That C is anything but average

I wear a couple of hats.

I am Area Editor for The Colorado County Citizen and The Sealy News. I am also a full-time teacher at Rice Consolidated ISD, teaching students at both the junior high and high school campuses.

So, this column isn’t coming from the editor’s desk. It’s coming from the teacher’s desk.

For two years, our junior high campus carried an F state accountability rating.

There is no point in pretending we were proud of it. We weren’t.

But there was something about that F that bothered us beyond the rating itself: Our administrators weren’t failures. Our teachers weren’t failures. And our kids for sure weren’t failures.

Still, we were stuck in a rut. Several of us teach at both the junior high and high school campuses. Our days were already busy. We were tired. Teachers were frustrated. Kids were frustrated. And when you’ve struggled long enough without seeing the results you desperately want, frustration can slowly turn into defeat.

Last year, Dr. Andrew DeWalt arrived as principal of Rice Junior High, along with Assistant Principal Lisa Hoelscher.

The change was felt almost immediately.

That doesn’t mean everything suddenly became easy. Quite the opposite.

Already tired teachers were asked to do more. Our administrators pushed us. We pushed one another. And all of us pushed our kids.

We lesson planned together. We looked at one another’s plans and found opportunities to reinforce content across classrooms. Teachers came early and stayed late to tutor.

And our kids worked.

They came to tutorials before school. They stayed after school. They had WIN time to get extra targeted help. We reminded them over and over to lock in when their attention wandered. We had to remind ourselves to lock in, too. When STAAR testing arrived, we watched them slow down, take their time, buckle down and give us their best.

We didn’t know exactly what the final result would be.

We just knew we were determined to get out of that rut.

A few days ago, we found out. Rice Junior High went from an F accountability rating to a C.

Now, somebody looking at that from the outside might shrug and say, “A C? What’s there to celebrate? A C is average.”

Not this C. This C is anything but average. Let me be clear; I see the year behind that letter. Exhausted teachers, kids who had begun to believe the label, new administrators who refused to accept the status quo, tutorials, WIN time, lesson planning, cross-curricular work and a campus deciding collectively that an F did not define it.

I also don’t want this to come across like a newspaper editor objectively analyzing Rice CISD’s rating. This is unmistakenly me writing as a teacher who lived it.

This C is for confidence. For two years, an F told a story about our campus that none of us wanted told. Now we have tangible proof of what can happen when administrators, teachers, and students decide together that where we are today does not have to be where we stay.

Our kids can stand a little taller. So can we.

We raised the bar for ourselves — and then we reached it.

This C is for courage. It takes courage to admit that something isn’t working.

It takes courage for administrators to walk into a struggling campus and say we’re going to do things differently. It takes courage for exhausted teachers to hear, “We need more from you,” and somehow find more to give.

And it takes courage for kids who have struggled to keep trying.

We did. They did. This C is for concentration. “Lock in.” If you spent any time around our junior high last year, you probably heard some version of those words.

Focus. Slow down. Read it again. Take your time. Ask for help. Try again.

We watched students put in extra time before school, after school and during WIN periods. We watched them take more days seriously. We watched them take STAAR seriously and give the test their best effort.

Their work mattered. This C is for collaboration. Education can become incredibly isolating when everyone closes their classroom door and tries to solve every problem alone.

We didn’t do that. Teachers planned together. We looked at one another’s lessons. We talked about students and where they were struggling. We found ways to reinforce skills across content areas. Our administrators challenged us, supported us and kept the campus moving toward a common goal.

None of us earned that C alone. This C is for community. Being “out there” in Altair, sometimes it felt as though our junior high campus had been forgotten.

That has begun to change, too. We’ve seen increased engagement from families and community members. We’ve felt people taking an interest in what happens inside our school and supporting the people doing the work.

Thank you. Keep showing up. Keep asking about our kids. Keep encouraging them. Keep reminding them that their community is invested in their success.

And finally: This C is for continued success. Are we satisfied with a C forever? Absolutely not. That’s the beautiful thing about this particular C.

It isn’t a destination. It’s evidence. Evidence that improvement is possible. Evidence that our students are quite capable. Evidence that our teachers’ work matters. Evidence that when strong leadership, determined educators, hardworking students, families and a community pull in the same direction, things can change.

We know there is more work ahead. There will be difficult days. There will be tired teachers and frustrated kids. There will be lessons that flop, scores that disappoint us and moments when progress doesn’t happen as quickly as we’d like.

But something is different now. We know we can move the needle - because we’ve moved it.

We climbed from an F to a C. Next? We’ll keep climbing.