An Interview with the Principal of a Rural Middle School

Caroline Best, Associate Professor

Pellissippi State Tech Community College and ACCLAIM Doctoral Student

Carpenters Middle School sits in a field surrounded by pastures with grazing cattle in Blount County, Tennessee.  The school has three computer labs, a Smartboard, and Qwisdom technology. The principal, Rob Britt, a former high school choral director, has two masters’ degrees.  The state of Tennessee classifies this school as rural, but the principal sees his school differently.

Rob Britt has been the principal for three and one-half years since the school was built to meet the needs of a growing community in the southwest part of the county.   Previously, he was assistant principal for seven and one-half years and teacher for eight years at nearby William Blount High School.  Britt has masters’ degrees in Music from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Educational Administration and Supervision from Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, Tennessee. He earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Music Education from Shenandoah University and Conservatory of Music, Winchester, Virginia. He grew up in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania and attended a rural school system.

Caroline Best is a doctoral student in math education in the Appalachian Collaborative Center for Learning, Assessment and Instruction in Mathematics (ACCLAIM) program.  She is an associate professor of mathematics and program coordinator of developmental mathematics at Pellissippi State Technical Community College, which serves Blount and Knox Counties in east Tennessee.

You are the principal of a rural middle school, grades six through eight.  How is the rural classification determined?

 I think it is determined by the state. All you have to do is look around; you see cows on one side and a big field on the other. There is land that had been purchased by the school system to build a K – 5 school on one side and a 9 – 12 on the other.  The way the county is growing in this direction, it will not be a rural school forever.  It will be a suburban school very shortly.

 Does population, income level, or number of students who receive free or reduced lunch determine the rural classification?

Probably a combination of those things. We do not have a real high percentage of free or reduced lunch. We are right around 32 – 35%. If you go to Lanier Elementary School, one of the feeder schools, you’ll see around 56%.  That’s probably why we (Carpenters Middle) are classified rural.  Then you go to Fairview Elementary School, you have 7% free or reduced lunch.

 How does this classification affect your students and/or teachers as it relates to funding, professional development opportunities, instructional equipment, etc?

I wish it did.  No, the classification is just in name only; it has little to no effect.  We would have to have 45 – 50% free or reduced lunches to receive Title I funding. Lanier is a Title 1 school; they receive extra funding.

How do you see the rural classification played out in everyday activities at your school?

 For the most part I do not think of my students as rural. Student behavior and conduct do impact us.  For the most part we have students who come from traditional homes.  Even single parents make an attempt to raise their children in such a way that they come to school with feeling of respect to authority.  We don’t have any problems with violence; just typical middle school behavior played out on reality TV shows every afternoon and evening.  The very same things that come into my office are the same things you see on TV or read about in the paper.  For example, the other day, on the morning news, the father of one or our students here was picked up in Knox County for soliciting sex from a minor.  Now we have to deal with that. That’s Jerry Springer right here.  It’s a sad thing, but I think that’s how society has impacted us.

 Were you given any guidance or training on how rural schools are different or operate?

 I was not really given any guidance.  When you go through a degree program to be a principal you have a little bit of talk about knowing your community and environment.  I came from William Blount High School so I pretty much knew the kids coming from Lanier and Fairview.  I live in the Fairview Community so I knew those folks, the standard of living, and the norms that make up our community. We are very rapidly becoming a school that should be classified as suburban. I think that in another five to ten years we will be classified as suburban. I don’t see that a reclassification will matter.

What has been your connection with math teachers, in the past and/or in your present school?

 In my past experience I was in charge of curriculum and instruction.  I worked a lot with math teachers, looking at curriculum and teaching strategies—seeing how we can do a better job.  I helped facilitate a lot of discussion:  how are we doing, can we be doing better, or looking at the data. Let’s do some training on how we can get from where we are to where we need to be.  Sort of like what I do as the principal here.  We have a curriculum chair who handles a lot of those responsibilities.  We, the school, sent two teachers to the national NCTM conferences.

Where do you get the money to send teachers to these conferences?

The school has funds. The Coke Company gives us about $3,600 a year that goes toward staff development.  The local Coke distributor signed a contract with the county schools; we have their machines in our schools and the schools get a portion of the proceeds.

We also sent teachers to the national middle school association conference in Atlanta, Georgia. We took math teachers with us there; they attended the math workshops.   We have teachers going to present at a conference in Athens, TN.  We do a good job of keeping up with modern, contemporary learning.  We are in a textbook quandary right now.  When we came into this building, the textbook adoption had already gone through.  One of our feeder schools already had Saxon math books. Another had Glencoe.  We had no choice but to meld the two together in some form or fashion. And so we have a hodge-podge of what we are using.  Now, we have directed our Saxon material to those students who are behind, the ones that have not been so successful because they need the constant repetition. The Glencoe math spends a little more time on higher-order thinking.  We use it for medium to higher-level students.  We are looking forward to our next adoption cycle so that we can get one series into the building. You know our math teachers teach a lot of computation and they do a lot on procedures.

 Interesting. Is this because of the testing? What is the testing cycle at Carpenters Middle?

Yes, all three grades—six, seven, and eight. If the student does not make a certain grade, he or she is remediated. With the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, there is a whole new layer of accountability.  I could talk about this for days; it’s on my mind constantly. We have geared up and tried to prepare our kids. Now they not only get a score that will dictate what their gain is, they will get a cut-off score that says whether they are proficient at that grade level. And so we are looking at both those things now. That’s a whole other issue, but I think it does connect with what we are talking about because of instruction. How we roll out math; we do not do a very good job anywhere I think in terms of making connections to the real world.

Do you see your students making the connections between what they do in their rural community and math? Are farm chores or other rural activities helping them connect with math?

 No. And I think if you ask our teachers, they would agree.  They struggle to make those connections.

 When your textbook committee meets to decide on the next textbook, will they be looking for texts that have a more rural flavor?

No, they will look to see how well the textbook matches the Tennessee State standards.  Everything is standards-based. The curriculum is pretty well laid out for us and driven by the test.

Is that a problem—driven by the test?

            I think there are some good things about the testing. We saw tremendous gains by many of our students. I am very proud of our test scores. Some of our value-added scores are some the highest in the east Tennessee region.  We are proud of that.  Because of the fact that we have to look at data and understand what it means, we have to look at what is essential.  That’s what we need to focus on. Because we have to do that, we can take kids from where they are on the learning ladder and move them along to the best of their ability.

Can you describe how your math instructors are trying to make math relevant to the student’s everyday life?

Some of our teachers really try to set up certain examples that relate to students.  For instance, figuring the angles of a deck; the number of boards needed to build a certain size. They try to relate.  We did at the high school.  Because we had the tech-prep track and the technical math, it was easier to relate problems to automobiles or diesel engines; we were able to do that better there.  At this level, we are just trying to meet the standards.

Let’s talk about technology. What are you currently using?

                We were very fortunate to move into a new building with technology.  We have three full computer labs with 24 -25 computers.  A teacher can take their kids to the lab.  The eighth grade math teacher can take her class and teach a lesson using the Internet or whatever is appropriate.  We do not have a lot of math classes using the lab; it’s more the language arts, language, and social studies classes.  We do have a new piece of technology called Qwisdom. It has multimedia materials and remote controls.  Every child in the class has a remote control.  A problem is shown on the board; a higher order thinking type question. The child beams their answer to the board. Immediately a graph is displayed indicating how many students answered the problem correctly. It does two things—it gives the student immediate feedback, which is so important. Quite often a student is working a problem on a piece of paper, turning it in not knowing whether the problems were worked correctly until the next day. The students may practice the wrong procedure at home that night.  I have a saying that practice does not make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.  Students have to learn the correct procedure. This technology is a great tool for our teachers. It gives the teacher immediate feedback.  He or she knows what needs to be retaught immediately.    It is in one classroom, and only used for math. We are piloting it this year and if it goes well and is useful, we’ll hope to use it in other classes.   We saw it at the national middle school conference in action.   The kids love it to; it has a game on it so if you answer a question correctly your racecar moves ahead.

Is this a NASCAR thing?  And maybe NASCAR is a rural phenomena?

It’s definitely here.  It would be a rural thing.  We have kids that follow it religiously, along with their parents.

 Do you use calculators to teach mathematics?

We have classroom sets of TI-83 calculators for the two eighth grade algebra classes. We don’t have this technology yet, but we would like to have it.  We are looking at software used at Maryville Middle. The child works on the computer individually through a series of math problems. The software diagnoses the students’ entry level and then takes the student through the lesson at their own pace. We feel that this would be a great supplemental class in the lab, not to take away from a student’s regular class. We would use this with some kids, not all.

Are your kids so used to video games that the teacher has to find similar ways to engage them in the classroom?

Yes, you can follow a group of kids that go from a traditional classroom into the computer lab. They are not doing so well (in the traditional class), yet take them over to a teacher working in the (computer) lab with a Smartboard and the kids are absolutely enthralled with it.  It does not matter what they are working on, they will persist to the end because, I think, they are so engaged by this technology. This instructor is teaching computers in the lab; this is not a math teacher.  The math teachers do not have Smartboards.  The fact is that you can take this same group of students from a class with very low engagement to one with high engagement; the only thing that I can point to is the technology use. It is fascinating. He, the computer lab teacher, doesn’t have any discipline problems.

Describe the financial support that is available for implementation of technology.

We raised our own money to buy the Smartboards.  We won a grant, but that only paid for half, so we had to use our own money.

 Fundraising; now that’s another topic. Are your parents involved, perhaps more so because of your rural setting, in the parent-teacher organization?

We have a PTO.  I would not consider them overly active.  We had a really active one last year. It depends on the leadership, just like anything else. I feel like my role is to help them get them started, help set goals, set up meetings.  It’s really up to them.  I do attend the meetings. In terms of supporting our fundraising activities and our school, our parents do a super job.  We raised $3,000 to $5,000 more than was expected for our fall fundraiser.  Our related arts team did coupon books at the same time; our parents supported both.

 I see great publicity in the local newspaper about your school and its principal. I think that you are making a real effort to get the word out.

We have to do these sorts of things.  We, school systems in general, get enough bad press.  We have to do a better job about telling the good news about what’s going on in our schools. So that if something bad happens, God forbid, the local folks don’t say “ I knew it was just a matter of time. I’ve seen thus and thus and thus….” So far, we have won the battle of community support and community buy-in; the community here believes that this is a good school. I had the opportunity before Carpenters opened to go see a lot of middle schools, not just in the state of Tennessee. We were fortunate to be able to do that; it helped build our vision on what we wanted to achieve here. All the teachers who started were hand selected. Being able to choose all the teachers for this building was really a neat experience.

Thank you, Rob, for an hour of your time. I’ll let you get back to your job.  I heard on the intercom that tonight is the Valentine’s Dance for the students at Carpenters Middle School.  You’ll be here to chaperone. Just another day in the life of a middle school principal.