LM January 2017

Superintendent shadowing: Living a day in the life of a student

Jonathan Tallman, Superintendent of Red Bud District 132, spent a day going back to high school, and this column tells about his experiences and what he learned that day from shadowing a student.

Have you ever considered what it would be like to be a student in your own district? After watching a PBS story on Assistant Principal, Karen Ritter, who shadowed a student at East Leyden High School, I thought that gaining that perspective for my own district would be insightful. As a district, we have always focused on what is best for students, and all decisions we make are derived from that premise. To truly gain the perspective of one of our own students by walking in his or her shoes for a day would give us a realistic look into our district. As a superintendent, I visit classrooms often. However, as an administrator, I have the ability to get up, move around, and even leave the classroom whenever I feel like it. Our students do not have that same ability. To begin this journey, I shared the PBS story on the East Leyden assistant principal with my building administrators, explaining that I thought this experience would be valuable for our district--and that I would be willing to go first.

I started the process by asking my guidance counselor for the name of one high school student with a “typical” class schedule--one with no remedial courses or advanced courses. Once selected, I called the student to my office and discussed my proposal. I then called his parents to explain the purpose of the shadowing, asking both the student and the parents to keep the plan amongst us. I had shared with my staff that I would be doing this, but I thought that if I didn’t share the specific date, I could truly experience a typical day in the life of a Red Bud Musketeer. Utilizing a pre-shadowing list of questions developed from the PBS video, the following areas were assessed before and after the shadowing experience: climate, high expectations, relevance, students as active learners, student engagement, and student voice. I also used WeVideo to record myself the morning of shadowing to share my thoughts and pre-assessment of those areas before the experience.

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