A Career THAT Fits

By Griffin, Shari Chaney; Newsome, Brian

With a firm belief that “no student deserves to be a number,” Jill Martin, the 2007 NASSP MetLife High School Principal of the Year, has built her career on a commitment to giving every student a high quality education and a good start in life.

Jill Martin

2007 MetLife/NASSP National High School Principal of the Year

Had things turned out differently, Jill Martin, the 2007 MetLife/ NASSP National Principal of the Year, might have made a great secretary. With a degree in English and a craving for big-city life, she moved to New York City to try her hand at clerical work. But when her younger brother-an intelligent young man who had grown uninterested in school-dropped out, it prompted her to reconsider her choice. “That really bothered me,” she said.

Thus began a 38-year career and a lifelong quest to keep students challenged, engaged, and learning. “Every student deserves a quality education,” she said. That philosophy has driven her to make Doherty High School in Colorado Springs School District 11 a top-performing high school. Doherty is a school that inspires parents who live outside the school’s boundary to setup camp to wait in line when an opportunity arises to enroll their children. And as Martin sees it, it’s a place where people like her brother get the help they need.

Students, Not Numbers

In a 2,000-student high school, it’s easy to succumb to statistics. But for Martin, no student deserves to be a number. Rigor, relationships, and relevance are her three Rs. “Every student deserves a quality education, and every student can learn,” she said. From football games and concerts to hallway conversations and her office’s open door, Martin never loses sight of individual students. “She’s like one of us,” said 10th-grade student Gloria Angel after Martin’s surprise award assembly. “She’s secretly a student.” Newspaper articles from the latest football games and other school activities hang on a bulletin board outside her office. “She’s always there to recognize when students do well,” said David Williams, the department chair for the performing arts and the band director.

Long before becoming a principal, Martin saw what happened when schools fail to pay attention to students on the periphery. Her brother, she said, was smarter than she, but he didn’t share her love for school and no one took the time to engage him. That’s driven her to create a culture where students feel included, valued, and engaged in their success. Doherty’s dropout rate, according to the Colorado Department of Education, declined from 4.3% before her reforms to 0.88%, and freshman attendance is currently 94%.

Doherty’s programs cast a net to reach all students. During Spartan Connection time, the entire student population is divided into small groups. Employees-including top administrators and classified personnel-are assigned to student groups that give students the opportunity to discuss issues they care about. The September meeting, for example, focused on school safety after the Platte Canyon High School shooting in Bailey, CO. Perhaps more important, the groups provide every student with at least one adult on campus who is available when they have a problem or concern. “The goal is to personalize our school,” Martin said, which can be difficult when more than 2,000 students walk through halls made for 1,725 students.

About once a month, Martin uses pizza to entice students to meet with her in a small-group setting to talk about what’s on their minds and how to improve the school. She also meets with every graduating senior during the year to hear the good and the bad about Doherty directly from the students who have been there the longest. Diana Sirko is superintendent of Aspen School District and a former supervisor of Martin, as well as a longtime friend. Sirko said that Martin has the ability to get students to buy into their own achievement goals because students get more than just lip service from her-their comments and suggestions have been incorporated into curriculum and policy.

For example, during one of Martin’s meetings with seniors, the students mentioned that teachers seemed to approach their honors and AP classes with more creativity and energy than their regular ones. That led to a schoolwide push to increase enrollment in those more challenging classes, and Martin also implemented a plan for all teachers to incorporate AP strategies in all their classes. Last year, enrollment increased by 34% in AP classes and 19% in honors classes. In another meeting, students unexpectedly suggested a stricter dress code, and their discussion led to a ban on novelty contact lenses that many students claimed were distracting.

Students respond positively to the attention they receive from Martin, and she regularly receives e-mail messages and thank-you notes from students who attribute their success to her caring attitude. For example, Jerry was an angry student from a single- parent home when Martin was an assistant principal in the Cherry Creek School District in the Denver area. She guided him to teachers who helped him work through his emotional issues and get on track Recently, he sent her a graduation invitation from Stanford University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology.

Sarah-Rose Gundel, a senior, remembers what it’s like to feel like a number. She came to Doherty from a middle school in New York where she felt lost. She offered a personal thanks to Martin after the award assembly. “I was tearing up in the bleachers when I saw her walk out,” she said. Another student wrote in a letter, “It seems that every day, I see you doing something that I admire. Whether it be helping a student, working diligently, or just asking a student’s opinion, you never cease to amaze me. You are one amazing administrator, mentor, person and friend.”

Although keeping kids in school is key, conversations alone don’t raise achievement. When Martin started at Doherty, at least 40% of freshman students had least one failing grade. Today, that number is roughly 14%. “I really believe you raise the floor by raising the ceiling,” Martin said. The school instituted a program for incoming at-risk freshmen in which students get a taste of high school before their peers and catch up in core subjects, such as English and math, in a camp-like setting. Classroom lessons are integrated with a ropes course, scavenger hunts, and trust exercises.

Not all changes are sweeping new programs. Sometimes a slight tweak will do. When Martin arrived, Doherty had an open-campus lunch. She dosed it for freshmen, who struggled with making the transition from a structured middle level school setting to the freedom of high school That, she said, helped increase attendance.

To help the students who have shown they are capable but underachieving, the high school implemented the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program. About 130 students participate in the program, and the first four-year cohort is ready to graduate this year. The program provides elective classes on how to build study skills and prepare for college. Two days a week, local college students help teach the program.

Teachers Too

Part of a principal’s responsibility is to monitor and support teachers. Martin views the Doherty teachers as a team of experts who help students and also teach their fellow teachers. One group of teachers at Doherty is trained in brain-based instruction; others are experts in AVID or other programs. “Teaching is an art,” she said, “but it’s also now a science. Staying on top of the latest research is important.”

Martin admits that leading is easier when you have a great staff that constantly looks for new information and techniques to incorporate into their classrooms. But even the best teachers can often use reminders of why they got into the business, and there are always new tools that can be added to the toolbox. And sometimes, she believes, teachers should be cut loose. “We don’t have time to mess around with bad teachers,” she said. At Doherty, teachers discuss what style of teacher they are-such as nurturing or stern- and what that means about their strengths and weaknesses. Martin attempts to build a relationship with each teacher, just as she does with students. “They really are the front Une,” she said.

At her direction, staff members have embraced professional learning communities. One day a week, the school day starts late so teachers have time to work together. They work on aligning the curriculum so students in grade 9, for example, are prepared for what teachers will expect them to know in grade 10. Teachers create common tests for classes and scour data. “No matter who your teacher is, you’re going to learn the same stuff’ Martin said. “No longer should it be the luck of the draw.”

Doherty staff members are data junkies. Teachers are using data to answer the important questions: What should students know? How do you know what they’ve learned? What do you do if they don’t know it? “Teachers are looking very closely at test score data…and adjusting their teaching,” Martin said. She tells teachers, “You’re either going to get better or you’re going to get worse.” When Thalia Hardy, a former lawyer who made a career change to teaching En\glish at Doherty, arrived, Martin immediately gave her a book on teaching and introduced her to professional learning communities. “It’s this real sense of teamwork,” Hardy said.

Martin is still a teacher herself and instructs graduate classes at two local universities. She teaches people who want to change careers to teaching and instructs teachers who want to become administrators. It helps her keep up with the latest research about brain development, school reform, instruction techniques, and other education issues. And she isn’t above looking to other teachers or administrators for ideas and information. “There’s nothing I do [that] I didn’t steal from somebody else or learn from somebody else,” Martin said. Mary Thurman, the deputy superintendent of curriculum and instruction for the district, frames Martin as a “charismatic leader” and an inspiration. “We need more like her,” she said.

Living and Learning

Concerns with learning and school do not end when Martin gets home. Her mentor sits across the table from her at dinner. Paul Martin, her husband and the 1984 Wyoming Principal of the Year, is the principal at Cheyenne Mountain High School in a neighboring Colorado Springs district. Although family dinners are rare because school functions are almost nightly, time at home is a chance to share ideas and frustrations. It also means there are friendly wagers when the two schools meet on the field or court. The losing principal buys pizza for the other school’s team. The Martins read, cook, and spend time with their family, but it’s understood that conversation will sooner or later return to education. “They understand we’re going to talk about school,” Martin said about family members. Some of their children also work in education, including a son-in-law who’s an assistant principal in the same school district as Martin.

Although she is grateful and excited to be honored, Martin isn’t slowing down for pats on the back. She believes that work doesn’t stop with recognition and milestones: there is more to be done. Doherty is no inner-city school, but it’s more diverse and has a higher percentage of students who receive free or reduced-price lunch than her previous schools, which included mostly White students from generally affluent suburbs. That challenge is what she was looking for when she applied for her current position more than eight years ago. “I saw Doherty as kind of a sleeping giant,” she said. Her first impression was that Doherty was a good school, she said, but “it was really clear to me that we could get better.” Doherty has risen from average to high on the state’s School Accountability Reports even as the percentage of minority students and those who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches has increased slightly.

Every school faces unique challenges, Martin believes, but there’s always a solution. When doing her doctorate thesis, Martin examined why students weren’t successful at school. She thought it might be linked to family income, but after talking to students, she found it had more to do with how they viewed themselves and the fact that many of them didn’t qualify for specific school programs that might have helped them. “They really believed they weren’t going to be successful,” she said. And that’s why she’s committed to dispelling that idea. “Our job is about lives,” Martin said.

From football games and concerts to hallway conversations and her office’s open door, Martin never loses sight of individual students.

Students respond positively to the attention they receive from Martin, and she regularly receives e-mail messages and thank-you notes from students.

Martin attempts to build a relationship with, each teacher, just as she does with students. “They realty are the front line,” she said.

Every school f aces unique challenges, Martin believes, but there’s always a solution.

Short Chanty Griffin and Brian Newsome are education reporters for the Gazette in Colorado Springs, CO.

Copyright National Association of Secondary School Principals Jan 2007

(c) 2007 Principal Leadership; High School ed.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.