Principled Principals

Marquette educational administration grads seek to lead with trust and integrity

By Erik Gunn

There are two middle school principals — one at a suburban Milwaukee public school, the other at an urban, charter school with a largely Latino population. There’s a suburban high school principal, another who works at a city parochial elementary school, and a Milwaukee Public Schools assistant principal.

All five are graduates of the College of Education’s Master’s in Educational
Administration program — or as program director Dr. Cynthia Ellwood prefers, educational leadership. Chosen by college faculty and administrators as accomplished ambassadors of the program, all five report that, whether they completed their studies a year ago or more than a decade ago, the Marquette education they received has been integral to the work they’re doing today.

Participants point to the program’s emphasis on rigorous research, but also on the grounded environment of schools as they really operate. Supportive student-cohort networks that last long after graduation, and the program’s core values that stress equity in the classroom and in the community surface repeatedly when graduates recall what lives with them long after they’ve completed the degree.

“I see it as preparing leaders who are not just skilled in the managerial roles of leadership but who really are prepared to do what is the core of leadership at the school level: to mobilize and inspire people around a vision that truly challenges and serves all children,” says Ellwood, in her sixth year as the program’s director. Equity and justice “are central to that challenge.”

“I really valued the component of social justice and compassion and empathy for students and families in schools,” says Jason Curtis, Arts ’07, Grad ’15, principal of Oconomowoc High School. In the master’s program he found those principles embedded in every class he took. “If I wanted to learn how to be a principal, I could have easily taken a course somewhere else. But I wanted to grow in my leadership and as a human being, which is why I chose the experience I did.”

As a teacher and now as principal of more than 1,700 students, Curtis says he has used that grounding “to get to know and understand the stories of my students, and get beyond the academic and behavioral data.” And in supervising faculty, “My responsibility is not just to evaluate teachers, but to coach teachers.”

Tom Blair, Grad ’13, echoes that. As principal of West Milwaukee Intermediate School, he sees his task as not simply evaluating teachers, but asking instead, “How do we work with teachers to improve their ability to reach all students?”

The three-year Master’s in Educational Administration program enrolls about 12 students on average in each year’s cohort, most of whom are already working full time as teachers or, in some instances, lower-level administrators in area public, private, parochial or charter schools. Graduates find that the small cohorts foster mutual collaboration and support that last long after graduation as participants keep in touch with each other to help navigate work challenges.

School leaders can learn from that, Blair says — “being open toward being part of the problem-solving process” in collaboration with teachers, “rather than the solution itself. We need to be open to working together as a team.”

Rigorous attention to research is another value that the program emphasizes, and one of the things that Lauren Beckmann, Grad ’10, found the program instilled in her.

Beckmann enrolled in the Marquette program only after she had been unexpectedly appointed principal at St. Robert School of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. “Learning on the job and attending classes over the next three years was a wild ride, but one that really transformed me and our school,” she says.

From her exposure to research in the program grew Beckmann’s commitment to establishing “evidence-based practice throughout the curriculum.” Today, she says of her K–8 school in Shorewood, Wis., “We are a leader in the archdiocese in terms of contemporary instructional models.”

Sarah Burzynski, Grad ’18, has been living out the lessons of her time in the master’s program with her recent assignment as assistant principal at Cass Street School, a Milwaukee Public School where she serves over 420 students on the city’s east side.

A teacher and instructional coach for her first two decades at MPS before getting her administration degree at Marquette, Burzynski calls working with the Cass Street teachers and as a go-between for teachers and parents “my favorite part of the job.”

At Marquette, she realized, “It’s my responsibility to use my career to address equity,” she says. “I’m in the district I’m in because I want to serve the families that are here.” So, she makes it a point to spend time listening to parents, hearing “their perspective of what it is like sending their kids to our school.” And she strives to recognize “the barriers that are stopping our kids, and how do we go about breaking down those barriers.”

Communication with families is a core principle at Bruce-Guadalupe Community School, a charter school affiliated with the United Community Center serving mainly the Milwaukee Latina/o community. Santiago Navarro, Arts ’95, Grad ’04, is the middle school principal there, and acknowledges he’s constantly reminding his teachers to reach out to parents to remind them of teacher conferences, check in with them if they don’t show up, or thank them when they do. That might be why parent attendance at those sessions exceeds 90 percent. Or it might be the high level of parent involvement the school fosters in general, he says.

A textbook from his educational law class still sits on the shelf in his small office stuffed with books and paperwork, and Navarro draws a connection between that book, the class — taught by Dr. Ellen Eckman, associate professor and chair of educational policy and leadership — and the family focus he brings to his job.

It might sound like a dry, stuffy topic, but not for Navarro.

“When you look at educational law, a lot of it deals with families who might be disgruntled with school,” he explains. “I always keep in mind, how can we best serve families, not just the students, and make sure that families are a part of it.”

For him, that was a key lesson from the class: “We are here to help educate kids and serve families.”

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