 |
Bob Goerke gets the best from students and staff with an artful blend of wit and wisdom.When I approach a child, he inspires in me two sentiments-tenderness for what he is and respect for what he may become. JACKSONVILLE, Oregon — Jacksonville Elementary looks nothing like the one-room schoolhouses from this town's proud past. Students don't sit at wooden desks dipping their pens into ink wells. No schoolmarm stands at the doorway each morning, clanging a bell and greeting pupils. But someone does wait for them every day without fail. When students jump off the buses and stream through the breezeway, their principal is there, raising his voice over the general din. "Hi, John. Good morning, guys. Hi, Stephanie. Good morning, Ben. Good morning, everybody. Are you feeling better? How's your grandma? Good morning, Michelle. Good morning, sweetheart." Bob Goerke, Oregon's National Distinguished Principal for 1999, likens Jacksonville to Norman Rockwell's America. It's a place where people still know each other, and he does his part to keep it that way. His 400 students wouldn't understand what it takes to run a school building. They wouldn't be interested in the reams of educational research he reads. They wouldn't know or care that his work as chairman of the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission shapes licensure standards for every teacher in the state. What they do know is that he cares about them. He makes time for them every day — at the buses, on the playground, in the classroom. "He knows if they collect baseball cards, he knows if they're a skateboarder. He knows each child really, really well and knows each family," says sixth-grade teacher Elaine Reisinger. While upholding what is good in small-town values, Goerke (say GUR-kee) brings a forward-looking vision of education to a historic community that has undergone many changes. Jacksonville, now a tourist destination, boomed in the mid-19th century. It was a busy gold-mining town and center of trade for Southern Oregon. Money flowed and mansions rose. Then fortune's wheel turned: in 1883 the railroad bypassed Jacksonville for nearby Medford. With the train tracks went prosperity, leaving behind a collection of Victorian edifices, souvenirs of the glory days. Until recently, the town — a National Historic Landmark since 1966 — was home to a predominantly low-income population. "I got all my student loans forgiven because I was teaching at a poverty-stricken school," says Reisinger, who joined the staff 30 years ago. Today, the Jacksonville area is booming again. Following the region's influx of retirees have come service and healthcare professionals, and now telecommuters, many from California. These newcomers bring new expectations. Though they like Jacksonville's small-town feeling they want big houses on big spreads just outside of town. And they want big-city services, such as a recently instituted nonstop flight from Medford to Los Angeles. They support the high-quality cultural offerings of Jacksonville's Peter Britt Music Festival and nearby Ashland's Oregon Shakespeare Festival. They support education and demand a lot from their schools. "Part of what I need to be most concerned about as principal is meeting the high expectations of the community, seeing that their students achieve up to that," says Goerke. But when he arrived at Jacksonville School three years ago, achievement was lagging behind those expectations. Jacksonville was not one of the top-scoring schools in the Medford School District; in some grades and content areas, it was even scoring below the district average on state tests. "Resting on your laurels is always a danger," says Goerke. "Everybody loved this school inside and out when I got here, but we weren't doing well." Particularly troubling was that in some cases scores of the "intact" groups — students who had always been at the school and should have benefitted from that consistency — were lower than those of the general school population. Goerke joked at a staff retreat that it looked as if "the longer you stay at Jacksonville School, the worse you do." Actually, he says of the intact scores: "It wasn't a chronic problem in that you couldn't point to it everywhere in every test. But it was a symptom of an issue, and that was a curriculum-articulation issue." Instead of a well-articulated K-6 curriculum, Jacksonville had teachers operating what Goerke calls "educational franchises," each with his or her own pet projects and field trips. In addition, assemblies were often impromptu events, unrelated to curriculum. The result was gaps and overlaps in the system as a whole. The school's complacency with this situation can be traced to old patterns that had become so ingrained over time, no one noticed. Goerke points to the pitfalls inherent in long-term principal-staff relationships — pitfalls that any school can tumble into when people stay put too long. "Elementary school principals work very closely with their staff. You have to build relationships with your staff, and you rely on those relationships. There is constant pressure to build positive relationships. Principals are going to slowly move toward keeping things positive, instead of pushing people out of the little envelope they're so comfortable in." Over the course of his career, the 50-year-old Goerke has become adept at building and maintaining good relationships while still challenging staff to change and improve. In his 18 years as a principal, he has overseen improvements at four schools that span the spectrum of need. At one end of the spectrum was a rural, Title I building in northern Los Angeles County, with a 94 percent free-and-reduced-lunch population. At the other end was a suburban Medford school where only 7 percent of students were on the lunch program. At Jacksonville, Goerke convinced the staff to give up pet projects, coordinate field trips, develop common instructional units. He encouraged joint planning, purchasing, and scheduling. He persuaded teachers to share ideas, materials, even students. Thanks to his sense of purpose, and the staff's hard work, Jacksonville now has a system of teams and meetings that facilitate communication between teachers at the same grade level, within each of the school's three wings (kindergarten though second grade, third and fourth, and fifth and sixth), and between wings. Goerke shifted his staff's use of a districtwide weekly early-release day. Before, teachers used the time as they wished, for general planning. Now, the time is dedicated to weekly wing meetings and monthly cross-wing meetings. A calendar committee, working a year in advance, put a stop to unscheduled assemblies and those unrelated to curriculum. Goerke didn't tell his staff exactly how to make change. Instead, he gave them the professional latitude to work out a plan and manage the details. "At times it was a little frustrating," admits fifth-grade teacher Curt Shenk. "At times I thought, Bob you're the boss, make the decision. But at other times, looking back now, I take a lot more ownership of our accomplishments and our progress and successes. He's really enabled our staff to grow together." "He kind of built on it each year," says third-grade teacher Cindy Schubert. "The first year he had us start working together at grade levels. The following year he developed the wing meeting. Then last year he really had us work on helping kids meet benchmarks — that means meeting with the grade levels ahead of you and behind you. So it's kind of evolved, but he's done it in a way that we had some ownership. It wasn't just a mandate, because that doesn't work real well. So I think everyone's bought into it." The increased coordination and cooperation have created more learning opportunities for students. Teachers have begun doing some team teaching and ability grouping, particularly in the upper grades and particularly in math, moving students between classrooms and grade levels to meet individual needs and draw on individual strengths. "My fourth-grader goes to the other fourth grade for math," reports parent and PTO President Michelle Gordon. "In second grade, one of the teachers is real strong in science and the other is real strong in art, so they switch. There's a lot of team teaching that happens as opposed to before he was here." Jacksonville is seeing the results of a more streamlined approach to curriculum. In 1999, third-grade math and reading scores were the highest in the district. And the gaps between the whole-school group and the intact group have closed. Success in meeting benchmarks in basic curriculum areas means the school can continue to provide the well-rounded education that parents expect and the staff believes in. While some schools in the district have abandoned music and art to focus on raising test scores, Jacksonville School begins its day with a music-appreciation program purchased by the Britt Festival, one of the school's business partners. A different composer is featured each week. During the first week in December, for instance, a William Byrd harpsichord melody trills out over the PA system. Kids learn about the composer, the piece, the instruments, the musical style. After music appreciation, the school's intermediate students are in a music block, in addition to their twice-weekly general music classes. "Come sing a song of countries far away, down south of the border, and ring in Christmas Day," sings the chorus, accompanied by a parent on the piano while the music teacher conducts. The band toots a lively rendition of "Up on the Housetop," while orchestral students review a score, chanting "A, E, D, D, E, rest, rest." Meanwhile, an artist-in-residence is teaching younger students about quilting. Each spring the school stages a musical in the Britt Theater tucked in the hills above town. Goerke is hoping to add a dramatic production in the fall. He'd like to continue adding art and music offerings, perhaps eventually centering the school's curriculum around the arts.
| ||||
|
The New Principal Special Report:
| |||||
|
This document's URL is: Home | Up & Coming | Programs & Projects: Northwest Education | People | Products & Publications | Topics © 2001 Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
|
