Wrangell School District welcomed a new elementary principal this school year. KSTK’s Colette Czarnecki sat down with Jamie Wollman to get some insight on who she is and how it’s been going at Evergreen Elementary. Wollman said so far, it’s been great.
This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
It has been fantastic. I’ve gotten a lot of support from community members, a lot of support from staff. We’re just really getting to know our kids, knowing what things that they need specially and just doing the work and having fun while we’re doing it, because that’s the most important thing. Let’s learn, but let’s have fun doing it.
It seems like you’ve worked in schools globally: South Korea and Germany. Will you say a few words about your experience with that, and what experience from that would you like to bring to Wrangell [Evergreen] Elementary?
I was with the Department of Defense Education Activity at the time. One reason that you want to do that is you want to experience other cultures, because many of those schools are populated heavily from the local culture. Some of the cool things with some of the partnerships with the Korean schools, and not so much with the German schools, but a lot with the Korean schools, where we get to visit each other and see how people do school, and then thinking about what’s very good about what they do and bringing that back to our own culture and seeing what works for us. I spent a lot of time listening to the people in that location on how they saw us getting to our goals.
Can you give a couple examples?
Korea has some of the higher scores in the world, and some of the things that they talk about is how they do their professional development. They use a model where they plan together and they talk together every day and they spend a little more time than teachers in The United States get a chance to do. So that’s something that I have brought with me and it’s called PLCs – Professional Learning Communities. We talk about, ‘Is this working in your classroom? Is this strategy working for the student, or is there something else?’ And it’s fantastic, because teachers will share ideas and somebody goes, ‘Yeah, I forgot about that strategy. I’m going to use that with this student or that student.’ When they get together and they can share those, the ideas that they have and the plethora of experiences they’ve had, they’re just stronger.
I was an administrator with that. I did it, about 10 years. It was an amazing, amazing run. And then, of course, Hooper Bay came up and I’ve always, always, always dreamed of setting up a school, and so that was an amazing challenge, and I had to leap at it.
Why did you leave Hooper Bay?
When I went, I only said that I’d be there three to five years, and I kind of cut the middle of it and it was four. It’s a long time to be that isolated, it really is. You know, Wrangell, even though we’re out here, it’s not as isolated as that community was. I loved it, loved it, loved it, and maybe I’ll go back someday, but it was time to to be a little more, not quite so isolated.
How have the schools globally, and in Hooper Bay, compare to Wrangell [Evergreen] Elementary?
Every place has its strengths and its weaknesses, and there’s a lot of strengths here. You have a lot of talented teachers and that’s something that is hard to acquire. I kind of feel like maybe I’m a conductor of an orchestra because the people are so talented and it’s just getting them to work together and sharing their talents and sharing the kids and trying to move them forward.
What’s important for you as a principal?
I hope that I can inspire everyone to be kind, everybody: teachers, students, parents. If we could just all be kind to each other, our lives would be so much easier.
What goals do you have for here?
Our goals would be to definitely inspire more kids. Obviously to love academics and to move forward with that. We’re always kind of measured with how we perform. And, of course, I’d love to see us advance our number of proficient students and advanced students and any students that need support. I hope that we inspire just the love of reading and the love of doing math and science. Kids all pull to their own gifts, so being part of that to inspire them for their futures is really the biggest goal.
What challenges have you experienced so far here?
This has nothing to do with education, but, gosh, it’s difficult to find a place to live. It’s really, really difficult. Especially because I have three poodles. And that’s a lot when you tell people you have three poodles, until they meet them, and then they’re like, ‘Oh, they’re sweet.’ So yeah, probably housing is the most challenging.
Are there any challenges in the school district so far?
The challenge that I have right now is learning what it means to be an Eagle, because there’s so many things that they do and they naturally know that this is what we do. ‘This is how we celebrate Halloween here. This is how we celebrate this year. This is what we do on a regular basis.’
Have any changes happened since you arrived?
I guess that our biggest change is changing to the PLC idea. And I think that my colleague, Greg, is also doing that and that can be challenging when people are changing up the way you do things, but I think it’s going okay. We have a good time in those conversations. And anytime you get to talk about teaching and learning, it’s fun.
Anything else you’d like to say?
Everybody should come up and anytime we have an event, come experience what we have to offer and enjoy our students. And we’d love to see you here. We need volunteers. They can get their volunteer packet from Miss Kimberly Powell in the district office, and anyone that has something to share with our students, come talk to us. And maybe we can see if it’s something that we can work with.
