Episode 56 — March 2, 2020

Thursday is Nebraska Teacher Appreciation Day, so on this episode we’ll listen to the latest Superintendent Spotlight. Steve Joel talks about the powerful impact that teachers can have on students, families and communities.

• • ‘Really cool science’ at Park Middle School
  • Southeast hosts 9/11 survivor, honors theater’s namesake
  • High School Design Preview

Coming Up This Week

• Monday  3/2
  • Boys Basketball districts wrapping up Monday and Tuesday
  • 7pm – LNS N Live (also Tuesday)
  • 7pm – LSE/Irving Showcase Concert
• Tuesday 3/3
  • 7:30pm: LNE Theatre present The Bat by Mary Robert Rinehart at the LNE Drama Center
    • Continues through Friday
• Wednesday 3/4
  • 7pm: Singing Knights, Knight Sounds — LSE
• Thursday 3/5
  • Girls State Basketball starts, continues through Saturday
    • Games happening at Southwest, East, Devaney and Pinnacle
• Friday 3/6
  • Last day of 3rd Quarter and Beginning of Spring Break
• Sunday 3/8
  • Daylight Savings Time starts!

Episode Transcript

Brian Fitzgerald
This is stories from Lincoln Public Schools Episode 56 for the week of March 2 2020.

Hello from Lincoln Public Schools. I’m Brian Fitzgerald.

Jason Keese
And I’m Jason Keese. Welcome to stories from Lincoln Public Schools. Our podcast that gives you an inside look at the people, activities and programs that make LPS the amazing place that it is. Thursday is Nebraska Teacher Appreciation Day, so in this episode, we’ll listen to the latest Superintendent Spotlight. Steve Joel talks about the powerful impact that teachers can have on students, families and communities.

But first, let’s see what’s making news on LPS.org. Speaking of great teachers, we just posted a story and video about a Park Middle School teacher who’s piloting some cutting edge science curriculum, as he says “It’s really cool.”

LPS released the initial designs for the two new high schools. We have a special web page where you can check out the site-plan documents and watch a rendered fly-through video of what’s inside of the new schools will look like.

And we also have a story about a great event hosted recently by Southeast High School. A 9-11 survivor spoke to students about his experience in New York City that day. His talk held special significance for Southeast. The school’s theatre is named after Jennifer L. Dorsey-Howley, a 1985 graduate who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center. Family and friends of hers also spoke at the event.

And as always, you can find all of this and much more on any of our social media platforms.

Brian Fitzgerald
Here’s some things going on this week at Lincoln Public Schools…

Boys Basketball districts are wrapping up Monday and Tuesday. Also Monday, March 2 at 7pm, we have LNS N live up at North Star and also 7pm Southeast and Irving are having a showcase concert. Tuesday the 3rd at 7:30pm Northeast Theater presents The Bat by Mary Robert Reinhardt at the Northeast Drama Center and that continues every night through Friday. Wednesday, the 4th at 7pm we have Singing Knights, Knight Sounds over at Southeast. And on the 5th, girls state basketball starts and that of course continues through Saturday. At the time of recording. Northeast, East High, Lincoln High and Southwest are still in contention for that but we’ll see who’s going to be making it to the finals there. And games will be happening at Southwest, East, Devaney and at Pinnacle. And then on the 6th is the last today of the third quarter and of course the beginning of spring break comes with that. And Sunday, March 8th, remember daylight savings time starts and so we spring ahead. This is the one where you lose an hour so…

Jason Keese
Boo

Brian Fitzgerald
Boo? But you get the evening sunlight which I cannot wait for so that’s some of what’s going on this week and Lincoln Public Schools you can view links to more academic, activity and athletic calendars at lps.org/podcast.

Jason Keese
Now it’s time to listen to the latest episode of Superintendent spotlight, which shines a light on the power of public education and the impact of a good teacher.

Mindy Burbach
Hello, I’m Mindy Burbach, communications director for Lincoln Public Schools. Welcome to Superintendent spotlight an opportunity to sit down with Dr. Joel twice a month and hear about the latest going on in our district. Welcome, Dr. Joel.

Dr. Steve Joel
Thank you, Mindy.

Mindy Burbach
And we have a lot to celebrate this week. This week is National Public Education Week. Public Schools week. Next week we get to honor Nebraska teachers on Tuesday. Its Nebraska teacher recognition day and the next Thursday, we are honoring five of our teachers with one of my favorite events: Our Thank you teacher event where we invite teachers in and we get to recognize them at the governor’s mansion. We have selected five award winners. And so let’s start with National Public Education Week. Why is public education so important, not only for our community but for our state and for our nation.

Dr. Steve Joel
Well, you know, as a history major, I always go back to a quote that Thomas Jefferson said years and years and years ago, you know, when we’re trying to form this country, and that is that the backbone of democracy is going to be education. And so you know, when you build it off of that premise, the most important thing that a society can convene or conveyed to their children is an education so that they become better citizens, they can become an educated electorate, they can realize their dreams in terms of what they want to do with their life. Without education, you know, you don’t have any of that. So, you know, fortunately in this country, we have continued to be the backbone doesn’t mean that we’re not being challenged by you know, certain issues and you know, very, very often when there’s a something that has to be addressed as a society, education is often given the instructions on you know what people think we should do to that, but at the end of the day, it’s reading and writing and arithmetic. Now we’re throwing 21st century skills, you know, collaborative collaboration, communication, critical Thinking, decision making, you know, all of those things are important too. So, you know, we do a great job and LPS, you know, our kids get our high quality education. I often say when I speak at graduation, this diploma carries some weight. I mean, you, you have you have a high degree, we have a high degree of graduation requirements. And we often hear from our students that have gone off and done some really good things that they’re prepared for college.

Mindy Burbach
And you’ve heard that I mean, you’ve talked about that before, where you go out every time you go out into the community and you run across a student, you ask them about their school experience, or where they went to school, and you’ve heard how it’s prepared them for the next step.

Dr. Steve Joel
And you know, about the only negative that I get sometimes we my wife and I were out to eat, or about two weeks ago, and waitress came over and I just said, So did you go to an LPS school which I was there and you know, Linda rolls her eyes kind of like, Oh, here we go again. And she said, Yeah, I did. And she told me the high school and I said, Well, how do you feel that it’s prepared you knowing that she’s waiting tables, and she said, You know, I wish I would have taken better advantage of the opportunities that I had, and so many of her friends have gone off and done some things and she was she was in her mid 20s. So she’s trying to go the non-traditional route. So I really think it’s one of those things. We’re trying to work hard with our children to say take advantage of what you got it because this is a golden opportunity to get a tremendous education from some of the best instructors in the entire country.

Mindy Burbach
And part of the strategic goal and the goal the board has set forth is that 90% on-time graduation rate, and we’re striving to it. What efforts are we doing to get there?

Dr. Steve Joel
Well, it comes down to one to one relationships, right? So you know, we have an awful lot of children that are dealing with challenging baggage and you know, latest poverty rates 45 or 46%. And we have high mobility and so, you know, we have kids that are adjudicated in the court system. So you know, we now pinpointed you know who those students and aren’t making it — what can we do to help them make it but you know, at the end of the day, school is hard, right? So you know, you can’t come to school and be a chronic, be be enrolled and be a chronic truant. We have an awful lot of kids that miss 20 or more days. And it’s very, very difficult for teachers to be able to get them caught up. So you know, what we’re trying to do is what are agencies that we can partner with in the community that can help us get these children and we know we get them here, we can create relationships for them, but I’ll tell you down the road, what we’re really starting to look at our focus programs, that we’re going to be able to introduce kids to their, to their interests, and perhaps help them explore different ways for them to express their creativity. And I think that’s going to be exciting. I’m looking forward to April, when we put these focus new focus program packages together, and we’re able to talk about these great community partnerships. Hopefully, some of our students that are less inclined to achieve academically may be inclined to achieve, you know, working with their hands or working in technology or, you know, aviation at North Star, which isn’t any secret. So, you know, we get a lot of good things on a plate, but you know, at the end of the day, students have to come, parents have to be accountable for getting them here. And then, you know, we got six and a half hours to work with them, you know, so it’s, it’s this onus on us,

Mindy Burbach
And so it takes our staff and we have a lot of dedicated staff that work with our students and build those relationships. Our teachers play a really important role in providing those opportunities for our students. Why do you think it’s so important that we honor teachers in their work as we’re planning to do next week

Dr. Steve Joel
The most important function that we have some classrooms, right? So all of all of the rest of us are our job is to support instruction. If we didn’t have great teachers in front of our kids, that we wouldn’t have the results we have. So we’re very, very thankful that, you know, LPS is a destination location, meaning that a lot of these young people are graduating from colleges in the area, want to come to Lincoln Public Schools, and as we look at our, you know, 30-year litany of employees, many of them stay. And so I was looking at a statistic the other day where 40% of the teachers in America — in America — that start a first year don’t see a fifth year, and so I went down and Dr. Webber’s office I you know, where do we compare here, I always think we’re better while we are 11%. So you know, people come here, they just stay. We hear constantly from teachers that we support instruction, better from whence they came if they came from another district. But you know, as you know, there’s there’s always financial challenges with that to a class sizes are really good. But at the end of the day, you have to have a skilled practitioner in front of that classroom who loves kids, who meets kids where they are, that are culturally proficient than our content masters, and have multiple strategies to deliver instruction, and when I go visit schools on a regular basis, that’s what I see.

Mindy Burbach
Wonderful. So do you remember a particular teacher that made an impact on you?

Dr. Steve Joel
Yeah, it was Mr. Adler, my sixth grade kind of math science teacher and he was… and in I grew up kind of want to be a police officer and major league sports player and he was the one that told me Ds in math are not going to even get me the major leagues. And so I always… he was a motivator. You know, he was one of those guys that taught you a hard yelled at you in class, but at 3:30 went in the gym and would beat you up on the basketball court. And it was all about kind of teaching us how to become young men. And, you know, so he’s somebody I always look back on and say, you know, thank you for that. And then I lost track of him. Funny side of that story is he didn’t like… I didn’t know until I got my master’s degree and became a principal that he hated administrators while he was a teacher. He just felt like they got in the way at too many rules. And when I got my master’s degree, I just sent him a copy of it. And I said, I just want to say “thank you” and he sent it back to me with his picture sitting in his classroom. And he said, the next time you you pick on a poor teacher, that’s just working their tail off, I want you to look at the smiley face and remember me because quite frankly, we need more teachers and less administrators. I never forgot that either. It didn’t stop me from, you know, pursuing my journey. But he was just one of those guys that kids meant everything to him, and you know, and broke the rules. And he didn’t he didn’t worry about the ramifications of breaking the rules.

Mindy Burbach
Sounds wonderful. Thank you for sharing that story. Well, now so the favorite part of our program where we get a question from one of our students, this one comes from Eva, a sophomore at East High School.

Student
My name is Eva. I’m a sophomore at East. And if you could teach any subject for any grade, what would it be?

Dr. Steve Joel
Well, either that’s a great question. I’m a I’m a history, political science kind of major-minor. And I can tell you that teaching Junior Achievement right now, I’m not doing a very good job of following the scripted materials because there’s so much happening in our world today, that when you teach history teach PoliSci or you teach economics, you have the ability to take what’s happening as we speak, meld it into a lesson. And at the end of the day, hopefully your students, like yourself Eva, are becoming critical consumers of information so that you can make your own educated decisions as you begin to process what’s happening. And I think that’s really our role in school and we have to try to do it in an unbiased way. Which sometimes it’s very, very difficult because you know, we we are informed, but I would, I would walk into any political science class history class, economics class, tomorrow and and just have a ball.

Mindy Burbach
Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thanks, Eva, for your question. That’s all the time we have for today. Thank you for joining us.

Jason Keese
Well, I really liked Eva’s question Brian, so I’ll throw it to you. If you could teach any subject, any grade level, what would it be?

Brian Fitzgerald
You know, I think I would probably go towards some sort of, you know, computer programming, computer applications

Jason Keese
Very on-brand.

Brian Fitzgerald
Right, right. You know, I’ve, in the past been able… to have the opportunity to do some things with our , what used to be called the ITFP program, the focus program, and it was so fun to work with those students to do some digital design. So I think that’d be a fun thing to do all the time. How about you?

Jason Keese
Oh, I probably have an obvious choice like you did probably a journalism advisor, something like that. Plus, I feel like you know, when they’re in a when they choose to take journalism, they’re probably they probably already have a maybe not necessarily a passion but an interest in that. So I, I would question my ability to inspire students unless they were already interested in what I was teaching. So all this all this is probably just a way of saying that it’s, it probably worked out well that I’m not a teacher.

Brian Fitzgerald
Well thank you to all of our teachers.

If there’s anything that you’ve heard today that you’d like to learn more about, there’s links to everything along with links to our full calendars on our podcast page at LPS.org/podcast. Also, if you’d like to subscribe and get notified each week when we push up a new episode, you can find us on your favorite podcast service. Links to all those are also at LPS.org/podcast. And that is all the time we have for today.

Thank you for joining us here at stories from Lincoln Public Schools.