On Having Heart

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AC: Those kids so rarely show up in the thinking, especially in the accountability ratings, which break kids into very simplistic blocks that don't represent the reality of the school. When it comes to the end of the year, and you look at your ratings and you look at your campus, how do you make those two things work together? Because that seems like the big task for any principal.

AG: It's huge, for everybody in Texas. We want to be accountable, but when people are making the rules for education, it's almost like zooming in on a puzzle piece. You only see this much of it. But when you're a principal, you zoom out a little more to be able to say: "OK, here are the parameters that we have to meet. What do I have in my cupboard? How many of these kind of kids, and how many of these kind of kids, and what do I have to do?" All of that is such a waste of time, because I'm not focusing on how good can I get my reading program, or how good can I get this or that. It just pulls us away from that. Now we have to do it, but to bring it together is an amazing task if you're going to do it effectively. I've never done it by myself. I very much appreciate input from everybody.

At that time, in that year, I had an executive principal who was assigned to the school, which was a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant thing to do. Edmund Oropez was assigned to the campus at the same time as I came in. There were so many issues that he was able to fend off while we were able to work. I didn't have a lot of experience, so I was able to take from his experience. They allowed us to work together, and the district supported us. This was very unique, because I've seen it work in other places where the district comes in and slaps a plan on and expects you to stick with it because "we've paid so much" or "we've done this or that, and you have to do it because it's worked somewhere else." They don't value the opinions of the people on the ground, but the stars aligned that year. The board listened. The superintendent was in her first year and she came in battling some very tough things, but she listened. My area superintendent listened and allowed us to do what we thought best, and what we thought best made some people very nervous, because we were doing some crazy things. The webs were complex, and the interventions and what we were going to do – it could have scared people. "Are we really willing to take a bet on a new principal in this school that has been in such poor health for so long? Are we ready to risk it?" Well, they did, and the path just came open.

AC: That's one thing the book really makes clear: that there wasn't some big crazy plan, and that you didn't have endless resources, that you couldn't hire 5,000 teachers or give everyone a tutor. That you had to say, "Well, what do we do with three sticks and a rubber band?" How do you, as a principal, stand back and say: "OK, the tough decisions have to be made. We know the math and science scores are low for African-American students, so we have to put our resources there. We know our English as a second language scores are low, so we have to put the resources there"?

AG: You've been in situations where people have asked you, "OK, there's so many of you on a boat, but it can only hold so many people." That's what it feels like. That's where it breaks your heart and your spirit and your soul, because how do you decide who you throw out? You can't. So you've got to see how many rubber bands and how many sticks and how far you can stretch. But you have to make some hard decisions, and it's not without a broken heart, and it's not without knowing that I'm going to come back for you. You've seen so many movies, and it's just like that. But is it humanly possible? Can you make those promises, and can you really come back for them? Again, I'm praying. I don't have enough arms, and I don't have enough strength, and I don't have enough to come back, so send something that will help me to be there.

I have a joking relationship with my faith. All I ask is that I have a parking space at the front. That's how I know you're listening to me. You can ask anybody that I know about where I park. It's always in the front. If the space opens up, I always know that, if I have to make a hard decision like that, that somehow something good is going to happen, because I had to leave you until I come back. So I don't feel like I'm throwing someone out of the boat, because I have my toe over the edge and you can hold on to it until someone jumps by themselves and we can pull you in. Those are impossible decisions that they expect you to make, because we're the teacher types. It's almost like Miss America: We want world peace and to help everybody and teach everybody. So to expect us to make those decisions is really crazy. Again, it's like being on a puzzle piece. When you zoom in and you're right on it, you can't see what you're doing to other kids. But when you zoom out and you're able to look down, you see how when you try to do good things and set high standards, that you're really hurting other kids.

AC: In the book, Michael talks about the big basketball game between Reagan and LBJ, which he portrays as a real high point and a turning point in the story. Looking back the 2010 school year, what were the highest and the lowest points for you?

AG: I had been a teacher at LBJ, so that rivalry had been a crazy rivalry before. Just getting people out there to be spirited about us coming together, because they're really like our sister school. We do something, they're there, and they do something, we're there. It's the same families, brothers and sisters right across the highway. But again, just like the parking space in the front, the game was just a sign that it was possible. That one moment in time, it just lifted the spirits of the kids and the teachers. It was an unbelievable moment, and you had to be there to see the energy. I think that energy helped to propel us forward.

The lowest point? In that year, there were people here from everywhere. State agencies, federal agencies, people that were breathing on this side and this side. The commissioner came to our school, and I was going to have 15 minutes to tell him why we needed to keep the school open. The night before, I was nervous that I wouldn't have the right words in 15 minutes to save the school and all those teachers that trusted to come there and start their careers. Worst of all, they would have to send the kids somewhere else, and they would be coming from a school that failed, and nobody would love them. They'd say, "Those kids, mm-mm." What was going to come out of my mouth in those 15 minutes, that was really hard. Teachers were crying, they were scared they were going to lose jobs. You know, "Oh, you came from that school?" But I think he heard what I said.

I'm the same person. It was just: "Don't cry girl. How can I make my classrooms look better that day, how can I make my teachers smarter, how can I make my kids smarter on that day, to make him see the value of saving it?"

AC: Whatever you said, it worked.

AG: Today. It's moment by moment. When you look at a city, any city, you're going to have a part of the community that struggles that way, and until the community changes, you'll be faced with the same battles over and over again. We just need to get better and faster, to get the kids higher and higher. That's our goal each and every day.