Dr. Gerald Hill engages in a rich conversation with Bob Maxfield and Suzanne Klein, reflecting on his district leadership experiences, guiding principles and vision for re-imagining teaching and learning. Drawing upon a wealth of experience as an educational leader and insight as a forward thinker, Dr. Hill shares his perspective and advice for current district leaders offering eight essential guideposts: School Finance; School Board Relations; Staff Relations; Organized Abandonment; Flexible Thinking; Student Learning Environments; Graduate Students with the Four C’s; and Support Current and Future Educators.
Dr. Gerald Hill engages in a rich conversation with Bob Maxfield and Suzanne Klein, reflecting on his district leadership experiences, guiding principles and vision for re-imagining teaching and learning. Drawing upon a wealth of experience as an educational leader and insight as a forward thinker, Dr. Hill shares his perspective and advice for current district leaders offering eight essential guideposts:
1.School Finance
“Try to be as transparent as possible, so everybody knows what we have, where it is and how we utilize the resources that we have. One of the things I’m most proud of is that we have corrected the district’s financial situation going from less than a 1% fund balance when I started, to about a 19% fund balance this year…It is so critical to have the finances right, because the resources enable us to set goals and priorities.”
2. School Board Relations
“Superintendents need to have a really good working relationship with their boards of education and that's a lot easier said than done. As superintendent, share your vision with your board and bring them along, developing a set of operating principles. Have the board make the same commitment to work toward the goals. If board members change, you have a new dynamic; but that communication is a constant.”
3. Staff Relations
“If I am leaving any kind of legacy here, it's that everybody has a seat at the table. All voices are heard and all opinions and perspectives are respected. The teacher leaders, the principals, the superintendent, the school board; we're in this together…As a team we will make it work or not work. Once we start splintering then we're already losing; we're losing that edge to be creative and innovative on behalf of the students that we serve. We can have conversations around the difficult issues but it’s student-centered and student-based.”
4. Organized Abandonment
“With the pandemic we learned that we don't need some of our traditional practices. This gave us an opportunity for organized abandonment…We need a new playbook. I think if we allow ourselves and our teachers and parents to develop and design environments that are conducive to the best possibilities and choices for students at any age, that we would be surprised with what they came up with.”
5. Flexible Thinking
“In terms of teaching and learning, no one strategy works best for every student; we need to be flexible in our thinking of how we deliver instruction...We have teachers doing some really creative work and they aren't that inhibited by pre-conceived boundaries. It needs to be the sky's the limit, and we need to create that feeling of safety and security and risk-taking at the central office level, the school board, and superintendent.”
6. Student Learning Environments
“High schools need to look more like community colleges where students are coming and going, working in large groups, small groups, focused areas, and teachers are there as facilitators and advisors. We need more flexibility in the schedule to get students into the community with internships, and build more community partnerships as ways for young people to experience what's out there.”
“Middle school should be a time of exploration. We're building a new middle school, designed for integrated communities of learning. Students will be working as collaborative teams; grades six, seven and eight together with a cadre of teachers, in more of a STEAM kind of environment school-wide, with different pathways.”
“Our primary schools and our intermediate schools need to be rich in literacy across the board and numeracy. Let’s take advantage of kids discovering their passions with more active learning situations. I would like to see a blurring of the grades.”
7. Graduate students with the Four C’s
“We developed a portrait of a graduate with the Four C’s. We want students to be: great communicators in writing, speech and through technology; collaborative problem solvers, working in collaborative groups; contributors not only to their classrooms and their schools, but to society and the world; critical and creative thinkers.”
8. Support current and future educators
“Young people coming into education have to have an understanding what their role is; have a firm understanding of what their goals are; have a support group that they can rely on and have discussions with; have some time for personal reflection; and be able to sort through the issues and not overreact, and feel you have the answer to everything…In West Bloomfield we have a richly diverse student body and I love the more recent grants available for growing your own future educators.”
Final words of advice
“First of all, my advice to a new or newer superintendent (or district leader) would be to seek out somebody that you know and trust as a mentor or executive coach. You need to have a space where you can bounce ideas off somebody, have the conversation not necessarily to come away with the right answer, but to come away with what the options are. As you're getting into the profession, you need to submerge yourself and really learn as fast as you can, but you also need to have balance in your life with time for family and your own personal well-being.”
“Never lose that spirit of curiosity that you see in kindergarten students when they come into school for the first time, and never lose sight of the fact that we are here for them…Education is a privilege to be a part of; it's an honor to be a part of.”
One of the more important things for democracy is to have an educated society. We have to keep in mind why we're here and what we do is important to not only the learners, but to society as a whole.”
Bob Maxfield:
Welcome to Podcast for Leaderful Schools, this is coming to you almost live from Oakland University from the Galileo Institute at the School of Education and Human Services at Oakland University. This is Bob Maxfield and my co-host the wonderful Dr. Sue Klein is with me. And Sue, it's sad to say a typical early March day in Michigan; it rained, it snowed, it's grey, and it's windy. Other than that, it’s just fine.
00:24.060 --> 00:35.530
Suzanne Klein:
But the taste of spring that we had yesterday was 60 degrees almost, lets me know we're flirting with some changes in weather. I’m trying to be patient because I’m ready for them tomorrow.
00:37.160 --> 01:27.900
Bob Maxfield:
We all are. So, today's guest and if you've been with us this year, you know we've had a series of really interesting guests and we've tried to stay with the theme of what schools learned during the pandemic, and what we can do to maybe, perhaps do a better job coming out of it, and today's guest is a perfect person to talk to, Gerry Hill.
Dr. Gerald Hill, who is the superintendent of the West Bloomfield Schools, will soon to be retired. He will be retiring after 10 years of I think spectacular service in West Bloomfield. I really admire what he's done and he's a real force in the West Bloomfield community too. Prior to coming to West Bloomfield, he was superintendent in two school districts in the Chicago suburbs and has an illustrious education career leading up to that. So, Gerry, welcome, we are just so pleased you could be with us.
01:28 --> 01:32
Gerald Hill:
Thanks Bob and Suzanne, I look forward to our conversation today.
01:33.250 --> 01:58.990
Bob Maxfield:
I guess the logical place as you are preparing to retire and coming up rather soon, is that we'd like to give you a chance to reflect on your service in West Bloomfield. I know there's a lot you're proud of, but I also know that you're one of those guys who takes on tough issues, and so I’m sure there are issues that have caused you to wake up in the middle of the night and that you've had, have been challenging. Let's begin with those sources of pride as you look back over this last decade, what are you proud of?
02:00 --> 04:32
Gerald Hill:
Thanks for the question Bob, and I've been reflecting on that obviously with 10 years of service to the West Bloomfield School Board and the community, in particular staff and students. So, there's a lot that I’m proud of, and then there are some things that we still have work to do, and sometimes it's the same topic. When I first came to West Bloomfield as you may recall most, a lot of school districts in Michigan were really struggling financially. In West Bloomfield those financial struggles really impacted staff, board, administrative relationships. We were not on the same page just to put it mildly, in terms of working together as a team. There was, it was more adversarial. People were feeling frustrated with some of the finances and the budget woes.
So, one of the things I’m most proud of is that we have corrected the financial situation, going from less than a 1% fund balance when I started, up to about a 19% fund balance this year. And that's been growing steadily for the last seven years. The first three years were really, really tough. The reason that that's important is because then we were able to address a couple of really important factors. One was school board superintendent relationships, being on the same page with the board and developing a set of operating principles that we can abide by and adhere to. A lot of that was, what's our true north and what is our main purpose, and we had to discuss that. But most importantly were the staff relations and actually we worked with Oakland University quite a bit on this. We had consultants come in and lead our team; our team being the teacher union leaders, teacher leaders, principals, school board members, and how can we work to be more collaborative. And, of course, building trust was essential to that. I think where we are right now in staff relations is what I’m most proud of.
And if I’m leaving any kind of legacy here it's that everybody has a seat at the table; all voices are heard; opinions, perspectives are respected; and then we're all about finding common solutions; interest-based bargaining. We do interest-based bargaining and what is our common interest in developing solutions to address any kind of issues that come our way.
04:35 --> 04:45
Bob Maxfield:
But as you said, there are also things that are lingering that you know aren't as good as they could be. So, what are some of those on-going challenges?
04:46 --> 04:56
Gerald Hill:
Well there's still a question of finances and trying to be as transparent as possible so everybody knows what we have, where it is, how we utilize the resources that we have, and that's an ongoing process. As you know, in the school business the Board of Education changes whenever there's a board election. New members come on, and then you have a new dynamic. And you have to… you (the superintendent) and board have to get on the same page.
Finance is so critical to have it right, because they give us the resources to accomplish other things, so there's still a lot of work in finances. And unfortunately, in Michigan we don't get the kind of financial support that we would hope to get, I mean it’s improved with COVID; this one-time money. But that's also challenging because it's one-time money and you can't create these legacy costs related to finances, and think if your fund balances is 19%, now we can spend wildly. No, we can't because we don't want to go back to that 1%. So, that whole issue is huge.
The other thing that I’m proud of is the staff relationship piece, but that is also unfinished. It's continual work; you never ever finish it. The trust can be gone in a second if you betray that trust, if you're not honest with the people you're working with. We have to constantly remind ourselves the we, being the collective we: the teacher leaders, the principals, myself, the school board, that we're in this together. And as a team we will make it work or not work. Once we start splintering then we're already losing: we're losing that edge to be creative and innovative on behalf of the students that we serve. And as long as we keep our eyes on the target: what's best for students' learning, social emotional development, and mental health, then we can have conversations around the difficult issues, but it’s student-centered and student-based.
06:59 --> 08:06
Suzanne Klein:
Gerry, you've led right into the next topic that we wanted to hear from you about, and that's the whole notion of resetting and re-imagining education as the districts in this state and others emerge from a pandemic that had changed the routine of schools, changed the availability of students being in classrooms every day. You pointed out with your last couple of comments how important it is to look at what the school finance picture is, so that those goals and priorities can be set, and also pointing out that whole notion about staff and leadership and community and school board, all being on the same page about what is best for kids, and what kind of process is going to be most useful and valuable to ensure that the kids are successful.
Based on your experiences the last couple years, my guess is like many other districts you've learned some things again that you might know, might have known in advance, but you've also discovered some things that weren't immediately visible before the pandemic. So, talk to us for a few minutes about what those lessons learned were.
08:07 --> 13:22
Gerald Hill:
Sure, thanks Suzanne, and really it was interesting because we went from a totally normal kind of teaching and learning on a Friday the 13th, I will add that in, to the totally remote situation on Monday the 16th. So, what happened between Friday and Monday? Well, it just happened that on the Friday the 13th, we saw something coming earlier in the week, so I called the snow day. It didn’t snow but I called a snow day, so that we could plan. We had an all staff development on Friday, and the question was when we planned it, what if we went totally remote, what would we do? Well, by the time Friday came around it was, what will we do? Because the governor said Thursday night, we're going remote. But we had our learning design team come together on the Wednesday prior and that team: teachers, administrators, school board members, designed our plans for what are we going to do for out of school for two weeks. We didn't know it'd be two and a half years of chaos, but we're just planning two weeks.
So from there really Suzanne, what we've learned is the importance of having everybody in the room; having everybody at the table; listening to all of the concerns and recommendations; and the importance of being flexible in our thinking, whoever we are. You know, we can't get in a rut. We have to look at all possibilities. How can we effectively collaborate and problem solve even though we're in a crisis situation? It may seem more expedient to just do command and control; the superintendent’s going to say this, and the board is going to demand that, but then you're spending most of your time defending the decision. So, we decided that we needed to have a collective voice make recommendations; our school board was onboard. So we're solving challenges as they were coming to us. The people doing the most work are also the people learning the most, so we had multiple voices at the table. Everybody was learning: we were making mistakes; we were correcting those mistakes; we were trying “Plan A”, “Plan B”, “Plan C”, and we learned to pivot on a dime. I felt like I was in a basketball game and I was in the center in the lane, and I was pivoting all around; there's different defenders, and you don't know what's coming, and so,that was one of the big aha!
Then in terms of teaching and learning, not one strategy works best for every kid; there is not a strategy. So, we needed to be flexible in our thinking of how we deliver instruction. And we learned a lot with the remote learning and we learned a lot of good; we learned a lot of challenges; but we can incorporate a lot of the good into our ongoing plan.
We also learned that some of our traditional practices, we don't need. We could abandon them and this gave us an opportunity for organized abandonment. I think the state should follow suit and take a hard look at state mandated assessments and what good are they, and put more responsibility on school boards and school districts to come up with assurances and accountability measures that they can report to the state and the community. There can be some assessments related to that but we need to take a picture of the whole child. That's another huge learning during the pandemic. We saw the crises developing in social emotional learning and trauma, and students being left on their own or in a different world, and we saw things and learned things that we didn't know before. Well we now know a lot more about how to help students and teachers that are experiencing challenges related to that so, there are a lot of things we'd like to keep.
One of the key ingredients… I've always said that teaching is not a nine-to-three job, but we treat it like an hourly nine-to-three; I punch in at nine, I punch out at three. There's no time to collaborate with my colleagues; there's no time to have office hours for students; for families; and we take the summers off. Well, teachers don't ever take the summer off. They're always… they're learning; they're going to college; they're taking classes; they're teaching summer school. I think we ought to have a 40-hour work week. We ought to have a 45-week work year and not have students in front of us all the time. So, there are a lot of different ways to approach that. We need to look more like community colleges rather than the way we do now, with first grade, second grade, third grade, and so lockstep on schedules. We need to open up flexibility, particularly at the high school level. I could go on but it's an exciting time because if you have the right people at the table, you can come up with some really creative solutions that will resonate with students and community members.
13:23 --> 14:00
Suzanne Klein:
Well, not surprisingly because of the reputation that your district has for its leadership, in terms of supporting and providing best possible learning options that meet the needs of individual students, people have looked to West Bloomfield and under your leadership that's done nothing but grow. If you were coming back in three years for a visit, what would you be hoping to see in terms of what had been re-imagined and reinvented for the young, medium, and older students at the West Bloomfield Schools, based on what you've set in motion?
14:01 -->19:42
Gerald Hill:
So, I’m going to go in the reverse order; I’m going to go with the high school students. I would expect to not hear bell schedules. I would expect that there would be: it would be run more, managed more like a community college setting where students are coming and going, and they’re working in large groups, small groups, focused areas, and teachers are there as facilitators and advisors and all of that. That would be ideal if that happens, but I think we need to introduce more flexibility into the schedule of our older students; get them more into the community with internships, and get more community partnerships going. We have some now that we can build on, but building more community partnerships and ways for young people to experience what's out there, what are the possibilities. It's a matter of imagining endless possibilities not only within West Bloomfield, but within the greater southeast Michigan area; there's just a wealth of opportunities.
At the middle level I would see... We're building a new middle school, and I’m really excited about the design because the design is set up as ...we have six houses of learning within the school. And it's not going to be six, I hope it's not going to be six houses of three, you know two sixth, two seventh, two eighth; whatever- that we will have integrated, in terms of age, communities of learning and that they will be working as collaborative teams: grades six, seven and eight or whatever the age range is, and working with a cadre of teachers. The design of the building is set up so that their individual classrooms that can be opened up into a big commons area and you can have endless kinds of arrangements with flexibility, flexibility of furnishings etc. We look for really more of a STEAM kind of environment school-wide, where you really have different pathways: Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, Fine Arts, and really explore. Middle school should be a time of exploration and not, you don't want to be two tracked.
At the elementary level, our primary schools and our intermediate schools, they need to be rich in literacy, literacy across the board, not only lit, and numeracy, and how do we, how can we get the most.. You know this Read by Grade Three Law was fine except that it had a fatal flaw; it punishes kids if they're not able to read. What's the sense in that? We should have expectations that everybody is able to read and then get them there by whatever means, and not hold this out as a punishment. Kids don't come in neatly designed… There's no such thing as an average kid. And I remember, I think the first book I read as a kid beyond Dr. Seuss, I love Dr Seuss, but beyond that, I think I was in the fifth grade by the time I started really understanding that reading was a nice escape. Well, kids are going to discover other passions along the way. Let's take advantage of those and give them more active learning kinds of situations. Like I described a high school being coming and going, well within an elementary school you can have a lot of activity. I would like to see a blurring of the grades. Let's have a segment, kindergarten through second grade age kids flow through. There's not a grade- first grade, second grade, that type of thing, then if you have a legislature that decides, well we're going to retain kids if they don't read by third grade, we could just say, sorry we don't have third grade. We're just learning and there's no retention because there's no grade to retain in.
So, that would be one of the things I would hope that we would be so bold as to start challenging some of the thinking that is going on in Lansing and MDE, for example. I don't think we need to have… We need a new playbook but that became obvious too during the pandemic that we're trying to use the old playbook with something that never happened before, and seat time and all that kind of barriers that went up. So an aside, I think if we allow ourselves and our teachers and parents to develop and design environments that are conducive to the best possible choices for students, possibilities for students at any age, that we would be surprised with what they came up with. I want to just share an example, we had a high school teacher, and we were talking about it. I think he was a science teacher, and we were talking about, you know you don't have to follow… There's not a curriculum cop, you can, you know… like A.P. exams and you have to follow the curriculum verbatim. Well who's going to come down on you, if you just take the kids’ interest and go with it? You mean I can do that? Yes, you're the professional, you can do that. The students are going to learn; they're going to do well on the A.P. exam. You don't have to be so prescribed in your approach. I think we need to get out of the prescribed kind of learning approach and trust the educators, rather than everything seems to be built upon mistrust; high stakes tests, evaluations tied to test scores. All of that is disheartening for educators.
19:42 --> 20:02
Bob Maxfield:
Sue asked you to talk about what you'd like to see three years from now, but I think I’m guessing that if I was to walk with you through your schools tomorrow, now that we're out of the pandemic and everybody's back in, that we'd see signs of that already, that it is looking different than it looked two years ago.
20:03. --> 21:48
Gerald Hill:
You'd be right, Bob. We have teachers doing some really creative work and they aren't that, they're not inhibited by pre-conceived boundaries. It needs to be the sky's the limit and we need to create that feeling of safety and security and risk-taking at the central office level, the school board, and superintendent.
We developed a portrait of a graduate- the Four C's, so we want our students to be great communicators; internal, externally, in writing and speech, through technology. We want them to be collaborative problem solvers working in collaborative groups. We want them to be contributors to society; we want them to contribute not only to their schools, to their classroom, but to the world. And we want them to be really creative problem solvers, critical thinkers, creative problem solvers. Those are the bigger softer skills that any employer down the road would want to have. The other thing is since I mentioned employers, not every student needs to, or wants to, or should go to a four-year college like Oakland University. There are other pathways in careers that students can look at and be equally successful. In West Bloomfield the majority of our students are striving to go to a college or university, but not all. What are some career technical pathways to productive livelihood post formal education?
21:50 --> 22:39
Suzanne Klein:
That leads us to an interesting next question. Gerry, as I listened to what you have to say, you create a portrait not only of a learner but also a learning environment that is going to be an attractive one for teachers and administrators and community to work together on the behalf of students. Lay this against the increased rate of retirement that comes cyclically and has come about in some measure as result of the retirements from the pandemic and folks feeling like they have come to a point in the road where they're going to take a different path now. So, when you think about recruiting and preparing that next generation both of teachers and school leaders, what kind of ideas do you have that you've been pursuing for West Bloomfield that you might also advise our listeners about?
22:49 --> 26:42
Gerald Hill:
Well, first of all Suzanne, I agree with you. The stresses of the last two and a half years were hard enough but they've been compounded by a growing incivility in our society, a growing Red State v. Blue State kind of mentality politically. The politics of education has become front and center. We weren't trained to be medical professionals, so when we follow the medical advice related to a pandemic we're following medical advice; we’re not taking a survey and have it be a political question. But unfortunately, the politics are there. Critical race theory was a politically motivated discussion that's taken over. We need to stick with what we know we're doing, in terms of teaching history, all of those things. I think young people coming into education have to have an understanding what their role is; have a firm understanding of what their goals are; have a support group that they can rely on and have discussions with; have some time for personal reflection; and be able to sort through the issues and not overreact, and feel you have the answer to everything. Often in the last couple of years, I go “I don't really know the answer to this”; we're going to try to do plan A, if that doesn't work we'll go to plan B, and we'll have to rely on expertise that we don't have. Oakland County Health Division has expertise and C.D.C. has expertise and we’ll rely on that, but people too often get caught up I guess, trying to please everybody or please the most people and that's not a way to lead. I think you have to have your vision of what you want to do and share that vision with first of all, if you’re superintendent with your board and bring the board along and have the board have that same commitment, if you will, to work toward what the goals are and then be steadfast in that. Listen to people, listen to perspectives, but don't get caught in the political dynamics that happened, that have been happening.
I think a lot of the retirements of some of the people I've seen, they're just exhausted and that's frustrating for me to see because there's a lot of talent leaving the profession and at the same time because of all the turmoil, there's less talented coming in. And so we need to develop that talent. Galileo, what Oakland University is involved with, is a great example of how you can nurture talent and creativity. And I think that'll become more and more important having opportunities like that for educators to become involved. That's a support group. Teachers that I know in West Bloomfield that are a part of that experience, the Galileo experience, they feel so much more confident and empowered in their professional efficacy. They know what they know and that comes through in how they work. Well, we need to be tapping into that talent pool for our next leaders, in my opinion, and be more aggressive along those lines.
“Grow your own”, we have a lot of, we talk about diversity of staff or lack of diversity. In West Bloomfield, we have a richly diverse student body and I love the more recent grants available for growing your own future educators, and we need to leverage that and take advantage of who knows better about the community than those that grew up in that community. And if you're in a richly diverse community like West Bloomfield, there's an opportunity to become, have the staff reflective of the student population, which we are not right now. We're striving toward that, but I think it would be a great approach to grow our own.
26:43 --> 26:56
Suzanne Klein:
Your mentioning the Galileo Consortium for Teacher Leadership brings to mind their motto, which fits so nicely with what you were saying: Curious Learners, Courageous Leaders; both are needed.
26:57 --> 28:24
Gerald Hill:
And that is true, and whenever you have issues and problems, our best spokespeople are our teachers. We had a lot of concern or controversy, concern, whatever you want to call it, when we were introducing a lot of work around diversity, equity, inclusion, in reading some books in the middle school. The best spokespeople for that for us, were the teachers that were teaching the classes.We held parent seminars and did book studies and the teachers were leading those. Once the parents saw that the teachers were pretty knowledgeable, they had the best interest of students at heart and in mind, it never became a “we're going to ban this book” kind of a conversation; it's how can we make this be as successful as possible for our students. I’m not saying there weren’t some interesting discussions, some challenging discussions but that's part of it, to have those and have them in a way that you can have a respectful discussion, and not like what we see going on in Washington D.C. today or arguably Lansing, where you just start throwing out one liners at each other. You're really not having a dialogue and that dialogue is so important. We're modeling for our youngsters or young people, and right now we're not doing a good job modeling universally anyway.
28:24 --> 29:23
Bob Maxfield:
We may capture some of what you just said in an even shorter little audio clip because I'd love for every young person to hear your vision of what teaching should be at its best because that's the message we've got to be able to get out there to the young folks who have been so discouraged by all the factors that you mentioned, but there's a plus side and you stated that really well. One of the issues that Suzanne and I are wrestling with right now is the dramatic increase in the number of new and newer superintendents. We've got a little mentorship program going, but a lot of these folks are coming in with precious little experience. I think there's about 40 of them in the area that Oakland University serves and most are doing just fine, thank you. As you approach retirement what advice do you have for those first and second year, men and women that are new to this role and maybe in some cases, new to their district?
29:24 -->32:26
Gerald Hill:
I think that's really a good question. First of all, my advice would be to seek out somebody that you know or that you trust that can either be a mentor for you or that knows somebody that could be a mentor or executive coach if you will. You need to be able to have a space where you can bounce ideas off somebody or a group of people but maybe a seasoned person, and then have the conversation, not necessarily to come away with the right answer, but to come away with what the options are. And I think that's one thing that there is no right answer there, there are a series of options and you need to know that you're going to…You need to make solid decisions, but not everybody's going to agree. Some of those decisions are going to be effective and others less so. So, you have to have some degree of flexibility.
I think you need to have balance in your life. You need to have that life balance or you get too submerged in the 24/7 pace of being a superintendent. If you don't take care of yourself, you're going to become less effective sooner than you would. I mean you just need to have that time for family, time for your own personal well-being, stay healthy. What are your other interests? Pursue those interests. I've been asked the question, what are you going to do when you retire. And a lot of people say, well you're going to do all those. A lot of people say they're going to do all those things they didn’t have time for. That’s pretty telling if you haven't done any of those things. What have you been doing? I don't live to work, I work to live. So, I do have some passions:I enjoy cooking, I enjoy reading, I enjoy photography, I enjoy travel. I do those things now, I'll just have a switch. I’ll do more of those and then, if I want an outlet maybe I'll do some consulting and do it the reverse. As you're getting into the profession you need to submerge yourself and really learn as fast as you can, but you need to give yourself some space and some time and you need to have balance in your life. And I think that's absolutely critical.
The other thing too is superintendents need to have a really good working relationship with the boards of education and that's a lot easier said than done. And that's a constant communication, it’s a constant. You need to be there and communicate in a number of ways and work together, and find that time that you can set aside where you're doing some strategic planning and that type of thing together. Otherwise you're going to lose that working relationship with the board, and then it really won't matter what you do, because you won't be there anymore.
32:26 --> 32:45
Bob Maxfield:
That's a good way to put it. So, you answered what was going to be my last question which was, what's next for you. It sounds like taking some time for yourself is going to be part of it. I know you're going to relocate, talk a little bit about that, if you would.
32:47 --> 35:45
Gerald Hill:
My wife and I first of all, we've been totally engaged in the West Bloomfield Community for the last 10 years and thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed it. We also have a family; our son, Cory, and his wife, and our two granddaughters, age seven and ten, who live in Hermosa Beach, California, and we go there several times a year. We're going to go there, period. So, we’ll be in Hermosa Beach, California, as close as possible to them, seven blocks away and a couple blocks away from the beach, and that'll be where we're located. My plans are to first of all, really invigorate our relationship with our son and his family and be there watching our granddaughters. My wife and I are also involved in Rotary, which is an international organization and we've been very involved in the southeast Michigan area. And that's an opportunity that's there for people wanting to give back to society. We will continue to do that. We'll explore opportunities for giving back to the community, whether it's local, state, national or international when we have that next phase of our lives. I’m going to look back with pride and I’m going to look forward with anticipation and a sense of adventure. And the one thing I haven't mentioned is the typical thing superintendents do, they leave and they become consultants or work at a four-year university or…. and I’m going to hesitate doing that because I need to get my priorities in order and see if that's one of them. Now I would like to still do executive coaching or something like that, but it's not going to be front and center, it's going to be more family time and exploring the state, the world, that type of thing.
34:46 --> 35:05
Bob Maxfield:
Well, now that I’m surrounded virtually on Zoom here by two Rotarians, both of you will be doing great things. So, Gerry, as we wrap up this wonderful interview today, is there anything we haven't talked about that you wish we had? Anything else you would want our listeners to hear from Gerry Hill?
35:07 --> 36:26
Gerald Hill:
I think, no. Well, the importance of never losing that spirit of curiosity, that spirit that you see in kindergarten students when they come into school for the first time, that sense of awe in the end, and never losing sight of the fact that we are here for them; to experience the sense of awe or frustration, excitement. If you want to be grounded as a superintendent or an educator that's in the central office, go to your preschool classrooms, go to the kindergarten classrooms, hang around a while, then you'll know why you went in it in the first place, and it will ground you to why what you're doing is important. And that's one of the things that I will be doing in retirement. My wife and I both, we’ll be volunteering in schools: reading, hanging out, whatever can be helpful.
Education is a privilege to be a part of, it's an honor to be a part of; it's one of the more important things for democracy is to have an educated society. And I don't think we need to... We have to keep that in mind of why we're here, and what we do is important to not only the learners, but to society as a whole.
36:28 --> 36:36
Bob Maxfield:
Well that's an appropriate closing comment; well thank you for that,
Before we end, final words from you, Suzanne?
36:37 --> 37:17
Suzanne Klein:
Gerry, you've laid out your vision for the West Bloomfield Schools since you arrived and as you leave and move on, your legacy certainly is a powerful one; whether it's in the buildings that are being updated or built, but most importantly, as you said earlier up and down the halls of those schools that you've walked through. I wish you well and thank you for your contributions to those children and their families and to that staff because that district continues to be one of the places people look to for inspiration, as they reset and re-imagine what their schools might be. So, thank you for being a curious learner yourself, as well as being a courageous leader.
37:18 -->37:20
Gerald Hill:
Thank you, appreciate the time.
37:21 --> 37.40
Bob Maxfield:
To our listeners, thank you for being part of this installment of Podcast for Leaderful Schools, as always coming almost live from Oakland University, in Rochester, Michigan, particularly from the Galileo Institute at Oakland University. Please stay with us as we continue a series of additional very interesting interviews and again thanks to Gerry Hill.