Education Week - February 16, 2022 - 26

LESSONS
From the
Leader
Casey Rimmer,
right, reviews
the apps used
on student
Chromebooks
with Regina
Snelson, a high
school media
coordinator.
Be flexible
In ed-tech things are always
changing. You have to be
able to go with the flow
for so many things. Identify
your priorities and what
you value as a district and
focus on those when things
are moving and changing
quickly.
Be purposeful and
act quickly
Our students are with us for
a short time. We must have
urgency to get them the best
education we can while they
are with us. Dr. Houlihan has
instilled urgency in our work
as a district because
if we " wait until next year, "
we will have missed a whole
group of students.
Have fun
It is so important to make
sure everyone on your team
in your organization knows
that you can have
fun and laugh a little.
Leading districts and large
teams is hard work and
demands professionalism
most of the time. Sometimes
the laughs and jokes are rare,
but make sure you take some
opportunities to enjoy work
and the people you do it with.
-CASEY RIMMER
consistency in mental health services and aren't sharing a
counselor with kids at some 50 other schools around the
district.
The COVID-19 pandemic has strained even those
additional mental health resources. " Even with
the growth we've made, the demand we have is far
exceeding what we have available, " Houlihan said. " So
we're probably still not where we need to be. But we're
in a much better position on that, " compared with 2016,
when he joined the district.
Terry Grier, a former superintendent of the Houston
Independent School District, worked closely with
Houlihan, who served as the Texas district's chief
academic officer and chief human-resources officer,
among other roles.
In Houston, Houlihan helped create Arabic and
Mandarin immersion schools. He played a big role in
turning around a struggling middle school by refocusing
its curriculum on health-care careers, an idea he later
brought to Union County. Grier considers him one of
the top young superintendents in the country.
" He's out-of-the-box creative. He's articulate, he's
bright, he has a boatload of common sense, " Grier said.
" He knows how to say 'I don't know' and 'I've made a
mistake.' He's humble, and he hires good people. "
And although their day-to-day portfolios differ, some
of Houlihan's and Rimmer's best work has been in
partnership.
In the fall of 2017, Houlihan worked to get 1st and 2nd
graders in Union County who have been slow to get
hooked on books and reading the opportunity to read oneon-one
with a volunteer for a half hour each week. The
program gets the students some additional reading time
and introduces another supportive adult into their lives.
Then social distancing hit. So Rimmer trained
all the volunteer coordinators at the district's
elementary schools to help readers serve kids virtually,
ensuring that the program could continue during the
pandemic.
26 | EdWeek Leaders To Learn From | February 16, 2022
The district's career academies are another, more
ambitious collaboration. Back in 2017, the district
partnered with Atrium Health, which operates a local
hospital, to create a health-career academy at a highpoverty
middle school. The program is modeled in part
after one that Houlihan worked on in Houston. Students
get exposure to health-care careers that go beyond
nurse or doctor.
They can learn about the business side of health
care or the way that robotics help doctors perform
procedures. The program has been expanded to include
elementary schools, where students learn about
nutrition and neuroscience, and high schools, where
students get more hands-on work experience.
That's where Rimmer comes in. She works with
Melissa Hines, the health-academy service coordinator
and an Atrium employee, to make sure that teachers
have the support they need in delivering the health-care
curriculum.
" She's just a wealth of knowledge, " Hines said.
" And she's a really fun person to work with, plus she's
mission-driven and solutions-focused. If there's some
type of project or assignment or goal that we're not
meeting, we can have really honest conversations ...
[asking], what are we missing? "
The model has been so successful that the district
later opened an agri-technology academy in a more
rural area of the county, which Houlihan is also helping
to oversee. When implementing such a complex
project, it's easy to forget the purpose behind all the
work, Hines said.
" Both of them stay focused on the vision " of a
project, she said. " I think sometimes it's really easy to
lose sight of. " n
Coverage of whole-child approaches to learning is supported
in part by a grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative,
at www.chanzuckerberg.com. Education Week retains
sole editorial control over the content of this coverage.
Alex Boerner for Education Week
http://www.chanzuckerberg.com
Education Week - February 16, 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - February 16, 2022
