Jennifer Black

I've been able to sustain the principalship for 18 years because I've always found joy in the work that I do, and I think mostly because I love children. I think that we are their biggest advocates when they're not with their parents, and the community that I serve is a minority population where their parents often don't have the skill sets to advocate for them, so we as the school become their advocate to ensure that they receive the services that they should. My main area of expertise is building strong relationships with people, which leads to a positive culture - people trust you and want to work for someone who is positive. By building strong relationships and utilizing the strengths of the people on your team, you can really build an amazing school culture, because it is really incumbent on everyone in the building, not just the leader, to have that same vision and outlook for how we want our school to be when kids show up. I'm a learner and I'm always growing and learning, whether through formal programs like the Public Education Foundation Executive Leadership Academy and the National Institute of School Leadership, or by immersing myself in reading about trauma and attachment styles and how that impacts people in the work setting.

My mentors have always been there to listen to me and helped me understand that every day's a new day, so you might have not a great day at work - there might be some things that happened - but it's not the end of the world. You can come back the next day, you may have to repair a relationship with someone, or it could even be a student, but just every day is a new day, every day's a fresh day. I think that's important in our profession, because with kids, we need them to have a fresh start every day when they come to school, so I think that's important for adults too. We're gonna have off days, and that's okay, but don't perseverate, don't let it drag you down. Another important piece from my mentors is that you have to find the joy in the work that you do.

As a teacher, it really is about relationships, always. You have to build really strong relationships with your students and their families, because the time you spend together every day is going to be a lot more fun and a lot more engaging if you can build those strong relationships with students. That carries over into administration too - you have to have strong relationships, you have to be visible, people have to know that you're there to support them. But most importantly, never forget where you came from. When you make decisions, you always need to factor in that you were a teacher once, and you still are a teacher, so keep that mindset of when there's an initiative or a mandate or something that's coming down, think about how will that be received by the teachers and put yourself in their shoes so that you can help mitigate maybe what some of the challenges may be along the way. You have to be strategic about your messaging - the way you present it is the way they will receive it. So if you present it in a positive way, the staff most often will receive it that way, but if you perceive it as 'oh, we gotta do this' and you're negative, then of course they perceive it that way as well.

The funding is always a challenge because our funding can ebb and flow with the gaming industry, which is a huge part of our revenue in our state. Post-COVID, obviously there was funding challenges, so the way that we're underfunded in our state for education then rolls down to schools. We've had to make some cuts, and that's been a challenge because you want to keep the money close to the classroom. However, when you don't have the funding, you have to cut other things. Last year, I had to cut a social worker - luckily we still have a social worker and a counselor, but that team of three was really crucial in working together to serve our student population of 600 students, so we come up a little short-handed sometimes and we have to cut some of those services that we offer. Hiring used to be a challenge, but not so much anymore - luckily we're fully staffed and we've been for the last three years. But that was a challenge for many years where we would have vacancy positions and long-term substitutes filling in classroom positions, and of course you always want a highly qualified, licensed teacher. I say now we have a lot of different challenges in education - it's always like do more with less, and do more during the day, but we don't extend the time of the day. The teachers have a lot on their plate that they're expected to teach the kids, and the kids are expected to learn, but it's really almost impossible to do it all in the 6 hours and 11 minutes that we have the kids.

I'm a learner and I'm always growing and learning. Every day is a new day, every day's a fresh day - we're gonna have off days, and that's okay, but don't perseverate, don't let it drag you down. I have to find the joy in the work that I do, which is why I've probably sustained the principalship for 18 years. I've always found joy in the work that I do, and I think mostly because I love children. I think that we are their biggest advocates when they're not with their parents, and the community that I serve is a minority population where their parents often don't have the skill sets to advocate for them, so we as the school become their advocate to ensure that they receive the services that they should. Building strong relationships with people is crucial to me, which leads to a positive culture where people trust you and want to work for someone who is positive.