Dr. Crystal Phillips

I'm blessed, but I also really work really hard. I take it really seriously. I want to do my best each and every day. I try to treat every child like they're my own, like they're a family member. And I take it home with me and want to do my best, not only for children, but to support parents and families to make my community a better place for little kids who look like me.

The best career advice I've ever received was probably from one of my mentors, who told me that even when things don't go the way you expected or you planned when you left the house that morning, don't take it so personal. When you're working with people, sometimes things are just purely out of your control. But consistency and high expectations rule the day.

My advice would be to recognize the impact that you have the potential to make. Everybody has needs and has teachers, but as soon as we are able to impact another student or a child, we change their lives forever by believing in them and by giving them the support they need to be successful. And I think it's not a field where we are millionaires, however, I always tell people it's a way to make a great living and impact our future. Because if we don't educate our children with folks who are intelligent enough to be educators, who understand math and science well enough to teach it to children, then our society will perish for the lack of knowledge, which is valuable, which keeps that which has had us ahead of every other country before now. And we've gotten to a space where we devalue education and devalue and disrespect educators as a second-class or less than field or career. And so we've got to look at that differently so that we're able to develop children and our world to be prepared for what's in store tomorrow.

I think the biggest challenges right now is the over-immersion into technology, from televisions to iPhones to the internet and all these social media pages, all these things that are not helpful for students. One, developmentally, their brains should not be impacted with so much electronics and all those kinds of things. And then, the social-emotional aspects and the development is affected, because when you're looking at other people and other people's lives, the whole idea or the parts of comparing yourself to other people, it's a self-esteem killer. So we have these kids who have low self-esteem. I believe that's why we have a huge uptick in all these students and children having anxiety and are stressed out because they're comparing themselves to folks that they don't even know or haven't even seen. Parents have built a culture of wanting to make sure that they're friends. We've moved away from consistency and consequences for behavior. We're just not setting up standards and holding children to those standards. One of my rules in my school is we follow directions the first time given, and I tell parents that's what you have to do at home. But what happens is when they're at home, the mom is saying it 5 and 6 times before they listen. So when they go into the classroom, teachers don't have 5 or 6 times to tell 22 to 25 kids the same thing over and over again. We won't be able to get anything done. We're setting our children up to not be successful in school, just by not having the respect to obey simple rules of just following directions the first time.

My values are integrity, respect, commitment, my word. I value just treating people kindly and fairly. I value my society and my community and building up the next generation of people who are not only smart, but able to think on their own and make their own decisions and choices.