State Education Board Member Visits Webster Elementary
Posted
Staff Report-
NORTH WEBSTER – North Webster Elementary School had a unique visitor Thursday, according to third-grade teacher Shellie Miller. Dr. Brad Oliver, member of the State Board of Education from the 6th Congressional District, walked through the halls of the school Thursday to do exactly what Miller asked of him: “Will you please come visit our school? Will you please come and see the faces of the students that are directly affected by decisions made at the state level?” Miller emailed every member of the State Board of Education and extended that same invitation. She did this on a whim, she reported. Did she really think she would get a response? No, she didn’t get her hopes up. It began with Miller's concern for issues going on at State Board of Education meetings. According to Miller, “It certainly isn't a secret that Hoosier teachers and administrators are feeling the pinch of high-stakes testing, heaps and heaps of material to teach and not enough time, evaluations based on student and district test score data that in many districts is directly linked to compensation, and the ever-growing, ever-concerning needs of many students who walk through the doors of our schools each day.” Being the teacher that she is, Miller composed that email and hit send. Much to her surprise, Oliver answered. As Oliver walked through the halls of North Webster Elementary Thursday, he saw almost every classroom, and met nearly every staff member. On many occasions, he got down on his knee next to a student working at his desk and interacted with that student as if he were his own. Oliver received lots of high-fives, lots of smiles, lots of hand shakes accompanied by “Nice to meet you!” He looked into the eyes of the 538 different and unique reasons why teachers go to work every day. Miller stated, “They aren’t test scores. They aren’t a number. They aren’t products we are creating from a mold on an assembly line. We certainly don’t measure them that way. These are our kids.” In Miller's classroom, there are 23 different students who come from 23 different homes and have 23 different sets of needs. “I know that is the same thing we would find in the classrooms of over a million Hoosier students across our great state,” Miller stated. During the course of the conversations, North Webster staff had Thursday with Oliver, they learned many, many things. “We learned that there are indeed people in positions at the state level who know what's best for our kids. It's a process. There's much to be undone just as there is still much to be done. Is it a perfect system? Absolutely not. He asked me this: Do you know what WD-40 stands for? I was thinking to myself, ‘Um...it's a lubricant that makes stuff stop squeaking?’ He went on to say, ‘WD stands for Water Displacement, but that’s not the most important part. It’s the 40. The 40 stands for the number of times it took to get the formula right. Thirty-nine failures. We don’t give up till we get it right,’” Miller reported. She also said, “On behalf of North Webster Elementary School, as well as the rest of the Wawasee Community School District, we would like to extend our sincere gratitude to Dr. Brad Oliver for making time in his very busy schedule to travel up to our great community and spend this time with us. We want to thank him for getting to know the faces of a small but important fraction of students upon whom he and others at the State Board of Education have such great impact. He knows what we do is important. Dr. Oliver was a teacher himself. In fact, we thought at one point he might take over in one of our fifth-grade classrooms (a grade he used to teach and obviously misses).” When asked about his take on North Webster Elementary School, Oliver said, “I was most impressed by the teachers and students and the quality of relationships that contribute to the culture of academic excellence observed.”
