(Written as a letter of support for Stubbs Academy Principal Jeffers Brown)
In
June of 2012, while sitting in our annual meeting, the seed was planted to form
a collaboration with a school in our city. After reflection, I asked a teacher with
whom I was acquainted to help us find a school that would welcome Grace Church
as a community partner. Around the same time, in one of my weekly messages, I
shared a vision for using our talents and abilities to nurture and support the
educational growth of the children in our community.
After
a close look at the schools in our area, Stubbs Academy seemed the right
choice. After trying to contact the former administration, and receiving no
response, the suggestion was made by one of our staffers, who had worked
briefly in education, that we might begin to forge a relationship by sending
goodies once a week for teachers and staff in their break room. Believing that
building relationships is a good thing, that’s what we did. Weekly, home baked
cookies and cakes were sent over to Stubbs with a note that said we were
thinking of them and the important work they do. For
some time, that was the extent of our relationship.
Under
the creative leadership of Jeffers Brown, we were invited to become a community
partner in helping the faculty and administration of Stubbs become more
effective in transforming the lives of their students.
I
like to say that Mr. Brown, and company, have invited us to do the things that traditionally parent organizations do: providing
school supplies and backpacks; staffing the annual back-to-school block party;
dipping ice cream at a math night for children and families; providing water
ice on a hot Field Day; purchasing a salt water aquarium; funding a spaghetti
dinner for an evening event for children and families; mentoring weekly;
lending a listening ear; attending Priority School meetings and board meetings
to support Stubbs; providing holiday gifts for teachers and staff as a way of
saying “thank you;” working with other community partners to provide holiday
gifts for children in the school; judging a bakeoff with baked goodies by the
fathers of students; attending holiday programs, a civics bee, and graduation;
purchasing uniforms for students.
The
above list is given as a way of saying that Mr. Brown, and the faculty and
staff he has assembled, understand the
needs of the students and the families of Stubbs and make every effort to meet
them so that the students, and those supporting them, can concentrate on the
most important thing: their education.
There
is a wonderful line in the book Blink:
The Power of Thinking without Thinking
written by Malcolm Gladwell:
“The
key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding.
We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the
latter.”
As Principal of an elementary school that has all sorts of sociological conundrums, one of which is the extremely high poverty rate of the students’ families and all the catch-22s that accompany this, Jeffers Brown recognizes that in order to make good decisions for those whose education is under his care, he first has to understand their basic needs, their circumstances, the struggles facing their families, the reasons why they are underachieving in spite of their obvious aptitude.
Anyone
who has spent time at Stubbs knows
that that an environment has been created, under the leadership of Mr. Brown,
in which teachers and staff seek to understand
the students and parents with the longer
term goal of instilling in them the joy of learning and the desire to excel in
that learning, aka in Delaware as raising
their test scores.
My
heart has broken over the past few months as I watched the decision of
September 4th threaten to close Stubbs. Yes, if one looks only at
test scores, it appears that the administration and faculty need a real
shake-up. However, if one spends time at Stubbs, seeking understanding of what has been happening there over the last year
and a half of Mr. Brown’s tenure as Principal, one could come to the conclusion
that it does not!!
Jeffers
Brown, along with his administration, has built a faculty that now works well together, that loves the
students and continually seeks the best education possible for each. Much of the credit for the
creation of this healthy environment has to do with this man who is
professional, loving, caring, involved, smart, funny, and dedicated; this man
who is passionate about his vocation with the children of our city; this man
who has sought to understand his
students and their families and who has the ability to guide his school into
making good decisions for and with them!
