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I was seven months pregnant and probably pushing myself too hard.

It was a science competition, and my seventh graders picked their own events—not the ones I assigned, but the ones they really wanted. Watching them dive into things they cared about, kids who didn’t always have the best grades but loved science and found something personal in it, I kept thinking one thing.

Why isn’t school like this all the time?

That question has driven almost everything I have done since.

I started teaching in Aiken County in 1990. I was clueless, and I admit that openly. I feel sorry for every student I had during those first eight years. But I was lucky in a way I didn’t fully realize then: I was surrounded by veteran teachers who already knew what we now call middle-level best practices. They had read the research, believed in it, and were putting it into practice before I even had words to describe it. Now I know what they were doing matched almost exactly the four pillars of Schools to Watch—I just didn’t know the name yet.

That connection became even clearer when I went after national board certification. The standards for a nationally board-certified middle-level teacher and the expectations of Schools to Watch aren’t exactly the same, but they share the same language. Both focus on adolescent development, rigorous and responsive teaching, and caring for the whole child. Seeing that alignment as a classroom teacher gave me something new: a framework that worked across different settings, bigger than any one school or program. It was worth giving my all to.

It was not a one-year hear-it-and-go-do-it moment. This has been a growing, learning process for me as a professional for many years.

I spent eight years as an assistant principal at Mid-Carolina Middle School before moving to Batesburg-Leesville. Near the end of that time, we applied for the Schools to Watch program but didn’t get it. The feedback pushed us to ask a tougher question than just whether we were doing good things: How do we get everyone engaged? How do we get everyone on the same page?

When I applied for the principal position at Batesburg-Leesville ten years ago, my superintendent was direct with me. The school was not where it needed to be. Different populations were underserved. There were gaps to close, and that was the job. I had done my homework on the community, and what I saw was potential. A community that wanted excellent schools for its kids. A school that could get there. I told the hiring committee I believed we could get there within my first three years. That was my vision, and I meant it.

That first year was hard. There were difficult conversations, mindset shifts that did not come easily, and painful but necessary faculty changes. What kept me grounded was a small group of teachers who came to me early and said, “Miss Clark, we want this.” Let’s figure out how to make it happen.

It is about our kids. The adults drive this process. We do the application, we do the work. But this is for and about kids. I have felt that way my entire career.

What Schools to Watch gave us, more than anything else, was intentionality. That word gets used a lot, but I mean something specific by it. I mean that our students know what they are learning and why. They know their targets. They know where they are entering and where they are supposed to wind up. They can talk about their own learning in a mature, clear way, not because we drilled it into them, but because we made it a real, weekly conversation.

We do not need to teach kids just facts and content. We need to teach them the process.

When guests come into our building, and we invite people in all the time because we want that outside perspective, what they notice is the students. Kids who can tell you where they are, where they are going, and what they need to do next. That still warms my heart after all these years.

Our school’s theme is progress over perfection. Our teachers came up with it, and it is exactly right. Kids do not have to be perfect. They have to grow. Wherever they enter, whatever level they are starting from, the question is always the same: what is your goal, and what does growth look like for you? It does not matter whether you are working toward advanced coursework or are significantly behind grade level. You set a stretch goal, you check in, and we talk honestly about why you are or are not moving forward. That is academic excellence in practice. Not a score. A trajectory.

That philosophy answers something I have wondered about since those early years in the classroom. Kindergartners cannot wait to get to school. By sixth grade, too many of them have lost it. Why do we drive the joy of learning out of kids before they are twelve? Schools to Watch, with its emphasis on developmental responsiveness and social equity, provides a framework for answering that question in practical ways every day.

I will be honest about which pillar I return to most often. A few years ago, I would have said academic excellence without hesitating, and it remains foundational. We have underestimated, and may still, what cultural change this process demands. You have to do the individual work first. You have to help every adult in the building understand their own why. Why are they at the middle level? What do they bring to this work? And then you spread and scale that outward.

If we, as individual professionals, understand our why and why we are at the middle level, what do we bring to the whole school? I truly believe a school-wide culture of belief in why we are here, and who we are here for, is what equity looks like in practice.

I am retiring this year.

I have thought a great deal about what I am leaving behind and for whom. Whoever becomes the next principal of Batesburg-Leesville Middle School is inheriting something that took a decade to build carefully. The right teachers are in the right places at the right grade levels. They are true colleagues. They do not hoard ideas or protect turf. They have open, honest conversations about curriculum, about behavior, about what individual students need. The leadership team is strong enough that it does not need to meet every week to stay aligned. The structures and processes are there.

I am leaving a notebook. It includes our Schools to Watch applications, agendas, leadership team conversations, and documentation from every cycle. If the next person chooses not to use it, that is their call, and I respect it. But it will be there because they should not have to start from scratch. They should be able to pick up what we built and take it somewhere we have not yet considered.

Whoever walks in next will get a strong school with a clear identity. I hope they build on it and make it their own.

We are a long way from a science competition where a pregnant teacher watched her students choose something they loved and thought, “Why isn’t school like this all the time?”

Thirty-six years later, I think I have finally built the solution to that question.

The first time we applied for Schools to Watch, we did not get it.

I started the process feeling confident about what we had built. Our culture was strong, and our teachers truly cared about the kids. Other schools in our district had already earned the designation, and we wanted to join them. We brought up the idea, decided to go for it, and got to work. Then we took a close look at the documentation.

We knew there was a lot to do. But I did not expect what we actually found.

I expected the gap to be in instruction, but it wasn’t. Our teachers were doing good work. The problem was harder to pin down at first. We were all over the place. From grade to grade and teacher to teacher, students’ experiences changed depending on the room they walked into. Learning targets looked one way in one classroom and completely different in the next. A student who had lunch detention in sixth grade faced a very different process in seventh grade. Lesson plans had no common format. Every teacher had their reasons and logic, but from the students’ perspective, moving from room to room, it didn’t add up to a clear, consistent experience.

It came to us as a clarity issue.

You walk into one classroom, and the learning targets look one way. You walk next door, and they look completely different. Same school. Same day. Same student.

We had been so focused on what was happening in each classroom that we never really considered what students experienced as they moved between classrooms. Once I saw it that way, I couldn’t unsee it.

So we submitted again. This time, we got Schools to Watch. But earning the designation was almost secondary to what the process had forced us to do: look at our own school honestly, from the outside in.

The harder work came next. I’m not saying our teachers weren’t doing great things. Professional individualism is important. Teachers should use their unique skills in the classroom. But some things have to be consistent across the school. Convincing people who have done things their own way for years, especially in a small school where there’s nowhere to hide, isn’t easy. We have one science teacher per grade, one social studies teacher, two math teachers, and two English teachers. When you sit down with a team of six and say something needs to change, every one of them is looking right at you.

What I realized through that process, more than anything else, was that I had to change how I led.

I was making decisions and then presenting them to people. I thought that was efficient. What I was actually doing was walking into rooms where I was already outnumbered. So we built a leadership team. Department chairs, team leads, guidance leaders. I gave more say to the people in our building who had been doing good work in their own lanes. And then when it came time to have a hard conversation with a grade-level team, there were already people in that room who understood why the change was coming.

I remember a specific afternoon with our sixth-grade team, when we sat down to discuss standardizing lunch detention procedures across the school. Two of the six people in that room had been part of our leadership team discussions and knew what was coming. There was still some discomfort, as there always is. But it was a different kind of discomfort. Instead of feeling like things were being done to them, we worked on it together, which changed the conversations.

I want to be clear about who our students are. We’re a Title One school in a high-poverty community. We have two feeder elementary schools, and we get what we get. Sometimes kids come in reading at a second-grade level. Families move here from other states or homeschooling, and we don’t always see the gaps until weeks later. Some of our kids bring things into school every day that have nothing to do with what’s on the board.

For a long time, we measured ourselves by what students scored. The Schools to Watch process pushed us toward something harder and more honest: measuring how much they grew.

We get kids where they are. We have to take them from there and grow them.

That shift changed every conversation in our building. Data discussions became real. Grade levels got competitive in a useful way, with each team wanting to outperform the others while also coming together to honestly ask why a student didn’t grow from one year to the next. Those were some of the most genuine conversations I’ve had as a principal. Then there’s our advisory program. We started it just before COVID because we saw our students needed something the regular school day wasn’t providing. Many of our kids come from tough home situations, and they carry those experiences with them. Advisory gave us a place to meet them there. It focuses on social-emotional skills, grade checks, and data review. It has grown every year since. This year, we added clubs. Once a month, students attend a club they chose at the beginning of the year. The clubs were determined by teachers picking something they love, and students choosing what they want to learn. Eighth graders get first pick. Not every kid gets their first choice, but every student gets to spend time on something that isn’t about standardized tests. They ask almost every single week: Is this a club week?”

I do not think we would be where we are with any of that without Schools to Watch. The process gave us a framework for thinking about the whole student, and it held us accountable to it year after year.

We just went through our first redesignation after three years of ongoing work, asking ourselves whether we’re doing well enough. What I’ve come to appreciate about the three-year cycle is how honest it makes you. Things drift. Priorities pile up. What mattered in year one can get buried under urgent issues in year two. The redesignation process brings those things back to the surface. Not because something is broken, but because you want your school to do well and keep earning what you worked for.

Our next goal is improving inclusion and co-teaching for our special education students. We have real challenges there, staffing and resources that are not easy to solve. But because of this process, our district leadership now understands the specific nature of those challenges in a way they did not before. We will get where we need to go.

I was a coach for years. And in coaching, you hear this said a hundred times:

If it were easy, everyone would do it. If winning were easy, everyone would win. 

But we know that’s not how it works. This process is like that. It’s challenging and takes time. There will be uncomfortable conversations and decisions that not everyone agrees with. But in my opinion, it’s well worth it. We’ve grown a lot. We’ve improved many of our processes, procedures, and instructions. We’re not the same school we were when we first applied.

We are better. And we are still not finished.

My freshman year, I really, really wanted to go.

There were seven seniors going to the SCAMLE Conference, and I did not really know a single one of them. I remember telling Dr. Martin I really wanted to go and Dr. Martin said, “Okay, you can go.” And I went. I did not know what I was walking into. I just knew I wanted to be there.

That was four years ago. I have been back every year since.

I grew up knowing I wanted to teach middle school. Middle school years are hard for every student, and when I look back at my own, those were the years I had the most support from teachers who showed up for me in ways that went beyond content. They taught me what care looks like in a classroom. That stayed with me. I went to Winthrop specifically because they had a Middle Level Program, and I committed myself to it fully, taking on leadership in our Collegiate Middle Level Association almost from the beginning. When something needed to happen, I made it happen. That was just who I was.

Dr. Martin saw it. She has been my professor, my advisor, and if I am being honest, one of the most important people in my life. I have sat in her office and cried, laughed, and worked through everything in between. She has never sugarcoated anything for me, and I have never wanted her to. We have that kind of relationship.

Last year, when we came back from the conference, she looked at me and said “You have been enough times to SCAMLE. It is time to do more. You’ve been to enough presentations. You know what a good presentation looks like and what it doesn’t. Let’s present.”

So we did. This year, I co-presented with another student and two of our faculty members on hosting college interns with purpose. Two student perspectives, two faculty perspectives, what makes an internship experience actually work for everyone in the room. I had presented in classrooms before. This was different. This was a room full of middle school educators from across the state, and I was teaching them something.

I will not pretend the year was simple. I came in with a full plate. I had an early Friday afternoon meeting with Dr. Martin and the SCPOMLE organization before the conference even began. I was also receiving the Teacher Candidate to Watch Award that evening, the first recipient from Winthrop University. And I was responsible for eleven students from our program, nine of whom were attending for the very first time. I had to apologize to all of them at the end. I told them: I am sorry I was not there to walk you through every session. I had expected to guide them more closely, and they had probably expected that too. But what happened instead was that they figured out how to navigate on their own, and I think that was its own kind of lesson. You can only lead from afar sometimes. That is still leading.

What I have come to understand about this conference is that it meets you wherever you are. My freshman year, it was a room full of people who loved middle schoolers, and I had never been around that before, not all at once, not like that. By junior year, I was bringing others and watching them have the same experience. This year, I was at the front of a session, and a woman I had met at the national conference in Indianapolis came into the room to support me. She is not even from South Carolina. She works for AMLE and lives in Indiana. And she came.

Having support within the state and outside the state, at the national level, is so meaningful. Part of the reason I keep coming back.

I have a notebook full of things I have written over the past four years. Quotes from keynote speakers. Strategies I tried in my field placements. I brought my ideas to my mentor teachers and said, “Can we do this?” I graduate in May. My first classroom is coming. Every single page in that notebook is coming with me.

I did not really know those seven seniors when I showed up as a freshman. I just knew I wanted to be there. I am glad I went.

In my  first year teaching, my principal let me go to SCAMLE.

I was a nineteen-year-old math teacher in Sumter, South Carolina and it was 1991. The conference was at the beach, in the same hotel and location where it is still held today. I remember walking into that opening session and thinking, This is exactly where I need to be. I came home energized in a way I had not expected. Not in the way a good lesson plan energizes you, or a strong parent meeting. It was something different. Something that reminded me why I had chosen this profession in the first place..

I went back the next year, and the year after that. By my second or third year teaching, I was presenting.

What I found at that conference, and what I kept going back for, was simple. Most of your professional life is spent inside your school, your district, your own four walls. A conference breaks that open. You sit beside someone from another part of the state who is wrestling with the exact same challenges you are. You hear their frustration and recognize it. You hear what they tried and write it down. You stop feeling like the only one.

If you took the time to attend a conference, you are not a Negative Nelly sitting in the teacher’s lounge. You are there because you care, because you want to grow, and because you want to be better. It puts you in that mindset.

I carried that with me into administration, telling every teacher I led: get out, go learn something, come back changed. I carried it to Winthrop eleven years ago when I came to join the middle-level program. In my first year back at SCAMLE as a professor, I sat in the higher education faculty organization meeting, met Chris Burkett, and learned that the Middle Grades Initiative could help pay for my students to attend.

That mattered to me because I remembered my own college experience. I once went to a conference in Hilton Head with my professors. We went to dinner. We played putt-putt. I remember thinking it was the coolest thing, being around my professors outside of the classroom, to be treated like a future colleague instead of just a student. It changed how I saw myself in this profession.

I wanted to give my students that same experience.

So we started going. The first year, maybe four students. I told them, “We are going to do something fun on Friday night. We are going to go to dinner together. We are going to be around each other in a different way.” I have done it every year since. It is not a small thing.  In many ways, it is the thing. A college student who has never been taken seriously as a professional does not know what that feels like until someone shows them.

Money is always a barrier. A college student cannot easily afford a conference and a hotel room. But if the path is cleared, they go. And once they go, something shifts.

This year, eleven students came with us. Nine of them were attending for the first time. Our program has grown to fifty-four students. Some of that growth comes from the work we do in the classroom. But some of it comes from this conference and the way it shows students that there is an entire community of people who chose middle school on purpose and are glad they did.

What I love most is what happens years later. SCAMLE has become what I can only describe as a Winthrop alumni reunion. Former students who are now in their fourth, fifth, or sixth year of teaching come running up to me. They tell me what is happening in their classrooms, where they have moved, and what they are accomplishing. Some of them went to schools where the principal had never heard of SCAMLE. They went anyway. A few brought their principals the following year.

One of my newer graduates attended a school where the principal had risen through the ranks of high school administration. He was talented and capable, but he did not know the middle-level framework. Then here came my teacher, fresh out of Winthrop, asking why they were not team teaching and why these best practices were not part of the school’s culture. That is what the Middle Grades Initiative planted in her. That is what the conference was about.

The middle grades initiative is helping perpetuate this mindset. It gives teachers the conference experience and a network of people who still believe what they were taught about middle schools.

I also serve as a Schools to Watch evaluator, and what I see when I visit those schools reinforces everything I know about why this matters. Middle school is not elementary school, and it is not high school. It requires its own philosophy, its own structures, its own understanding of what adolescents need at this specific moment in their development. When a school is built around those principles, you feel it the moment you walk in. When it is not, you feel that too.

This year, I watched Alexa Kate Bagwell present at SCAMLE for the first time. She has been coming with us for four years, the only student in our program’s history to attend every single year. Last year, I looked at her and told her it was time to do more. She had been leading, recruiting, and showing up. She was ready to stand at the front of a room and teach other teachers. So she did. That same weekend, she also received the Teacher Candidate to Watch Award. She was running in every direction that Friday, presenting, receiving an award, and leading nine first-time attendees from afar. She handled all of it with confidence.

Watching her, I thought about 1991. A principal who said yes and sent a young teacher to a beach conference. A girl who went to putt-putt with her professors at Hilton Head and thought: I want to do this for my students someday.

They build my world just as much as I help build theirs. They feed my passion. We desperately need many more people who want to be in middle schools.

Thirty-five years later, I am still going to the same conference. Still taking notes. Still taking students to Friday night dinner and watching something shift in how they see themselves.

Still saying yes.

I’m awkward. They’re awkward. It just fits.

That’s what I tell people when they ask why I teach middle school, and I truly mean it completely every time. I knew going into Winthrop University that I wanted a middle-level program specifically. Not something I would adjust or adapt. The real thing. The weird, unpredictable, you-love-me-one-day-and-hate-me-the-next thing that is seventh grade. Sixth grade feels like a slow roller coaster building all year, and eighth grade begins chaotic but settles down. Seventh grade is just constant chaos, and I love it. I love watching students discover who they are in real time, that moment when they still need you, but you can already see who they’re becoming.

About my junior year, one of my professors mentioned a conference. There is a middle-level conference, she said. You can apply for a grant. They will pay for it. You just have to find somewhere to stay.

I was like, okay, that sounds neat.

When I walked in, I found a room full of people who truly love middle schoolers. Not just those who tolerate them or ended up here because elementary jobs were full. These were people who chose this on purpose and were genuinely excited. At other conferences, even good ones, there’s usually a shift toward elementary or high school. You have to spend energy adjusting and translating. But here, for the first time, I didn’t have to do any of that. Every session was already focused on my kids.

I went again before I graduated. I have gone every year I have been teaching. This year was my eighth time. And it has meant a lot to me.

During my senior year, my last internship didn’t go well. I saw teachers being negative about their students, and I started to wonder: if this is what teaching is, I don’t want it. I had spent four years in a program I loved and had chosen middle school on purpose. Yet there I was, standing in a building, doubting if I could really do this.

I went to the middle-level conference that year.

Okay, it’s not all teachers. It’s just this one group. Most middle school teachers aren’t like that. There are plenty of people who love what they do, love their kids, and want to get better for them.

I came back, finished, and have been in a classroom every year since. But it happened again. Two years ago was a really hard year. I had been feeling low since November, and by February, I was not sure I would make it to the end of the school year. I got to March. I got to the conference.

Okay. I can make it to the end of the year.

I tell my students every spring, “I am going to a conference this weekend.” I am coming back on Monday, and I will be so excited that it will feel like the first day of school. They look at me like I have lost my mind. I have a little bit. That is the point. It is perfectly timed, every year, right when I need it.

This year, I presented for the first time.

Eight years of attending. Never presented. My colleagues and I have been using a creative bookmaking strategy in our classrooms this year, and we decided to share it at the conference. I will not pretend I was not nervous. But then someone came up after and said, “This is my plan, this is exactly how I am going to use this.” And I later saw that people had used the templates I shared. Something I had made in my classroom had moved into other classrooms in other schools.

Not only am I a professional. I am starting to become a leader. Not just in my school. In other places where I can share knowledge and help people.

What made it better than I expected was that two of the teachers who taught me in middle school happened to come to my presentation. These are people who remember me from back then, and I genuinely feel bad about that. But standing there and watching them say, ” Look at how much you have grown, look at where you are going and where you are going to continue to go, that landed differently than I anticipated.

That same year, a teammate encouraged me to take on a leadership role at my school. He said: You go to the conference every year, you share everything you learn, you present to colleagues. You are already doing leadership. Why not make it official? I became a seventh-grade team lead this year. And at the conference, without planning, most of the sessions I attended were about leadership development as if the whole thing knew where I was and what I needed next.

I have applied for the grant almost every year I have attended. The application asks one thing: how are you going to share what you learn? And I would share anyway. I always do. The grant just gives the sharing a shape and a deadline, which makes it easier to follow through. I presented to my department the day after I got back this year. People were already asking me: ” How was it? What did you learn? What are you going to do?

If someone asked me to describe the conference in one word, I would say resource. A resource for knowledge. A resource for connection. A resource for the moment in the year when your bucket is running low, and you need someone to remind you why you are here.

Middle school is a more important time in a young person’s development than most people realize. A middle schooler’s brain develops at a rate comparable to that of a newborn’s. And yet it is the level that gets the least targeted support, the least specifically designed professional development, the most eye rolls in the break room. Having a place to go where none of that is present, where the whole room is filled with people who chose this and are glad they did, matters more than I can fully explain.

Next year is year fifty. I cannot wait to see what they do with it.

In South Carolina, most awards require schools to reach full proficiency. Our school hasn’t reached that mark yet.

That’s not an excuse; it’s just the truth. Our school serves a high-poverty community, and we work hard every day for students who need us. For a long time, there wasn’t anything to show our community, parents, or teachers that said: This school is doing good work. This school is worth believing in.

That’s why we decided to pursue Schools to Watch.

Two years ago, we started considering it. We sent out an informal survey to teachers, then our leadership team sat down and asked ourselves: Is this something we can take on? We felt we were already doing much of what the framework described by reviewing discipline data every month, raising rigor and student engagement, and giving teachers real leadership roles. When I brought the idea to our School Improvement Council parents, they didn’t hesitate.

Their exact words: “We have seen this school grow so much since COVID. This is something we should definitely go for.”

So we went for it. From the start, I told teachers, students, and parents the same thing:

We are true to ourselves. We don’t try to be someone else. We know there are things we can improve, and we also know we’re doing well in other areas. But we have to accept who we are before we can move ahead.

I said that a lot. Because teachers would ask: ” What are we supposed to say when they come to observe us?” And the answer was always the same…The truth. Tell them who we are.

The process gave us a mirror, not one that flatters or criticizes, but one that’s simply honest.

Over the summer, our leadership team and teachers met to review every section. We asked: What are we doing well? What needs improvement? Where can we grow? Those conversations shaped our work plan, which then guided our professional development. Our PD became focused and practical, based on what we actually saw in classrooms, not just generic training.

We do three walkthrough cycles each semester, one day each for math, English, and science. Every teacher receives individual feedback, and each department receives group feedback. In every classroom, we started asking: What’s your learning target today? What are you working on? How do you know if you’ve learned it?

It took time for teachers to adjust, but we improved. By January, we changed our Thursday professional development from passive sessions to planning together: How do we build this into lessons? If someone struggled with small groups, we paired them with an instructional coach or teacher leader and gave them time and a substitute to work through it together.

Don’t hate the data. Embrace the data. Whatever you learn, you have to find out what it is. Then figure out how to address. As a principal, there are times when your feelings get hurt. You put in a lot of effort, but the data shows it didn’t work. That’s tough. But the data tells you something, and if you don’t listen, you can’t make changes. What I’m most proud of is how student voice is starting to grow.t voice.

We know that when students are more involved in their own learning, they learn more. If the teacher does all the leading and students just listen, less learning happens. So this year, we started clubs, like student government, literary magazine, volleyball, football, lacrosse, drama, chorus, and band. We’re just getting started, meeting three times a week for now. Our goal is to meet every day next year.

We’ve also started giving students a real say in things that matter to them.

Earlier this year, I asked the student government, “What would motivate you to do better on your iReady scores?” They discussed it and came back with an answer: If we hit our goal, could we wear pajama bottoms for a week?

I told them, “You hit your goal, you can wear pajama bottoms.”

They reached their goal, and I kept my promise. You would have thought I gave them a million dollars. It’s a great example of what we want to keep building here. What we want to keep building—helping students feel ownership, identity, and that their voice matters here.

We also invited someone from the district to interview students about what’s happening in their classrooms. We use that feedback to guide our goals. They’ll return at the end of the year to do it again, and that will shape our work plan for next year. The Schools to Watch process showed us we needed more student voice, and we’re making that happen.

On math, the numbers are starting to move. Last year, we had low proficiency. Our most recent iReady data projects significant growth. We are doing more small-group and individualized instruction, focusing more on clarity of learning, and using the resources that we have in ways that adapt to each student. Math is about confidence, and when a kid can see their own progress, on their own terms, something shifts.

We already had a strong reading culture, but now we’re deepening it. We’re asking what purposeful reading looks like and building a library with books kids actually want to read, books where they can see themselves and find characters who share their experiences. If a student is in a self-contained class, we want them to find a book with a character like them, not just a mention, but a real character.

None of this shows up on a report card, but it’s real, and it matters.

The Schools to Watch banner on our wall means something to our community. It tells parents, students, and teachers that what’s happening here is worth recognizing, not because we’ve reached the finish line, but because we’re doing the work and growing.

Most awards require scores we don’t have yet. This one looks at everything a school does and says: You’re doing real things, now keep going. For schools like ours, that means a lot.

It’s a great thing for schools like ours to have something to aim for. That’s what the banner represents.

I also say this: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. The Schools to Watch process won’t let you do that. Every time you renew, you have to show growth. You can’t stay in the same place; you have to keep moving forward.

That’s the culture I want in this building: not perfect, but always growing.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. “No one wants to work anymore.” What about this? “What are they teaching these kids now? They don’t know anything about the real world.” I hear these sentiments quite a lot in my field of work. As an educator focused on work-readiness and career development, I sit at the intersection of industry expectations and students’ preparedness to meet them. The problem is that there are more layers to these issues than people realize. So often, especially in high-poverty rural communities, there are barriers that prevent the attainment of skills that the workforce hopes to see. I didn’t know it at the time, but I think I may have been built over time to uniquely identify with both. 

My brother and I were raised in rural South Carolina by my grandmother with a very limited income. I lived in a big house, so people didn’t realize the limitations we faced and the inability to attain the things that others had. Beyond the emotional toll was the realization that I had to work for the things I wanted. I was fortunate to have people in my life who helped me with those things. From beginning to work at 14, to dropping out of college when I got married at 19 and divorced at 27, going back to school to get not only a Bachelor’s degree but also a Ph.D., there were people in my life who interceded. There were times I didn’t have transportation to get to school or work, and someone stepped in to assist me. There were times, as a single mom, when I had to choose between gas for my car to get to work and keeping the lights on, and someone helped. There were also times, though, when I wanted to give up or made choices with consequences that could have been much worse. As I look back at my life and the beauty of where I am now, I know I would never have reached this point without the mentoring and support of the people in my life. While this story is wholly mine, it is not unique, as many students and their families face such challenges daily.

Now that I am a Work-Based Learning Coordinator tasked with finding internship opportunities for high school students, I see so much of myself in some of them. When people say no one wants to work anymore my first thought is that I have 74 student interns who want to go to work today, and I can’t find enough people to work with them all. And is it that the people you want to work with have no desire to work, or have the circumstances of their life put them in a position where they do not have the means to work? Is transportation a barrier, or are they struggling to eat and have clothing? Or do they just need the right people to take notice and give them the opportunity to learn?

While internships are reciprocal relationships that can meet an organization’s needs and provide real-world experience for students, they are still learning experiences, and most will not equip students with the skill set to perform as a seasoned professional would. When I first came into my role, I was naive to the fact that those complaining about the workforce could also be unwilling to provide opportunities for students. Yet, with the right supports and partnerships in place, I have seen great success for some of these students. 

I was hired four years ago to manage the Key to Career Internship Program that began with 18 students and has expanded to 159 in the past year. These students are strategically placed in courses to help build essential life skills, such as communication, collaboration, and time management. Many of these students will need to unlearn behaviors that counter those skills, and it does not occur overnight. With my very first cohort of students in the spring of 2022, I began to realize not only that reality but also that the students I needed to help find internship experiences faced barriers beyond the classroom. 

One of my first interns had a placement aligned with her career goals, but her family had only one vehicle, and her dad used it to get to work. Transportation is a major issue for many students, and we were able to work through it, but it wasn’t the only issue. Her internship mentor noticed the condition of her clothing and paid for her to buy two suits she could wear on specific days. He never asked whether she needed the clothing; instead, he told her that, since she was his employee, he needed to provide her with a “uniform,” and she never realized he was assisting her because of her needs. When she received her first paycheck, she proudly told me she was able to turn the power back on at her home, after they had been living without lights or heat for months. At the end of her internship, her mentor gave her a $500 scholarship to help purchase college books – in addition to the $ 10-per-hour salary she earned. This student is currently finishing up her senior year of college with skills and abilities she would not have had if her mentor had not been willing not only to open the doors of his organization for her, but also to see and help meet her needs. 

Similar to my story, her story is unfortunately not unique, either. I have had a student intern who was involved in gang activity, who worked for a fire department, and is now in the military. I have had a student intern who went from being on the verge of an attendance plan to showing up every day at school and work, even if he had to walk. I have also had internship students who worked two jobs or slept on friends’ couches because they did not have a home. These were all students who wanted to work but, without assistance, could not.I recognize the needs of others because of the needs that I have encountered. I also recognize the privilege I have because others stepped in to help me. To truly build a workforce pipeline, we need to go beyond opening doors and open our eyes to the problems students face every day, asking how we can help alleviate them. It is not enough to say what we want the future workforce to look like; we need to put in the work to help it happen. True success comes from investing in people, and the earlier we begin, the better.

There is a well-known African proverb that teaches, “A person is a person because of other people.” Often expressed as Ubuntu—“I am, because you are”—this truth reminds us that our humanity is shaped through our relationships with one another. When a community is healthy, engaged, and united in purpose, it becomes a source of strength—lifting us in moments of exhaustion and renewing hope in times of disillusionment. Together, we grow stronger and go farther than we ever could alone.

Consider the scope of this work for a moment. I have the privilege of supporting a community of 60 international educators from across the globe, each serving students in classrooms across 32 school sites in Greenville County, South Carolina. Our district educates more than 77,000 students from K4 through grade 12. In the spirit of Ubuntu—“I am, because we are”—this work is rooted in relationship and shared responsibility. While I am one person, my work is made meaningful through the collective strength of this community. Each day, I serve alongside others so that every educator feels seen and supported, and every student has the opportunity to thrive.

At first glance, our team members appear to have little in common. They come from different geographies, carrying regionally rooted foods, dialects, and traditions—each layered with meanings known most deeply by family and community. The threads of their traditional garments are as distinct as the journeys that brought them here. For many, life “back home” continues in parallel time zones, where floods, typhoons, political unrest, and the loss of loved ones unfold as distant notifications on their social media accounts. Yet even across oceans, these experiences remain woven into who they are, reminding us that no one arrives untouched by the lives they leave behind.

What unites this community is a shared moment of arrival in Greenville. As they step onto the escalator toward baggage claim, palms slightly damp with anticipation, their eyes search for a familiar sign of welcome. At the bottom, I stand holding a sign bearing a logo they recognize and their name written in bold black marker, an American flag in my other hand. In that moment, Ubuntu becomes visible. Relief, tears, and smiles meet my gaze—not because I am the destination, but because I represent belonging. This is the first affirmation that they are not alone—that their brave journey has grown the circle and deepened the ties that connect us all.

From that moment forward, time begins to move differently. The five-year visa clock starts its quiet countdown as classrooms are arranged, desks positioned, and linens placed on beds that will offer rest in an unfamiliar land. These acts—small but deeply human—carry the weight of transition. They both stir and steady the emotions that shape the cultural exchange experience. In the spirit of Ubuntu, this work is not merely about relocation or instruction; it is about living, learning, and becoming together—recognizing that each individual’s success is bound to the care, presence, and shared responsibility of the whole.

Ubuntu demonstrates its pervasive relevance every day in a million tiny ways. Through advocacy, celebration, professional support, and even shared mourning and discontent, I am, because we are. The unity of our purpose, the high quality of our professional insights, and our personal resilience as individuals and as a collective inspire us. May we continue to walk forward together, leading, supporting, and growing side by side.

There is a moment in every writing retreat that I have learned to recognize.

It comes just before someone reads aloud at a writing conference with me. The eyes don’t make eye contact. The throat clears. Almost always, the preface arrives before the story does: This probably isn’t very good. Or, I don’t really write. Or, I’m not sure this is what you were looking for.

By the time the words are spoken, the apology has already taken up space in the room.

I have heard this from students, veteran teachers, first-year educators, principals, and instructional coaches. No matter how many times we name it or how many times we say that writing is communal or that perfection is not the point, the instinct to minimize oneself arrives early and uninvited.

When I first began facilitating narrative spaces, I approached the work the way I had learned to approach writing as a middle school English teacher. My instinct was to remove barriers. To reassure. To encourage. To tell people, truthfully, that what they had to say mattered.

That instinct still lives in me. What I did not understand for quite a long time was how much power sat quietly inside that reassurance. In the classroom, encouragement is a tool for growth. In institutional spaces, it becomes something else. It shapes what feels safe to say. It signals what kind of story belongs. It suggests, often unintentionally, what will be valued once the writing leaves the room.

Because I am not just holding space. I am shaping it.

I choose the prompts. I frame the purpose. I explain what a “field narrative” is and what it might do once it travels beyond the table where it was written. I help determine whether a story is ready to be shared publicly, revised privately, or held back altogether. Even when I say, This is for you, the structure surrounding the writing suggests otherwise.

The habits I carried with me from the classroom, scaffolding, modeling, and guiding, did not disappear when I moved into facilitation. They scaled. And with that scale came a different kind of responsibility, one I had not yet fully named.

There is an invisible curriculum in narrative work, and I am one of its instructors. Over time, I began to notice the kinds of stories that surfaced most easily. Stories of perseverance. Stories of growth. Stories that bent toward hope, even when they began in pain. I noticed which drafts participants hesitated to read aloud, and which ones drew nods of recognition from the group. I noticed which stories people asked me about later: Is this okay to share? Should I take this part out?

Those questions lingered with me longer than the stories themselves. Because embedded in them was a deeper uncertainty: Who is this story for? And just beneath that: What are the consequences of telling it honestly?

There are stories I encourage people to write, and stories I quietly hope they don’t.

Not because they are unimportant. But because I know the systems they move through. I know how easily a story can be misunderstood, flattened, or repurposed once it leaves the care of its author. I know that vulnerability, when removed from context, can become evidence against the very people who offered it in good faith.

This is the ethical tension at the heart of narrative work in education, especially when it is housed inside institutions. We invite educators to bring their full selves to the page, but we cannot always guarantee what will happen to those selves once the story circulates. We say your voice matters while working within systems that have long ignored, disciplined, or extracted voice. We celebrate authenticity, but often only the versions that are legible, productive, or palatable to those in power.

I sit with this contradiction constantly.

As an intermediary, positioned between schools and systems, between lived experience and policy discourse, I am close enough to hear the stories people do not publish. I am trusted with moments that never appear in reports or presentations. I carry narratives that shape my understanding of what schools need, even when those narratives cannot be cited, quoted, or shared.

This proximity is a privilege. It is also a responsibility. Because storytelling is not neutral. The act of inviting someone to write already assumes that their experience can be translated into meaning, that it can serve a purpose beyond itself. When we create narrative spaces, we are not just asking what happened? We are asking what kind of knowledge counts. And, implicitly, what kind of story will move the room?

I have learned to listen for what is missing as much as what is said.

Sometimes the absence is protective. Sometimes it is imposed. Sometimes it signals a boundary the writer is not ready, or not willing, to cross. My role is not to push past that boundary. My role is to recognize it, respect it, and consider what it reveals about the conditions under which educators are being asked to speak.

In recent years, I have changed how I facilitate these spaces. I speak less about courage and more about consent. I talk openly about the audience and the afterlife. I name that not every story needs to be shared publicly to be meaningful. I remind participants that withholding can be an act of wisdom rather than fear.

The truth is, some of the most important stories resist resolution. They sit in tension. They raise questions without answering them. They make us uncomfortable, not because they are poorly told, but because they reveal the limits of the systems we operate within.

Those stories are harder to hold. They require restraint. They ask more of the listener than the teller. I am still learning how to sit with that. I am still learning how to be honest about the power I carry in these rooms, and how to use it with care. I am still learning how to invite others into narrative work without assuming ownership over what they produce. I am still learning when to step forward and when to step back.

What I know now is this: asking someone to tell their story is never a small thing. It is an invitation that comes with weight, whether we acknowledge it or not.

If we are going to continue this work, if we are going to ask educators to write themselves into a field that has too often been written over them, then we must be willing to interrogate the structures we build around their voices. Not to silence them. But to ensure that when they speak, they are not standing alone.

“I have always thought of myself as a teacher the way other people of think of themselves as gardeners, painters, composers, mathematicians, and poets. I am a craftsperson of learning…”

(Kohl, 1998, pg. 10). Before the titles, before the credentials, before the organizations, teaching was the throughline. As a scholar and scientist, I was trained to ask precise questions, to honor evidence, and to respect the discipline required to move from curiosity to clarity. As an educator, I learned early that knowledge alone does not change outcomes. Context matters. Systems matter. Relationships matter.

My early work in a genetics laboratory sharpened my analytical lens. It taught me how complex systems behave, how variables interact, and how small shifts can produce outsized effects. However, it was my early years in secondary education that initially caused my calling to stretch. I did not want to simply teach in schools. I wanted to change the business of school. I wanted to understand why sound ideas stalled at implementation, why policy so often felt disconnected from classroom realities, and why educators were frequently positioned as recipients of decisions rather than contributors to them.

That curiosity carried me beyond the classroom and into the broader education ecosystem. My work within state education systems exposed me to how policy is interpreted, operationalized, and constrained at scale. My leadership in higher education, particularly in assessment and accreditation, deepened my understanding of accountability, quality assurance, and the invisible structures that shape educator preparation and professional learning. Moving across these spaces—from the classroom, to the lab, to state systems, to higher education, gave me a panoramic view of education as an interconnected system rather than a collection of isolated roles.

Just as important, it gave me perspective and relationships. I learned how decisions are made, who holds influence, where data is leveraged well, and where it is misunderstood or misused. I saw the distance between intent and impact, and the cost of that distance to students, educators, and communities. Verbalizing Visions LLC emerged from that lived tension.

The capacity of Verbalizing Visions is inseparable from my background as a scientist, scholar, educator, and entrepreneur. We are built to translate research into action, policy into practice, and ideas into systems that can actually sustain them. Our work integrates inquiry, experiential learning design, reflective leadership development, and strategic facilitation. We operate across sectors because we understand their languages…and their limitations. At our core, we help leaders make meaning, build alignment, and move with intention within complex systems.

This foundation has shaped my leadership within the Education Leaders Experience (ELE), a ten-month professional learning experience for K-12 higher education leaders. I entered ELE in its fourth year as a lead facilitator and internal evaluator at a pivotal moment in its evolution. My role was not to create the experience, but to help deepen it—strengthening its coherence, sharpening its learning design, and grounding it more intentionally in reflection, systems thinking, and lived policy context all within a fully virtual environment. This was during Spring  2020 when in-person convening were impossible and leaders were navigating the COVID-19 pandemic in real time. Designing for connection, inquiry, and trust in that moment required ELE to become more deliberative, more reflective, and more aligned with the realities leaders were facing. That inflection point marked a shift from adaption to intentionality, position ELE to mature into a decade-long effort, now in its tenth year, with a clearer theory of impact and a stronger alignment between purpose, practice, and participant experience.

Through the collaborative leadership among Colonial Life, the Center for Educational Partnerships, regional workforce advisors from the SC Department of Employment and Workforce, and Verbalizing Visions, ELE has functioned as a living learning system. Rather than operating as a fixed program, ELE is intentionally designed to evolve in response to the needs, questions, and realities leaders bring into the space. Participants engage in experiential learning grounded in authentic contexts that expand their understanding of education within broader workforce and community ecosystems, helping leaders see connections and opportunities often obscured by role-specific silos.

Reflection serves as a core leadership practice within ELE. Structured reflection is embedded throughout the experience to support sense-making, adaptive thinking, and alignment between values and action. Participants examine how their identities, experiences, and environments shape how they lead, particularly during moments of uncertainty and change. This reflective practice becomes a tool leaders carry back into their organizations, strengthening decision-making and leadership coherence over time.

Impact statements from ELE participants demonstrate consistent and meaningful shifts in leadership perspective, practice, and intent. Across cohorts, leaders describe expanded awareness of how education connects to community, workforce, and local economies, with repeated emphasis on purpose, resilience, adaptability, and people-centered leadership. Site-based experiences with farms, small businesses, cultural institutions, manufacturing, libraries, and corporations surfaced the value of mission-driven work, ethical decision-making, and community over competition. Many participants noted a renewed commitment to preparing students for multiple postsecondary pathways, including careers and trades, and a clearer understanding of how real-world skills such as problem-solving, collaboration, and adaptability align with local workforce needs.

Participants also reported changes in how they understand and enact leadership. Reflections frequently referenced increased confidence, clarity of purpose, and a shift away from position-based authority toward influence grounded in relationships, listening, and trust. Leaders described becoming more intentional about partnership-building, communication, and stakeholder engagement, as well as more reflective about how identity, values, and lived experience shape decision-making. Several noted concrete changes to their practice, including rethinking work-based learning design, strengthening community partnerships, refining communication structures, and fostering team cultures centered on respect, belonging, and shared responsibility.

Collectively, these impact statements indicate that ELE strengthens individual leadership capacity while also contributing to a broader culture of connected, purpose-driven leadership. Participants consistently articulated a deeper sense of responsibility to serve students, colleagues, and communities with intention, adaptability, and integrity. The experience not only broadened perspectives, but also reinforced a shared commitment to leadership that values people, builds resilience, and leverages community assets to create meaningful and sustainable impact.

At its core, my call to teach has always been a call to reach beyond classrooms, beyond roles, and beyond inherited ways of doing school. Verbalizing Visions LLC is where that calling takes form as leadership development grounded in clarity, connection, and systems awareness. For me, leadership is teaching at scale, creating conditions where people can see systems more clearly, make meaning together, and move within them more wisely. My leadership in the Education Leaders Experience reflects this work by stewarding spaces for learning, reflection, inquiry, and relationship. ELE is one way Verbalizing Visions shows up in the field, reaching leaders where they are, honoring what they carry, and equipping them to shape what comes next with clarity, courage, and care.

References

Kohl, H. (1998). The Discipline of Hope. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster