Justin Ralston, Essexville-Hampton Public Schools

“I grew up in Indiana, about three hours north of Indianapolis in a small town called Angola. I went to Hamilton community schools, one of the smallest public schools in the state of Indiana: I graduated with, I believe, 36 in my class,K to 12, all in the same building. My kindergarten teacher attended my high school graduation, because that's just what you do when you're all in the same building.

By attending such a small school, I was able to really be able to get involved in things that I probably would not have been if I was at a larger school: I was able to start our high school newspaper, I joined the track and cross country teams, things that I probably wouldn't have done if I was in a bigger school. I think what I learned from the small school experience, then, propelled me to success that I had at Indiana University.

I think I always knew that I wanted to be an educator. I remember as a small child, writing Math Worksheets for my grandparents, and then I think once I realized that I had committed myself to go into college, there was really no turning back.

I taught in Bloomington after I graduated, and absolutely loved it, but then ended up in DC. Howard University in DC was one of only two schools in the country that had a specialization in the master's program that I was looking at: Social Work with a concentration in refugees and displaced populations.

What I found as a teacher was that the students that I often wanted to be able to reach the most were the students who weren't attending class, the students who were failing. Those were the students that I was really committed to being able to figure out how to engage. I had also done my student teaching an in rural Kenya and fell in love with East Africa and that whole experience and then realized, looking at disparate, disenfranchised populations looking at both displaced and refugees as there's a lot of power to be learned from from the experience and work that needs to be done.

It was a powerful program at Howard University, and I think it really transformed my picture of the world and picture of education.

It’s absolutely made me a better teacher and a better leader, so I decided after completing the degree, to go back into teaching with this, sort of newfound toolkit. I worked in a community just maybe two miles outside of Washington, DC with a large immigrant population.

Really, I had gone to school to be a social studies teacher. But this was back when the economy was really challenging in the late 2000s and there was a hiring freeze on social studies teachers in much of the DC area. And so I had met this school at a hiring fair, and the principal's like, ‘I gotta have you, but the only way I can bring you in as a Special Ed teacher for a year, and then I can move you to teach AP government, whatever it is that you want.’ And so I took her up on that.

But within the first or second day of teaching, I'm like, ‘Oh,this is where I belong.’

I believe the jump from teaching to administration happened because of the social work part of my experience: I started looking at different systems that impact both positively and negatively affect education. My time teaching Special Education allowed me to see a lot of the inequalities and, quite frankly, the injustices, that are happening in Special Ed. 

I wanted to become a factor in changing systems or structures that create those inequalities or allow them to exist, and being in administration gives me that opportunity. 

The other part of administration I’ve really liked is family engagement. Again, I think I have the bias because of my social work experience, but I’ve really taken the family engagement piece as a critical component of leadership and public education. I really think that the success we will have is really dependent on our collective effort as a community. 

Having recently just moved from Washington DC, I was very clear that I don't know this community. I remember one of the big questions I was asked on my first day of meeting the staff was, ‘What initiatives do you want to bring?’ 

And my answer was, ‘I don't have any.’

For them to work, any ideas and initiatives we generate need to be based on what I learn about the community, so it’s critical to really integrate myself into the community as best that I can. The community needs to understand what's working well as well as what opportunities exist. And there’s so much here that is working well, it’s not about bringing something new to the table, but working to just bring attention to those things and figure out how to take them to the next level. 

Part of that engagement that’s important to me is including student voices as well. I think that's why, as a bit of a rebel in high school, I wanted to start my high school newspaper: I felt like students needed an opportunity to have their voices uplifted. So we put out applications to Kramer and Garber students who may be interested in talking with me where my goal was to be able to get representation of the entire school: not only looking at students with a 4.0 GPA or who are heavily involved in extracurriculars. We were very pleased with the number of applications we received and I meet with them once a month. 

I told the students that I didn't walk in with a plan because the plan will be developed based on what they tell me they want. Based on our conversations, the top two things students want to discuss are academics and social emotional needs of students. That is really powerful, and I'm excited to be able to dive into those conversations further.

I think transparency is a word that's often overused, we are a public institution, so it’s so important to how we move forward. I  was in a meeting a couple of days ago where I reminded our team that we have an obligation to the public to be really transparent in what it is that we're doing: everything from tax dollars to responding to what the pressing needs are. We have an obligation to be transparent and clear to the public. Of course, there’s going to be disagreements at times for where we allot resources, and I do think that disagreement can be valuable. Conflict is good, as long as we know how to effectively engage with it and manage it.

One of the core components of our strategic plan is working on empowering our people. I think the more that the more our people can be empowered to be able to argue and to be able to share what they believe is right, a new idea, a new innovation, or to focus us on something we have been doing that is really working that we shouldn’t lose sight of is really important.

Our strategic plan is a roadmap to get to where it is  we're going. One of the things that really drew me to the community is the rich history here. But based on what I’ve heard, the community has changed, and so now I think that part of the work we have to do is to rethink who we are as a community,  reestablish our identity is as a school system, and then ensuring that we have collective voices at the table to be able to design a roadmap to get us to the next five years.

To help make sure those voices are heard, I did a 100 Day Listening Tour, just hearing what people’s thoughts were, and through that, I was able to identify the four components that I think are the basic structure of the plan.

Number one to ensure excellence. That’s about what we're doing inside of the building to make sure that students are reaching their academic best. The second is to be able to educate the whole child, including the social-emotional part of who they are. Number three is empowering our people. We’re only as good as our students, we’re only as good as our teachers and staff, and so we’ve got to make sure that we're taking care of our people and making them feel supported and like they can influence what goes on here. And number four is effectively engaging our families and community in this work and in this process."

- Justin Ralston, Superintendent of Essexville-Hampton Public Schools