BY MARTIN AVILA, ANGEL ROJAS & VALERIA MORA
10 Minutes with Tipton originated in January 2022 on the Education Page. Students in the After School Education and Safety (ASES) Program at Tipton Elementary School take time to Zoom with individuals in the community to ask them questions about their jobs, lives and strategies they can use in their own lives to help them become college and career-ready.
What is your job title/role in our community?
“I am the principal of Woodville Elementary School. We are a TK-8th grade school.”
Please tell us a little bit about yourself - Your background, where you grew up, your family.
“I grew up in a little town called Exeter and Visalia, and I went to high school in Visalia. I went to College of the Sequoias and I went to Fresno State. I taught fourth and fifth grade for six years. I have been an administrator for almost 12 years.”
What makes Woodville Elementary amazing?
“I would have to say our students and our staff. Our students are great kids! They’re very happy and I love to interact with our students and we have friendly staff members that are fun to work with.”
Can you tell us what you do every day at your job?
“The biggest part of my job that I do daily is solve problems. I am scheduled to be in many meetings. They could be about budget, they could be with staff or employees, students, or parents.
Sometimes I eat lunch with students. I counsel students if they are sad, or upset. I plan safety drills. I have to get students in trouble. I help oversee facilities and projects since we are building new classrooms. I approve student activities, co-curricular, or extracurricular activities. I walk through classrooms, I watch students play during recess and lunch. I evaluate staff members. We have state testing so I have to make sure that it's completed correctly. Most importantly, I have to make sure students are learning. I look at achievement data, report cards, grades and how students are doing on tests.”
What do you love about your career? What do you dislike about your career?
“What I love about my career is building relationships with students and mentoring adults to be great at what they’re doing. If they’re instructional aides, I get to mentor them and help them be the best they can be, or if they’re teachers I get to mentor them and help them be the best they can be.
What I don’t like is when students get in trouble. I also don’t like the long hours.”
Would you encourage others to pursue your career?
“I would if they had the right reasons as to why they wanted to be a principal. If people think being the principal means they tell people what to do, or be bossy, or be the person in charge, then those aren’t the right reasons to be a principal. If they want to be a principal, I would tell them that being the principal is about having the courage to do what is right for students, their safety and academics no matter what. It is about being able to do the right things for kids no matter what because parents send their children whom they love so much and they send them to school every day and they trust the school to take care of them and teach them. That’s a very big responsibility. It’s a rewarding job when you know you are doing those things at your school.”
What is something that might surprise members of the public (either about you, or your career)?
“I think something that would surprise people is that I wanted to be a movie star when I was little and mostly all of the way up until high school too. I never planned on working at a school. I wanted to be famous. I’m glad it didn’t work out because I truly love what I do now!”
What advice do you have for young people who might be pursuing your line of work?
“They need to learn how to be solutions-based. People always come to you when you’re the principal with problems that need solving, or they have concerns, sometimes a crisis so you have to be ready to handle problems and come up with solutions.
I would also give the advice to become very flexible because you work with lots of different kinds of people. You work with people of different ages. Lastly, my advice is to make sure they naturally love love love children. You have to love children to be a good principal.”
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
“Hopefully, I will be the principal of one of the top academically performing schools in California called Woodville Elementary. That’s where I see myself in 10 years.”
Anything else you would like to add? (Maybe a current, or past project you’re proud of?)
“We’ve started a college and career lab. It’s got some cool things like a bunch of stations, One where you can work on a fake plastic stuffed dog like you’re a veterinarian, and you can diagnose the dog.
Another station you can look at X-rays of bones to see if they are broken. At another station, you can build a bridge and see if it can handle an earthquake and not break. At another station, you can learn plumbing or build video games on the computer. There is another station where you can create an object and print it using the 3D printer.
It was a big project and it seemed like it was never going to be completed and it is now and we built a STEM lab right next to it.
I am also proud of our character program, the TRIBE program, we put into place. I’m proud of the words we’ve chosen and how we use them for positive character at our school. I am also proud that our recent reading scores have improved every year.”
Martin is in the fourth grade and loves soccer. Angel is in the sixth grade and he loves to play soccer and Fortnite. Valeria is in the seventh grade and she enjoys spending time with her friends. All three students attend Tipton Elementary School and are in the After School Education and Safety (ASES) Program.
