Monica Randle

I've been in education for over 24 years now, and I'm currently serving as an elementary school principal at West Park Elementary, which is my 9th year in this role. My path to education was unique because I actually started in the corporate world with a degree in accounting, working as a financial analyst. I always participated in financial literacy initiatives at the companies I worked for, going out into schools to present workshops. After 9/11, I got laid off and started working as a treasurer at a high school, and that's when I realized teaching was what I was supposed to do. I began as a middle school math and ELA teacher, then became an instructional coach helping teachers develop their skills, then served as an assistant principal for 5 years before becoming a principal. This year, my district asked me to move to a new building because the scores were improving at my previous school and the systems and management were all in place. They needed me to bring that same instructional leadership to West Park, a building of over 500 kids that didn't have those systems established. It's been challenging because I have 24 classroom teachers, and 14 of them are either first or second year teachers, so there's a lot of skill development needed. But our culture and climate data is already showing improvement, and teachers are saying the building feels better and administrators are available. I was named Principal of the Month back in August or September, which validated that the work I was doing was right. My main area of expertise is really building systems and helping people understand what management is needed in order for instruction to happen, being a true instructional leader where you have both classroom management and strong curriculum implementation working together.