WEBVTT 00:00:05.360 --> 00:00:09.090 My name is James Johnson-Waldington. I am the Superintendent of the Hollandale School 00:00:09.090 --> 00:00:09.600 District. 00:00:09.600 --> 00:00:14.820 There’s a huge challenge in recruiting teachers here in the Hollandale School District, being 00:00:14.820 --> 00:00:19.200 that our location—we are in the southern part of the Mississippi Delta, but we are 00:00:19.200 --> 00:00:24.320 actually isolated. We’re 22 miles from the next largest city, which is Greenville, about 00:00:24.320 --> 00:00:31.320 15,000 people. We’re out here by ourselves. Local capacity building with our teachers 00:00:32.590 --> 00:00:39.079 that are here in the Hollandale School District addressed this issue 100%. We knew that we 00:00:39.079 --> 00:00:45.160 were going to have to rely heavily on Teach for America—and here in Mississippi it’s 00:00:45.160 --> 00:00:50.280 called Mississippi Teacher Corps, which is out of one of our largest universities here. 00:00:50.280 --> 00:00:55.010 But we also know that those teachers would stay here probably no longer than two years. 00:00:55.010 --> 00:01:00.250 So what we decided to do was build capacity in those teachers that we know that lived 00:01:00.250 --> 00:01:06.640 in the area and that would be here. We invested [in] on-site professional development. We 00:01:06.640 --> 00:01:11.940 invested—we dealt with our leadership team today—we get them [to be] a part of that. 00:01:11.940 --> 00:01:18.510 We want them to be in a collaborative environment so that they know as much as we know so that 00:01:18.510 --> 00:01:24.049 once they’re in their buildings, they’re able to work with those Teach for America 00:01:24.049 --> 00:01:28.350 or Teacher Corps to bring them along a lot sooner than they normally would have if they 00:01:28.350 --> 00:01:30.119 were out there on their own. 00:01:30.119 --> 00:01:37.060 The local capacity that we’ve achieved districtwide is that we have had several teachers that 00:01:37.060 --> 00:01:42.450 have decided to go back to school to continue their education. Several of them have gotten 00:01:42.450 --> 00:01:47.490 administrative licenses; several have gotten master’s and specialist degrees. One of 00:01:47.490 --> 00:01:53.280 the projects that we have in Hollandale School District with the SEED funds that we have 00:01:53.280 --> 00:01:59.430 is that we have a Grow Your Own Program. Again, we talk about that it’s difficult to find 00:01:59.430 --> 00:02:04.350 seasoned teachers or teachers that are coming out of our local universities, to want to 00:02:04.350 --> 00:02:10.699 come to the Hollandale School District. But we do have in the community a lot of individuals 00:02:10.699 --> 00:02:15.170 who have gone to college and that may have just received degrees—not certification 00:02:15.170 --> 00:02:21.660 in teaching, but degrees—and with the SEED funding, with us having to hire assistant 00:02:21.660 --> 00:02:25.810 teachers, what we decided to do was set a policy that we would hire assistant teachers 00:02:25.810 --> 00:02:32.810 that have degrees. And those teachers that came in, we set money aside for them to go 00:02:33.180 --> 00:02:37.870 back to school to try to achieve teacher certification. 00:02:37.870 --> 00:02:44.400 Having a collaborative environment is sharing, is transparency, is being data-driven, is 00:02:44.400 --> 00:02:51.400 everybody understanding what the mission and the vision of the school district is. To not 00:02:51.690 --> 00:02:57.910 have teachers in the dark about anything that’s going on in the district. Those teachers that 00:02:57.910 --> 00:03:04.400 we call teacher leaders are involved in most of the decision making that we have in the 00:03:04.400 --> 00:03:08.680 school. We have a transformation team here at Sanders; we have one at the elementary 00:03:08.680 --> 00:03:13.800 school and we have a district transformation team. And that’s how we help to build the 00:03:13.800 --> 00:03:19.870 capacity in the building, because of the transparency—good, bad, or indifferent—we talk about what it 00:03:19.870 --> 00:03:24.980 is that’s going on in our school district. And we are solution-oriented; we’re not 00:03:24.980 --> 00:03:29.390 problem-oriented. We don’t just talk about what our students don’t know or what it 00:03:29.390 --> 00:03:34.560 is that we’re going to be accountable for; we talk about that but also before the end 00:03:34.560 --> 00:03:39.269 of that meeting, we have a solution to whatever it is that the problem is that we need to 00:03:39.269 --> 00:03:40.930 best serve our children. 00:03:40.930 --> 00:03:46.170 I would tell incoming superintendents to make sure that they understand what they are getting 00:03:46.170 --> 00:03:51.370 into. If they decide that there is something—that they want this job or they want a job in a 00:03:51.370 --> 00:03:55.940 school district like ours—make sure you have all of your information. Data is very 00:03:55.940 --> 00:04:02.940 important. Independent audits on your finances. Independent audit as far as your academia 00:04:03.120 --> 00:04:09.269 are concerned, what type of programs do you have in your academics. Look at your personnel; 00:04:09.269 --> 00:04:14.349 make sure that you look to see what type of capacity do they have. Do they have higher 00:04:14.349 --> 00:04:20.769 degrees? If they don’t, then work on a plan of action to try to get that, because lifelong 00:04:20.769 --> 00:04:21.978 learning is capacity building.