Editor’s Note: This is the first of a two-part series exploring Austin Public Schools’ ability to retain and to grow leaders and educators amid a nationwide and statewide teacher shortage.

Read the second part here:  Growing Leaders: In times of teacher shortage, APS continues to sustain

Times are tough for teachers, and it takes all hands on deck to help provide the best education for students.

However, what happens if there’s not enough educators to meet the demand?

From the 2017 Teacher Supply and Demand Report released by the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE), the number of teachers leaving their positions increased 34 percent since 2008-09.

Among the most common reasons were from retirement, personal reasons, or taking a position in another district.

One of the MDE’s findings was that the average percentage of teachers leaving the profession after one year is 15.1 percent, and over a quarter of teachers leave the profession after three years.

Despite these trends and statistics, Austin Public Schools continues to grow and sustain itself and also provide opportunities for many to move around in the district, including four new principals— although familiar to the school district as seasoned veterans in education and to Austin— at different buildings, and each had their own journeys in education that kept them in.

“The happiest place in Austin Public Schools”

A place where the “littlest learners” could run, play and learn, Woodson Kindergarten Center was where Jill Rollie felt she could inspire youth to love learning from the very beginning of their educational journey.

“I know where I’m supposed to be,” she shared. “I want to be a part of that impact on students in their younger years. This is the happiest place in Austin Public Schools.”

Diving into her new position as Woodson Kindergarten Center principal, this school year marked the first time Rollie held a principal role during her 16 years in education. Prior to Woodson, Rollie was a continuous improvement specialist at I.J. Holton Intermediate School, and taught language arts at Ellis Middle School for a number of years.

From her beginnings in a classroom to a principal’s desk, Rollie worked her way through the one district she couldn’t imagine leaving for another.

Austin held a special place in her heart, Rollie explained. She was born and raised in town, and graduated from Austin High School. She went on to earn her bachelor’s degree in communication arts at Winona State University, and her first teaching job was at Lyle Public School.

Deep down, however, Rollie knew that her heart would always be in Austin, and to become a teacher in the very district she grew up was something that was important to her. Without having teachers who had invested in her from the beginning, it’d be quite a different story.

“I love Austin,” she said. “I always wanted to come back to this community. I’m a ‘lifer’ and this place fills my heart and I wanted to thrive in Austin. There were teachers and people here who invested in me, and I wanted to invest something back into this district.”

Becoming an administrator was never really the “end goal” for Rollie. She focused on her role of being foremost an educator, but felt there were ample opportunities that the district provided for her to have her hands in building her as a leader.

From being on a calendar committee to helping with staff-led initiatives at Ellis Middle School, Rollie found herself taking stepping stones to get to where she is today. She eventually earned her certificate in educational administration to become a K-12 principal from Saint Mary’s University.

Aside from being a part of a community that raised her, Rollie shared that what kept her in APS was how she felt “safe” to try new ideas and innovate with district leaders showing strong support for her pursuits.

“I feel so safe learning new things and trying new things,” Rollie said. “The district provides so much support for teachers in leadership opportunities and they honor risk taking and always stressed innovation and that this is a safe place to learn. You are never alone. You have this support.”

“A bond you can’t break”

No matter how far David Wolff traveled, his ‘heart’ was always in Austin.

His journey into education started early. Wolff’s father was a math professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and Wolff would often be in a classroom where he’d see his father teaching students. The “ah-ha” moment came after a youth group trip down to Mexico helped solidify what Wolff wanted to spend the rest of his life doing.

“My group got to play with some kids at an orphanage,” he said. “We were playing together despite language barriers, and it kind of solidified from there. We learned words through actions and sounds and that’s what put me in my direction. This was where I knew I wanted to be an elementary school teacher, and do what I was passionate about.”

Wolff had worked in the APS district in a wide variety of positions and held responsibilities from being the district coordinator of Gifted and Talented Services from August 2011 to August 2016, and then as the inter-district coordinator of Project E3 since August 2014, and then the coordinator of robotics programming from August 2009 to April 2016. Most recently, Wolff was a fifth grade math and science teacher at I.J. Holton.

Before this, Wolff had been a teacher at Park Christian School for four years as a second grade teacher since 2001, went on to Kansas and taught from 2004 to 2008 as a third and fourth grade teacher, and then came to Austin. Wolff also served a one year stint up at White Earth Reservation as a high school principal.

Among one of the reasons why Wolff chose to put down roots in Austin was the amount of staff development opportunities the district gave him, and the feeling of having administrators “invest” into his personal growth as a teacher, as well as the community.

“When someone invests something into you, that’s a bond you can’t break,” Wolff said. “You become invested in your community, and then you make friends and have family here.”

Austin, to Wolff, was a place where he knew he wanted to raise a family and kids, a factor that many young teachers may take into consideration when staying inside a school district. He also viewed the diversity as an immense asset to exposing his own children to different people from all walks of life.

“Our community is such a hidden gem,” he said. “From the outside, people might not see the complexity and depth we have for our kids as opposed to just a ‘factory town.’ We accept and value diversity as an important part of our life.”

Serve families, serve Austin

“If I were to return to the classroom tomorrow, I’d be perfectly happy,” said Dewey Schara, the new I.J. Holton Intermediate School principal.

For more than 20 years, Dewey Schara had been an educator. Having come into I.J. Holton after serving as the Neveln Elementary School principal, Schara will be looking to engage students and staff. Schara previously taught language arts in the Southland Schools District for two years right out of college from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, and has since been with the Austin Public Schools District.

He envisions a unified campus between I.J. Holton and Ellis Middle School and working with Jessica Cabeen, the new Ellis Middle School principal. “We want to make the grades 5-8 to be a seamless transition,” Schara explained. “It’d be foolish not to work with Jessica. We use each other as sounding boards, and we work together.”

Schara had seen many changes in the education field, and the approaches to learning. With I.J. Holton, he sees the usage of technology in problem solving for students that didn’t exist inside the classroom when he first started teaching. What Schara believed to be the district’s strength that helped keep him in Austin was accessibility to be creative and innovative in teaching techniques. He was not afraid to fail.

“If you aren’t making mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough,” he said firmly. “We embrace this, and welcome mistakes here. No one is dwelling on your mistakes, but they look at how you can grow on them.”

Being an educator was something that Schara deemed “a calling” and had aspired to take the career path after several teachers had influenced him a great deal.

“It’s a pretty classic moment,” he explained. “Teachers had made a difference in my life and were stable adults and they were there for me when my life wasn’t so great. We wanted to be life influencers on children. When I was a child, I first noticed teachers were more than just about teaching content areas. I knew this was what I wanted to do. Those teachers influenced me, and that is what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.”

However, teaching was not for everyone. Schara said that sometimes, it feels as if individuals forget what the profession was all about.

“Every person who becomes a teacher is answering a call,” he said. “They want to help children love to learn. They want children to be successful.”

A large extended family

Returning to familiar stomping grounds, Jessica Cabeen is back at Ellis Middle School. This time, she’s the principal.

Prior to Ellis, Cabeen was the Woodson Kindergarten Center principal and prior to that, she was the assistant principal at the middle school and also a special education supervisor and teacher.

“I’ve always wanted to help people,” Cabeen said. “I was ready for a challenge.”

Several feathers were pinned on Cabeen’s cap, such as being the recipient of the NAESP/VINCI Digital Leader of Early Learning Award in 2016, and last year she was named the Minnesota National Distinguished Principal. She has two published books on work and life balance as well as her own experiences as an early childhood educator.

It was hard to believe that Cabeen wasn’t originally on the path toward being an educator. She was actually previously working in adult disability services and adolescents in Iowa and Illinois as a music therapist and earned her bachelor’s degree in music therapy from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Cabeen went on to earn her master’s degree in special education from the University of Saint Thomas, and then obtained her administrative license from Hamline University.

What brought Cabeen to Austin was the desire to live in a small town, but to also have a community where there’s diversity so that her children could be exposed to it from the beginning and have people who support one another in all aspects of life outside of the classroom.

“This was really an amazing opportunity,” Cabeen said. “As a parent of a bicultural child, this community adopted our family. Thats something you really can’t get anywhere else, and it’s so important for my son Isaiah to have role models who look like him, and to see themselves as successful, and to hope and dream and succeed with high distinction.”

Upon hearing about the forecasted teacher shortage, Cabeen stated that she felt one of the biggest things for teachers was the “burnout” and not being able to properly balance work and life. As an educator, sometimes stepping away from work was almost impossible to do.

“They need to unplug,” Cabeen said. “Take breaks, take up hobbies, and I try not to email them more than once a week. Sometimes this job is hard to turn off. We need to remember to breathe.”

As the school year approaches, Cabeen turns to her colleagues and mentors for guidance and support, and feels one of the reasons why she continues to be an educator was because of that strong support system.

“There’s strong leadership above me,” she said. “They let me dream so that our kids could dream.”