Transformative Principal

Gina Davenport
===

[00:00:00] welcome to Transformative Principal. I am so excited to have Gina Davenport on the program today. She is, amazing, and we're gonna have a great conversation. She was the principal of a diverse suburban high school that truly was student centered, and we're gonna talk about a lot of those things.

She did a lot of cool things, including dropping referrals to under 50 per year for a student population of over 1700 students with less than 15 outta school suspensions each year since 2021. And [00:01:00] she's done some really cool things and I'm excited. Gina, welcome to Transformative Principal.

Hi. It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Well, the first thing I want to chat about is your dissertation on student voice, and you have a survey that's in the show notes at Transformative Principal dot org. We would love for each of you to go and take that survey and give some feedback, tell people what they're going to be participating in.

It's, it's a five minute survey and my, my research topic is really principal's perspectives on the use of student voice as a culturally responsive practice. so, the, the survey is, is really brief and it'll just gimme some ideas of what kinds of, of student voice activities are happening in, in our secondary schools across the country.

Awesome. So right now you're like, who is this person? Why should I listen to her? Why should I go take the survey? Well, you're gonna listen to the next 45 minutes or so of our conversation. You're gonna say, oh, I should go do that [00:02:00] survey, because what she talked about was awesome. And so I definitely encourage you to do that.

After you're done listening, we'll mention it at the end again, but definitely go do that. So we will get to my interview with Gina here in just a moment. (ad here)

And Gina will you talk to me about how intentionally teaching social emotional competence impacts a school environment?

Sure. You know, I, I was a principal at my school for 10 years. I was a, a assistant principal for seven. For seven. And in my time as an administrator, I, I started to realize that there was a pattern with the students that were in the office for discipline issues, for, for behaviors. And I started to realize that. What that the issue was. They were, they were missing something. They, they, there was a, a disconnect and you know, when you're in a school situation, when you're a teacher or an administrator and a student is struggling with reading you, you provide all kinds of reading interventions to that student. When a student is struggling with their multiplication tables as [00:03:00] educators, we know exactly what to do to support that student. You know, but when it comes to behaviors and self-regulation and those types of, of of deficits. We freeze up, we don't know what to do. We write a referral, we send them to the office, and we let somebody else take care of it. And as the person who was taking care of it, I was building really strong relationships with students who needed those relationships. But the teachers in the building were missing out and the students were missing out. On actually building the skills that they needed to be in school. I think that as kids get older, we're under that misconception that their frontal lobe is formed, right?

That they understand who they are. They, they have developed interpersonal competencies. They've, they've, they know how to speak to each other. They know how to resolve conflict. They know how to advocate for themselves. And, and I can tell you from my experience, they even our best students sometimes don't have. Those capacities. they've missed some of that along the way, and it's because we don't, after, after elementary [00:04:00] school, we stop intentionally teaching that. So I started to do a little bit of research and I ran into a couple of different programs and I. I realized that there wasn't a whole lot out there for secondary kids.

It, it, a lot of stuff for elementary school students, some things that, that have been adapted for middle school kids. And a lot of times it's laborious and it's something that teachers at the secondary level don't wanna do.

And,

teachers that,

and, and why don't they want to do it, Gina? Because they one feel like it's not their job. They feel like kids should already know it. And then third, I think this is the big one, is they feel like there's not a good way I. To teach it, which is ironic because the best way to teach it is through these relationships, these conversations, talking about difficult things that you were just explaining about.

You know, at the high school level, uh uh, a science teacher majored in chemistry. So they know chemistry and that's what they wanna teach. Or they know literature and they wanna teach Beowulf every [00:05:00] year over and over again, ad nauseum, right? But teaching the whole child and thinking about producing a product, a graduate that actually has all of these, these. Skills is they're in a silo, right? I'm, I'm an English teacher, I'm a social studies teacher. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a phys ed teacher. That's not my responsibility. And they don't have the tools and I think we push away the things that we're not familiar with. You know, and, and I don't think that in, in teacher education programs at the secondary level, there's a lot of conversation about social emotional competencies and.

What kids need to know. But I can tell you that if you ask employers why people lose their jobs, it's not because they don't know the Pythagorean Theorem. People lose their jobs because they can't get along with other people at work, or they miss deadlines, or they don't know how to set goals, or they don't follow through on things or they don't advocate for themselves.

Those are all social emotional skills that we need to be intentional about. So that's, that's why. We decided that, that we were gonna do that. And when I say [00:06:00] we, I, I mean we you know, before I could, could launch a program that was gonna be so kind of. not intuitive to high school. I had to make sure that I've got a, a core group of leaders that were going to kind of take this up and say, yeah, we, we believe in this.

We believe in this. So what I did was we did a book study on the formative five and we read that book as a leadership team. And when I say leadership team, I'm not just talking about department chairs in, in a high school. I'm talking about those individuals in the building that have personal power. just the position, but they have that personal power where they, they are credible with their colleagues and their, their kind of kid magnets, right? So, so it's people that could influence other people in the building. And we read this book and then I had somebody from the student service office come in and, and do specific professional development on social emotional learning.

She happened to be a former elementary school counselor who, of course that [00:07:00] was her. Her thing. And she kind of broke it down for us and showed us what the competencies were, and then we kind of developed our own program in-house to, to meet those needs. And we got kids involved in the building of the program.

We got faculty involved in the building of the program just to get that buy-in. And then we, we launched a, a social emotional program for, for our students and saw some really great results.

Yeah, we're gonna talk about that in a, in a second, but I want to go back to the formative five by Tom Hur, which is a, a book that I've read also and interviewed Tom about that book on this show. There's a link to our interview in the show notes, and when he and I were talking about this, I remember saying on the show.

That I was like, these are the only five things that really matter if we actually teach them, because it honestly doesn't matter if we teach Beowulf or the Pythagorean Theorem or anything else that's in our content area. What matters is that we teach [00:08:00] our students to become good. Flourishing human beings.

And if we can do that, then we're going to find success and we're going to help them do anything else that they need to do in their lives. But if we don't teach them how to be. Good people. And I will add, it's not our responsibility to teach them, it's our responsibility to help parents teach them, because that is ultimately the parent's responsibility.

And we are just helpers in that, which a lot of educators get a little perturbed when I say that, but it really is the parent's job and we just help. So we need to be aware of that and supportive of that also. So let's talk about your program and what you created and, and what that actually looked like.

So inspired by Tom's formative five. I got a group of students who were in our AVID program. We were in AVID school. We, um. Advancement via individual determination. And we, we, those kids are always talking about goal setting. And, you know, avid is, is social emotional learning kind [00:09:00] of on steroids, right?

It's, it's, it's what social emotional learning do you need to get to college and be successful in college? So those kids were a good kid, kids to kind of tap into. And we talked to 'em about the formative five and then I said to them. I want you guys to come up with attributes that you think a, a good stu, a successful student should have. What is it that a successful student should, should always model and demonstrate in our building? And they, they went to town on coming up with a list and explaining why they thought that these particular things should be included. And then they presented that to the leaders, the adult leadership group, and then kind of paired them up and narrowed 'em down and came up with six. What we called a rundle attributes, and those were things that became more of a common language for all of us to be able to use than it did really anything else. So posters had these, these six attributes on them, the teachers had them in their [00:10:00] classrooms. We tied them all to our social emotional learning lessons that occurred once a week. In our advisory period and you know, we, we, we just talked about these, these attributes. Ownership stands out as probably one of the, the biggest things that the kids really wanted us to, to consider as an, an attribute. And they were able to hang a lot of other things. On under that umbrella of ownership, they felt like you can't be a bully if you have ownership in the school culture, right?

You have to own your behavior. You have to have ownership, means you're gonna take responsibility for your classroom and your classwork. You're not gonna plagiarize because you're gonna own your own work. You're gonna put your name to it. And the kids came up with all of these operational definitions of what these words, these, these traits, meant to them. Then we, we took it out to the, to the whole student body and we had big pieces of chart paper and they were writing down all the examples of when you use these attributes. And it was just a great way to. Kind [00:11:00] of orient all the kids to what that that's gonna look like. We still do that activity now with all of our incoming ninth graders.

So that's one of the first things they do is they see a little definition of the run attri, each of the attributes. And then they're asked to brainstorm and, and make it what it is, what their own use their own words to define what that looks like and what that's gonna look like in school, and give examples.

So I

ask.

I, before you go on, I wanna just say real quick that the, the power in what you're talking about, that students helped create this, that it was specific to your school, and ownership is not one of the formative five. That Tom talks about, right? And so the, the key here is that this is specific to our community and, and this is so important that so many people think they can adopt somebody else's curriculum or somebody else's program and make it work.

And there will always be limitations to adopting what somebody else does. And so you have to [00:12:00] see bigger than that and adopt the principles. Which are correct me if I'm wrong, the principle is the erindale attributes are the things that make us excellent human beings. And this is what we need to do.

And if we do these things, we will be excellent human beings according to what our community standards, this fits into what we're doing. And I, you, you expressed this so beautifully. I wanted to stop and just put a little pin in it because it doesn't matter what the attributes are. What matters is that you then say you students who come in, you take these attributes and you express what they mean to you and how you individually will share that.

With yourself, with others and how you'll conduct yourself in that way. And that makes a huge difference in whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish because it's about you applying, this is what our community thinks, important is important. Here's how I'm going to do [00:13:00] that in my day-to-day life.

That is incredibly powerful. What else would you say to that?

No, I just, I, I think you're absolutely right and what, what we have seen is that this has become what the kids call the Arundel way. So when upperclassmen see freshmen running in the hallway, they stop them and they say, Hey guys, that's, this isn't the, a runaway. then the, and, and that is so much more powerful than the teacher. Or the administrator stopping a ninth grader and saying that, and you know, there, there, you, you, you put something out and you want it to be you want it to be dynamic. You want it to be amazing, right? So we, we gave teachers the little a little icon with each of the attributes on it. We gave them, button lights. And at the beginning of every lesson, when they're going over their, their outcome and their agenda, we want the teachers to say to the kids, which attributes are you gonna apply to this lesson? And a kid might raise their hand and say, well, today I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to use courage because you said we're gonna have group work.

And I don't usually like working in a group 'cause I'm shy. But today I'm gonna use my courage and [00:14:00] I'm gonna, I'm gonna give it a try. And the teacher then lights that up. To remind the kids that today we're, you know, we're, we're gonna be thinking about this as we're going through our, our lesson. And then at the end of the lesson, in the, in the closure, the teacher says, today, you guys said we were gonna work on integrity at, so we're, we're all gonna do our own work, but we're gonna also work on courage because we have to do some, some interactions.

How did we do on those attributes today? And there's no wrong answer when a kid says, you know, I want, I think we're gonna use this attribute because. There's no wrong answer. So every everybody has access and, you know, can come in and then, and then they wrap it up. So we're just continuing to use that language so that we have a common language to, to, to kind of pin our practices on. So if we're in the hall, I, I can say everybody I need, I need everybody to get to class. Come on, the bell's gonna ring. We, you know, that's part of our ownership. We're gonna be on time to class, you know, and, and that way we're just reinforcing. Reinforcing that. And you know, there are times when as an administrator you, you kind of [00:15:00] wonder if the kids are taking it to heart.

You know, is this, is this really, is this really part of our culture? You know, you see glimpses of it, but is this really something that that's happening? And I had the opportunity to host some executives from another school system in my building. They were having difficulty in their school with the behavior and the academic achievement of of students of color, and they wanted to come into a school that was having success with all students. And my superintendent asked me if I would talk to them about. the, the, the, the experience of the students of color. And I said that they were welcome to come to the building, but I, I couldn't speak to it because I, I'm not a student of color. So I put together a panel of kids to talk about their experiences and why they were successful.

And at the end of the conversation, one of the, they had gone on a little tour of the building. The kids took them around the building. I, I didn't do any of the work. I, I, I pulled all that out on the students and when they came back into the conference room, one [00:16:00] of the guests said. I've noticed these, these things on the wall and she, you know, she read 'em out and she said to the kids, can you talk to me about this?

And I thought, oh, here we go. Here's, this is the proof, right? These are, these are juniors and seniors. They've had these attributes around for years, and now they're being asked which one speaks to them, and the responses of the kids. And I, I intentionally chose kids that were very academically successful and kids that were still trying to figure it out. We're, we're being successful, but we're still trying to, to, to figure that out. And the, the responses were just, you know, amazing. They, they, they talked about not only which, which, which one spoke to them, but why it was so important to them. One of the students talked about a situation where he was. One of our football players and he was college bound, but he also was content to not really push himself too much academically. And he said that, [00:17:00] he was in a situation where he was in the weight room with the football coach. Who was also our, our weight train, our weight, our conditioning teacher, and the AP language, AP English teacher, English lit teacher, came down to the weight room and said to him, if you're planning to go to college to play football, you have to take my class. As a senior, you need this ap, you can do it. You need to take it because it's gonna help you be ready for the writing you're gonna have to do and the reading you're gonna have to do in college. And he said to her, you know, I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to do that at this point. I'm gonna be a senior next year.

I'm not, I'm not trying to work that hard. And she said, oh, no, no, I'm telling you, you, you're gonna take the class. And he turned to the football coach and he said to him, he said, coach Walsh, do you hear what Mr. Scavenge is saying? And he said, yeah, I heard her say, you're gonna take this class. And he was saying when he finally took ownership of his academic success, he was proud to tell everyone that he had just taken the exam.

He thinks that he got a four because he had gotten a four on a pre-exam, [00:18:00] and he really feels like he's ready for college because he was bullied into taking the class by, by the teacher who believed in him and cared for him enough. To say, Hey, this is what you need to do. And when he was willing to take ownership, and, and so that was the story that he used to explain what ownership meant to him and why he felt like that was important. And I mean, I, I was just so proud because when the kids can not only have, not only generalized it, but have also internalized it to the point where they see how it, how it benefits them in their lives, that's when you know that a program that you've started is successful.

Yeah, a absolutely. And what I love about that story also is that you also shared how. They apply it to their lives on a regular basis, daily, maybe even every lesson, so that when those times come to share, they have a whole list of things to share. And what's so amazing is so often in education we, we have students give their [00:19:00] responses to the teacher as though it matters to the teacher.

Well, it doesn't, it only matters to the student, right? And so. A, a student could go through four years at your school saying or hearing and talking about these how the erindale attributes are gonna show up in every one of their classes and never say anything to the teacher, but still have a Transformative experience for them.

Because they're thinking about it, they're reflecting on it, and they're seeing how it's working for them. And this is, to me, the beauty of this type of teaching is that. It's not about showing proficiency to the adult or to the people in charge. It's about your own personal development and only you really know where you're at with that.

And, and, and that's something that I. We can't, we don't know how to grapple with an education because everything has to be based on evidence and what we can see and not see and [00:20:00] all that. And, and I think that's one of those little things that as we understand that better over time, we're gonna see how that really does matter in a, in a powerful way for every one of the people that we work with, students and teachers alike.

I think that that, the shame in that is that you're right, you can't quantify it. It's all anecdotal information. That personal growth of a student doesn't always show up on the state report card. We don't always get credit as an administrator for that particular metric, right, because we're looking at attendance rates and we're looking at academic achievement.

But I would argue that investing the time in this kind of thing does show up on that report card. Right, because kids are coming to school because they feel a sense of belonging because they're taught to advocate for themselves. They don't have to lie to a teacher because when they tell the teacher the truth, the teacher respects that and responds in kind, right?

So when you build that kind of a community, it does pay off on all those other metrics that. Are the, the hard data that, that, [00:21:00] you know, that I hate to use the word judged, but that schools and faculties and kids are judged on. Right. But this is something that impacts all of those areas sometimes in a very subtle way, but it, it's, it's powerful and it really impacts individual kids.

And that really should be our business is, is growing students to make them as, as, as. I don't wanna say functional, because that makes it sound like that there's a time when they're dysfunctional, but makes them whole, makes them, you know, the, the entire package so that they can be successful when they're on their own at college or when they're in the workplace or in relationships that they're gonna have.

These skills are important. We used to call them soft skills. There's nothing soft about them. You know, they're, they're the real skills, as you said. You know, that, that this is where the rubber meets the road. And

Yeah.

argue that this is what makes. This is what makes kids, people successful. And I think when I look back at why do some kids have the capacity and some kids don't. [00:22:00] I worked with a group of boys my first year as principal and they were the kids that were in the hallways all the time. They were not academically successful and I really didn't know. How, how to help them. So I, I, I talked to 'em and I asked them what it was about the school that they didn't like or, or why, what was preventing them from being successful the things that they were telling me, you know, the, the things that connect kids to school, like being on a team in a high school.

Well, they're not eligible to be on a team because of their grades. Going on field trips as a, as a group, well, they didn't get to go on the field trips because either they were, they were left behind because of behaviors or they just forgot to bring in their permission slip because their executive functioning wasn't, wasn't functioning that that week. Right. Participating in, in clubs and, and, and community service kinds of activities. They didn't get to do any of those things. And those are the places where. emotional learning occurs. That's [00:23:00] where, you know, that's where these things happen. You learn to take turns and you learn teamwork by being on a team.

And if you've never had that experience and you're 17 years old, you're, you're at a deficit. And a lot of kids didn't have those experiences because they had single parents and, or, you know, their parents were working multiple jobs to, to make ends meet. Or, you know, they, they were living with a grandparent that, that was older and couldn't get them to different places. So, you know, I, I made it a point to, to. Put these kids in a club and give them purpose and take them on trips and, and do things with them. And that was life-changing for them. We, we went to a local a local place where Johns Hopkins is one of the, the hospitals in Baltimore. That has a, a huge children's center. And there's a lot of people come from outta state out of the country to have their children treated there. And there's an organization that provides housing to parents at a very low cost when they're in town because their kids are receiving [00:24:00] treatment. And one of the things that this organization does is it allows. Groups to come in and prepare a meal for the families, and then kind of like, have like a cafe, a cafeteria style meal and, and sit and, and, and, and eat with these families who are going through probably the most difficult time of their lives. And these, these boys created a meal. They planned the menu, they went to grocery shopping.

They went up to the, to the, the, the residents with me and a couple other people. They, they created the food and they were, they were shocked. The people's response to them because they were, they were thanking them and they were so appreciative and they were telling stories and they, they were the, my, my boys were playing with the, the siblings of the children that were, that were in care.

And one of the, the students said to me, I've never had somebody so genuinely thank me before. I've never had this experience. He was really. Uncomfortable because of this just, just, just was new. It was so new to him. And and, [00:25:00] and that was really eyeopening to me that that changed me as a leader to realize that we look at kids that have these deficits and sometimes we blame them for the deficits, when really they just haven't had the opportunities.

And when we give them the opportunity to love and extend themselves into. To do other things, to plan events. They planned a, a faculty student basketball game to raise money for that, that that charity to have the, to be able to buy the food, to get, they, they did the whole thing and to have that leadership responsibility. Those are things that they, they didn't have. And where they connected to school. Absolutely. From that point on, they were connected. They were bought in. They felt like they were contributors. To something bigger than themselves, and they had never had that chance before. So sometimes it's just providing an opportunity you know, to exercise some of these social emotional competencies that, that really can, can spark something in a, in a student.

Yeah, and what I love about that story is that you were illustrating that kids who are struggling don't get [00:26:00] the experiences that help them learn resilience and learn these other skills that they need to have. They don't get an opportunity to have ownership because they don't have choices, because they're bad.

Decisions have taken away their options for choices. And that is tragic, right? And,

Yes.

and we have the power to change that with ourselves. So one of the things that I want to talk to you about also is this idea of how COVID. Actually was a positive. Now in my own family, COVID was like the best thing that could have happened.

And I know it was tragic and a lot of people suffered and a lot of people don't agree with that. But again, this goes back to this thing that we've been talking about, that it's about the individual and how they deal with it. And and so talk about how Covid really was the launching point for your best years at Dale High School.

So, I'm gonna be honest with you my, my school spirit and, and the [00:27:00] connections in the school and the relationships were the kind of the, the, the gel that held it all together for us, right? Like us being in community with each other. Was was the, the. Stuff. And then when all of a sudden we're told you're now we're gonna be for the next months.

We're gonna be quarantined, we're gonna be in our own homes doing this thing called school on, on virtual, you know, on cameras and all that kind of thing. I was really concerned about, about losing that, that stickiness, using that, losing that connection with the kids, with the faculty you know, and, and so. I, I really had to be intentional and purposeful in trying to come up with ways that we could stay connected. My, my coaches and my, my teachers did amazing things with TikTok and, and social media where a kid would be throwing a baseball and then the next baseball player would catch it and throw it because all the kids were taking their own videos and then somebody would [00:28:00] splice it all together.

So it looked like, you know, we were together doing drills and that kind of thing. I mean, and we were trying to come up with any way that we could be together and, I would have optional faculty meetings once a week, and my whole faculty would show up. So there'd be a hundred people on my Google screen looking like little tiny pixels.

And we would just be talking about a win that we had that week. And so somebody would say, Hey, Johnny finally turned on his camera. You know, and, and it was something simple like that, but just hearing each other's voices became so important. What it did for me personally in my leadership was it really gave me the opportunity, the quiet time, to really galvanize my thinking around what was important to me as a leader and how I was gonna make that be part of the vision of, of the school. So when we came back, when we had the opportunity to come back, we sat down and we talked about the things that we really needed to work on, like equity and making sure that all kids felt. Comfortable and connected in our schools, not just our athletes that could make TikTok videos, not just our band kids that [00:29:00] had that connection, but what did we need to do to make sure that everybody felt safe and at home in our school? And I think because we had the same all, we all had the same lived traumatic experience. We could kind of rally around that and take comfort in each other and really make something amazing happen after that. When we finally got kids back in the building for the first two weeks of school, I put a, a moratorium on any academics, any schoolwork, and at first I thought that that was gonna be, I. Terribly. The pushback was gonna be terrible. But what I wanted to do in those two weeks was I wanted kids to go to their classes and get used to listening to Bell's ring again, you know, get used to moving through the halls get used to the, the, the schedule and just do team building activities in the classroom.

And we really front loaded a lot of our SEL work and, and a lot of our conversations around the attributes and a lot of our conversations about. What we do in school and how we interact with each other because it was gonna be new [00:30:00] again. And there were half of my students had never been in my building because they, they had spent the whole year in Covid.

So we had a lot of teaching to do about the Arun Way and how we were gonna, you know, move through the halls and interact with each other. The words that we weren't gonna say, you know, we're not gonna use the N word in the school because it could harm someone and we're not gonna use any language that can harm someone, even if we're using it. As friends, we're not gonna use it here at school because somebody else that overhears it could be harmed. And if, if our, if our behavior can harm anyone, then it's not behavior for school. And, and it worked. It worked. It really got the kids back to school on the right foot. So much to the point where every year, since we have done the first week of school, no academics, we do the team building, we do the, the SEL lessons, we do the. The, the getting to know you get, get to know the routines for everyone because we need that. We, we just need that, that, that time to build community. We do a lot of community [00:31:00] circles where we, you know, we ask a simple question and we go around the room and give everybody, give everybody the opportunity to, to give an answer just so we get to know each other.

It's really hard to be a jerk with somebody that you care about. And that's, that's, that's our counter to social media because that anonymity of social media can, can give kids a lot of freedom to be really nasty to each other. But if you're in community with each other and you share this common experience of school and you love your school and you love what we're doing and you're, you belong there, you don't wanna be separated from that.

You don't wanna be outside the community. And that really goes a long way when you're trying to. To manage and lead large groups of people. It works with teachers too. Teachers are much nicer to each other, much more collaborative and cooperative with each other. Because we've had that shared experience of, of covid and not being able to be together, you know, I think it makes you really appreciate what you have when you, when you don't have it for a year plus.

Yeah, exactly. [00:32:00] And before Covid when I was a principal still I. Yeah, I did the first three days where students didn't even have schedules and we didn't allow them to go to classes. We wanted them to get to know everybody in the school, not just who their teachers were. And so we assigned them like mentors teacher mentors who would be working with them.

And, but those kids may not have that teacher as one of their teachers later and. Set up this really cool opportunity for kids to get to know different teachers, get to know different students and, and like you said, it's hard to be a jerk when you care. That's gonna be the show title, by the way. I think that's great.

And.

it's hard. It's hard to be a jerk when you care. You know, for our ninth grade, the our, our system gives us the first day of school is only ninth graders. Only sixth graders in middle schools. And, and you know, so we take our ninth graders and, and I tell parents, your kid's gonna come home and tell you wild stories because this is what we're gonna do.

They come in, they go [00:33:00] to the auditorium and we have, what I tell them is the first graduation rehearsal where we read every student's name. They cross the stage, they sign a pledge, a big banner that's a pledge to graduate with their class. Then they're, they're given their first piece of, of, high school gear. We, our, our school colors are Kelly Green and white. So Kelly Green is pretty different. You know, a lot of schools are red. A lot of schools have a, a shade of blue, but Kelly Green is Kelly Green and they get their first Kelly Green shirt that has their, their graduation year on it. They come down the stage and they shake my hand and I welcome them to.

School and then they go on a scavenger hunt and teachers don't take them. We have students that we call amps, which is our Arundel mentor program, and those upperclassmen come in on that day when they're not, they don't have to. And they are the ones who take the kids around the building and show them all the different places that, that, know, all the different hot, you know, the library, the, the, the gym, the weight room, the all the different places. They do that. They, they, they, they walk through their schedule just [00:34:00] so they can find where their classes are. 'cause that's an anxiety thing for kids is where am I gonna go tomorrow? So the, the, the upperclassmen take them to do that, and then they have lunch. And then we have an ice cream, social and a pep rally. So I say to the, to the parents, when your kids come home and say, we played all day. We did. So, you know, don't, don't call them a liar because we're, this is what we're gonna do because we want them to. Have their first experience to be really positive and really friendly, and where they're just meeting people and they can feel a little bit relaxed.

And then those amps, those mentors that are assigned to them, stay with them all year and go back into their advisory classrooms. And those, those amps are a, actually teach the lessons, the social emotional lessons to the ninth graders with the teacher there as backup. So instead of you hearing. About goal setting from somebody that's 50 years old.

You're hearing about it from a junior in school that is talking about how when they started doing this, their grades went up, which is much more powerful [00:35:00] than hearing it from. From me, and that's, that's been very successful, is having those, those upperclassmen, it gives those kids a leadership opportunity, and then it gives the ninth graders some, some upperclassmen to know when they're at the game or you know, they're at the dance.

They, they, they can identify a couple people that, that they know in their comfortable with. It's all about building relationships.

(ad here) Yeah, man, that's so powerful. And you've, you've obviously done that and we just barely scratched the surface in. Talking about all these different things that, that you've done. And so, so I'm gonna change gears a little bit because there was some controversy earlier this year with how you left the school.

You retired from the school, and and there was a music video that was recorded at the school that got national attention and that video has, hundreds of thousands of views, maybe, probably even millions at this point. And it was definitely inappropriate for that kind of a music video [00:36:00] to be in a school especially shot in a school.

And, and you didn't comment on the news article about that? You it looked like from when I read that back in the spring when I didn't know you I was like. It sounds like this principal knew about it and like set it up and it made you out to be the bad person, which now that I've talked to you and learned from you, I am like, no, I don't think that's the case.

So can you talk a little bit more about that experience and whatever you'd like to share about how it went down and how you, how you felt about it and, and all that.

Sure. you know, one of the, one of the things that I pride myself on as a leader was. Having, having the trust of my students, and a lot of people have, have asked me, you know, how do you, how do you build trust among your faculty? Or how you, how do you build trust around your student body? And, and the way that you build trust is by trusting. So, you know, and sometimes when you trust [00:37:00] people, you're disappointed. that's just, that's just the way that it is. This was a, a former student who over the, the, the week prior was. Working with an assistant principal to try to get into the building, to, to do this and was being told no. That they had to come up with a, like a storyboard and, and we knew this student.

We knew he, he thinks of himself as an influencer. I, I don't know a lot about social media, but I know enough to know that you know, the more likes you get, the more views you get. The more, the more. Status, you re you, you have and this, this young man was about status and, and that that is not a new thing for him.

That was a case when he was, was a student as well. So he, he had gotten into the building to, to talk to me about it. When he was not prepared with his, his storyboard I knew that he was intentionally not showing me things because. He knew I would not approve. So that was the end of it for me. stayed in the building and, and, and let people in a back door and, and and made this music [00:38:00] video that then dropped and, and did all this thing. It happened to coincide with, the superintendent's decision to move 30 principals and assistant principals throughout the system.

Wow, that was missing from the article.

Of course. Yeah.

That was not part of the article. So prior to any of this happening, I had already been told that I was being moved to a different school and I had already made the decision with the help of my husband that to go start over at my age. You know, with, with the, the passion that I have for the work was probably not in my best interest.

Know, and, and, and not something that I was looking for in my career. I was probably at that point. A year or two from retirement and that, so I, we, my husband and I were debating whether I would take the new position or would, would retire. And then this, this incident occurred, so it looked to people because I, it was not it when the, the, the documents came out that said, you know, this, this principal's moving to this school, this principal's moving to this [00:39:00] school, this principal's moving to this school. A new principal was put in my school, but there was no information given about where I was going. I. So that gave the press the the, the thought that, I was being moved or I was being let go because of the video. and so they kind of went with that. 'cause that was now the new sensational story after the video had gone out.

And, you know, when you're a principal and things are said in the press, you, you're instructed to not comment, to not to not, you know, to not put things out there. And so. It was really difficult to to watch. The same thing happens on social media when you make a decision about something in school that, that one or two parents don't like, they start to put stuff out on social media and then it starts to gain traction.

And usually it comes from people that are outside of the community that just see something on social media and wanna jump on the bandwagon and, and they're insulting you and they don't even know you. And so what was happening on social media [00:40:00] was. The people in my school community were saying she would never let this happen.

This is not who she is, you know? But that, but I couldn't go on social media to say that. I couldn't go to the news and say that. So the, the, the, the kids of course who want more cliques, want more, more sensationalism. They want more notoriety. They, they were perpetuating the story. And the press, who unfortunately now also need more clicks, right?

Because. news industry is different than it was 20 years ago when people bought a subscription to the newspaper. So it became , a sensationalized story. And it, you know, it, it grew legs and, and my school system said in one small line, you know, Ms. Davenport moved from Arundel. Has nothing to do with the video, but. That, that of fell on deaf ears. I don't know that people necessarily read all the way down to the fourth

Yeah, too little, too late.

sentence Right. Said that, so, [00:41:00] you know, I, I took that on the chin. It did not, it did not impact my decision to retire. I was, I was retiring. I had made that decision before the video. It solidified that decision. Will say that. know, I, my, my mistake in all of it was I didn't escort the young man outta the building, right? I should have on that Friday afternoon, I should have said to him, Nope, you gotta go and I'm gonna walk you out and let, watch him walk to his car. I did not do that.

I, I trusted that when he left my office, he was gonna go do what he said he was gonna go do. And I, I was wrong for that. I should have escorted him out of the building. I, I have been in situations where visitors have left my office without escort. And I'm sure that that happens everywhere, but in this case, it, it did, it did turn around to bite me.

So Gina,

I.

Let me ask you, what, what advice would you have for a principal who's going through something? Like this where the media's out there and it's there's a lot of pressure on 'em. What would you say in response, like, how should they handle themselves? What should they focus on? [00:42:00] How do they stay sane?

Because I've been through this also and it's, it's scary. What would you say?

really hard. It's scary and, and it's hard and it kind of takes your breath away. The way that I got through it was the people that know me and know my work were very supportive, which was all of my, my colleagues, teachers parents in my community were very supportive. There were people that were nasty and people that were, were reading this from out of the state that would call and, you know, insist on talking to me and then say horrible things. But that, that, that passes, you know, and, and. With every person that was supportive. You know, I was reminded of the body of work. That stands behind me now, does it bother me that if people Google my name, that's probably the first thing that they'll see that pops up? Yeah, that bothers me because there's a lot of articles out there that talk about great things that happen with kids and, and you know, great things that came outta my school. I even got to talk to Larry King. And, and there's, you know, there's that, that, that that interaction with Larry [00:43:00] King is, is somewhere in the archives of the internet. So yeah, it bothers me that that's the first thing that pops up. But it doesn't define my career because I won't let it define my career. And if, if I helped hundred kids, maybe a couple thousand because of the trust relationship I had with them, and I was burned by one then I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that because, you know, trust is, is, is really important when you're a high school administrator, administrator in any setting. it's really important and it's something that. We don't invest enough time in, and that's what we really need to make a difference for kids. So I wouldn't change anything about my career. I would've walked him outta my building. But as far as every anything else, and for other people that go through this, just know, just know your

Mm-Hmm.

and and hold onto that. And you know, and, and hope that your, your, your school system and the people around you are gonna support you because they know your truth too.

Yeah, for sure. That's, that's really powerful and I appreciate you being [00:44:00] vulnerable and sharing that. Nobody ever wants to bring those difficult things up. But I also have a link to your Larry King. Conversation as well linked to the YouTube video. So we will, we'll try to get some more clicks on that as well.

And Gina, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for being here. And I just wanna remind everybody as you're listening, please go check out her survey as she's working on her doctorate which we talked about when we talked about that.

on student voice,

Yeah, so we want to hear your comments on that or she wants to hear your comments on that.

I won't see it, but I will read her dissertation when it's done 'cause I'm working on my doctorate also and I'm gonna ask her to send it to me, so that's right. We sure are. So, link to that in the show notes. Make sure you go take that survey and thank you again, Gina, for being part of Transformative principle.

You're welcome. This was really fun. Thank you.

​ [00:45:00]