bucket.

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Drops in the bucket were glows, and the teachers talked to each other

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about how they had supported them.

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And so those were some of the little things we did, but we have is a core of committed

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and dedicated professionals who are willing to do whatever it takes

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to make sure that children are successful.