Saturday, September 09, 2000
Education
She asks experts - students
At some point this year, every senior at Madeira High School will receive a small blue invitation:
You are cordially invited to lunch with the Superintendent.
Throughout the year, in groups of eight to 10, they will file into the district's administrative offices, drop their backpacks at the door, shake hands with Dr. Michele Hummel and take a seat at a table laden with pizza and Pepsi.
In the next 30 minutes — if not in their previous 12 years — they will realize one of the tenets of their education: To go to school in Madeira is to be known.
With 120 students in one's graduating class, there is nowhere to hide.
No strangers
It was one of the features Dr. Hummel liked best about the district when she accepted the superintendency six years ago. Her own high school class was nine times the size of Madeira's. She saw classmates slip through the cracks, graduating virtually anonymous. She determined that, as superintendent, she was never going to hand a diploma to a stranger.
Thus were born the lunches.
But Mikie Hummel is never one to do a single thing when she can accomplish two. Yes, the lunches are good customer relations. They are also quality control. One advantage to the business of education is that the finished product can speak. And Dr. Hummel knew that, plied with the proper amount of pizza, Madeira students would give her the un-
varnished truth about how things are, and how they should be.
The luncheons begin with friendly interest. What courses are you taking this year? Are you still in theater, color guard, playing a sport? What are your plans after graduation? Dr. Hummel, herself the mother of a Madeira High School student, knows a good deal about many students, and she is not hesitant to pry for more.
“So you'll come back and apply here?” she smilingly suggests to Robin Below, who plans to major in music education. “Let's see if we can help you out,” she says, suggesting career options for a laid-back student who knows only that he will go to college “in state or out-of-state.”
The bottom line
But then Dr. Hummel gets the payback for her pizza outlay. “So what has the school system done pretty well for you?” she asks.
After stilted praise for easy-opening lockers and decent food, the seniors get serious. “I like how high our standards are,” says Gwen Bogle. “My friends in other schools are doing things I did freshman and sophomore year.”
Sarah Blackwelder appreciates the low teacher-to-student ratio. “We get so much attention.”
And then Michele Hummel asks the most dangerous, and useful, question: What could we do better?
Suggestions come in a flurry, from more time to get to class to better enforcement of a rule that prohibits sophomores from driving to school. One student gently suggests improved scheduling, after being signed into band despite never having played an instrument. The superintendent promises to look into things.
Her word is generally good. After previous classes complained they needed more hands-on opportunities in science classes, the district built a new science lab.
“The most painful thing I could hear is that they felt we weren't there for them,” she says later, stacking empty pizza boxes. “We're a small district. No kid should ever slip through the cracks. The one gift we can always give them is our time.”
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