School principals walk a lot.
That was the only thing I correctly expected before arriving at Fairview Elementary School to participate in Principal for a Day, an annual event organized by the Guilford Education Alliance. Volunteers are placed throughout Guilford County Schools to shadow principals for a couple of hours and get a closer look at our county’s public schools.
This year there also were a few people shadowing other school workers, including Matt Thiehl with a school bus driver at Andrews High School and Wayne Young with a custodian at Fairview.
I wore sneakers instead of my usual dress shoes for work because I expected to be on my feet most of the morning.
And indeed we were. Abe Hege, the principal of Fairway, walked me through Fairway’s long, long, long hallways (the school sure seems longer on the inside than it looks on the outside), stopping in many classrooms to observe the classes in session and explaining what the classes’ daily routines are. Hege said he spends a big chunk of every day going to different classrooms to observe.
One thing I did not expect was seeing student desks that double as dry-erase whiteboards. Fairview has replaced all of its wooden desks with these dry-erase desks, which have angled edges so students can be arranged close together in small groups.
I also did not expect the prevalence of digital tablets. It’s one thing to read in the news about schools widely adapting the use of tablets, but it’s another to go into a classroom and see every student wearing headphones and quietly studying exercises on their own screen that they complete at their own pace.
Which brings up another thing I did not expect: almost uniform good behavior. Shortly before I left, one student loudly protesting his innocence was brought to the school’s main office, but throughout the rest of my time in the school I didn’t see so much as one student talking out of turn — or fidgeting. Even the kindergartners who reveled in throwing up their hands and yelling answers in unison seemed to sit still while awaiting the teacher’s prompt for them to yell.
To some extent the good behavior might be attributable to the morning hour — everyone was well rested.
But Hege said one of the things he didn’t know when he first became a principal in 2018 was that the job would involve managing adults — parents as well as staff — much more than managing children.
Hege is proud of the culture he has helped build at Fairview and of the progress the school has made. Student discipline cases have plummeted, and academically the school’s student body has exceeded its growth goals every year since Hege arrived. The key has been building relationships with and among both the staff and the students, he said.
“I want a third-grader to feel this is their school as much as it is mine,” he said.
It’s certain that his office belongs to the students as much as to him. It’s right next door to a kindergarten classroom. When they collectively scream their answers for their teacher, it’s like the wall is made of balsa wood rather than cinder block.
Hege smiled and said, “It lasts all day.”
Probably another reason he walks the halls so much.
Newsroom With A View 