{"id":222,"date":"2021-04-28T08:45:32","date_gmt":"2021-04-28T15:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/dean.richards\/?p=222"},"modified":"2021-05-04T09:12:27","modified_gmt":"2021-05-04T16:12:27","slug":"a-conversation-with-our-new-superintendent-dr-steve-cook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/dean.richards\/2021\/04\/28\/a-conversation-with-our-new-superintendent-dr-steve-cook\/","title":{"rendered":"A Conversation with our New Superintendent, Dr. Steve Cook"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Steve and Stephanie Cook<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Q:  Tell us  a little bit about yourself and your family.  Why are you looking forward to moving to Bend?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A couple of things about me:  I have three grown kids.  I have been a teacher, a building administrator. I have never taught my kids, but I have been a building administrator for all three of my children in some way, shape, or form.  My wife, Stephanie, is a former critical care nurse, and also a retired school nurse.  We have both worked in education, myself my entire adult life.  I\u2019m just finishing up my 32nd year in education.  I spent 13 years as a teacher, 12 years as a building administrator, and getting ready to start year 8 as a district administrator. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My wife and I have been fortunate enough to find a house here.  I\u2019m going to finish out my contract in Coeur d\u2019Alene and be here sometime in mid-June. We are also bringing a puppy with us – a rescue dog named Alfreda.  She was a stray and my wife fell in love with her the moment she saw her.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am also extremely excited to join the Bend community.  I feel so grateful for the opportunity to work with you all and others – to get to be eyeball deep in making the best learning experiences we can for kids and to help teachers and administrators and staff facilitate and grow that kind of collaborative learning experience for kids.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q:  Tell us about your biggest life moments around the topic of equity.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest one for me was by far the largest learning experience I\u2019ve had around equity – and it happened as an adult.  I\u2019ve grown up in pretty diverse areas.  I grew up in Topeka, Kansas until I was 10, and then we moved to Dodge City so my parents could take over the family farm.  And then my second teaching position, where I spent for the majority of my teaching career, was in Bonner Springs.  All three of those areas were quite diverse.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a teacher in Bonner Springs, I was telling a story about growing up in Topeka.  Both my parents were teachers and we lived in a fairy frugal house, in a very diverse and poor neighborhood.  The middle school was right next to the elementary school and sometimes the older kids would pick on the younger ones.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there I was in the Bonner Springs staff lounge, remembering all of this, and telling a story about how one day some African American boys were chasing us, trying to beat us up: they thought we had theme park tickets and they wanted them.  To make it all worse, I was taking band and needed to take home my practice drums each day.  So there I was: a scrawny little 4th grader, trying to get to a block mother’s house without dropping my drums.  But I couldn\u2019t run as fast, and the boys caught me and beat me up pretty bad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, the secretary of the high school was Mary Kimbrough. She was African American and had worked at the high school forever, and was one of those names that was known throughout the town and commanded respect.  And there I was in the staff lounge, telling this story for the laughs and the jokes. My audience was in stitches over this story of how the African American kids beat me up. Mary came up to me and she was furious. She wagged her finger in my face and she said, \u201cSteven Cook! Those kids are just kids!\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was stunned.  I felt so small.  It was the first time I\u2019ve ever recognized that I was delineating around race – there was no reason to specify the race of those boys.  Never in my life did I even consider race to be a thing.  It was the first time in my life I was made to recognize my own whiteness.  After that, Mary Kimbrough was so graceful and so kind to me, and helped me to grow through my own ignorance.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It impacted me deeply and personally.  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q:  And the second most impactful moment?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second one was later on, after I became a principal and was embedded in the expeditionary learning network, <\/strong>when I was really gaining experience and starting to feel comfortable in the shoes of an instructional leader.  The training I got, and the professional development I received, as an Expeditionary Learning principal is the most transformative I have received in my career.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q:  Can you tell us a little bit more about Expeditionary Learning?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Expeditionary Learning (EL) is a style of learning that came out of Outward Bound, a project-based learning experience.  And these projects are very complex and many times they involve giving back to the community in some way.  One of the biggest differences between EL and the mainstream model is that we don\u2019t compete with one another; the competition is my own to be better than I was yesterday, to engage with my own self-growth and self-efficacy.  EL was absorbed by many of the inner-city charter schools and challenged the dominant culture of low expectations and helped transform it into a culture of high expectations.  We have two EL schools in the Bend-La Pine district  – the middle and high schools of Realms.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q:  And it was EL that was so transformative to you as an instructional leader?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes.  It\u2019s because of the explicit intentionality and importance they place on not just the moves you make as a teacher, and not just the moves you make as an instructional leader, but also on the moves you make that are empathetically connected to that student that is sitting right in front of you.  EL asks us:  are you truly doing what you can to maximize that learning experience for that student?  When you think about teaching in that way, you become much more attuned, and much more connected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q:  So when we\u2019re talking about providing equitable instruction, what does that mean beyond providing an accessible learning experience to every student in the room?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first thing is:  can we start by agreeing that there are two moves every instructor can make right away?  1) Aspire to the best quality, Tier 1 instruction you can.  That you are always looking and evaluating and making new decisions about the moves you are making.  2) Creating a community and a socio-emotional experience for every student in the room that gives them a felt comfort and a safe environment, so that they feel like they\u2019re a part of that community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And on the basis of both of those things are strategic moves that we can train upon.  Those strategic moves are things you do as an adult that are going to create that feeling of felt safety and create that empathetic kind of relationship so I know, recognize, and understand who my learners are as individual people, and what value they are bringing into my classroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I came to know the Platinum Rule: don\u2019t treat others the way you want to be treated; treat others the way they <\/em>want to be treated.  And if you can start to build and connect with kids on that level, you can start to recognize what their needs are.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q:  Is it those relationships and that self-reflection as a teacher that make learning accessible?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accessibility is such a broad term…It\u2019s almost too vague in some regards.  But it starts with knowing and understanding who that kid is and what they\u2019re bringing in the door – who had breakfast, who had a rough morning (as adults, we even struggle with rough mornings; they\u2019re tough!).  We bring whatever we have into our world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can talk about specific ways to do that, but creating an environment in which every kid feels welcome starts with simple things like creating an environment in which every kid gets eye contact, in which every kid gets a smile, every kid hears his or her name in a positive way.  You don\u2019t let kids off the hook, you don\u2019t give them an opportunity to bail out of the learning experience, but you also treat them with respect and dignity when they say, “I\u2019m struggling with this.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As adults, we\u2019ve all had a moment – whether it\u2019s something you remember from your childhood, or something you\u2019ve experienced as an adult – where someone has done something that makes you feel less than safe, or less than comfortable. Recognizing when we do that as adults, stepping back and apologizing in front of kids, might be some of the most powerful things we ever do.  When we do that, we show kids that we still have a lot to learn.  And if I\u2019m aspiring to do that better than I did the day before, it means I\u2019m taking some risks and I\u2019m doing some things I\u2019m not perfect at yet and I\u2019m going to fail sometimes.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is important to create an environment where we do that together, and embrace those mistakes and own them.  And if we can do that in a way that empowers how we engage with each other, those are the kind of relationships I want to be in.  If we\u2019re afraid to make mistakes, that\u2019s not a safe environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part 1 of 2. The rest of this interview will be published next week.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Curious about EL? Here’s a great link to get you started: <\/strong>https:\/\/eleducation.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Q:  Tell us  a little bit about yourself and your family.  Why are you looking forward to moving to Bend? A couple of things about me:  I have three grown kids.  I have been a teacher, a building administrator. I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":638,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/dean.richards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/dean.richards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/dean.richards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/dean.richards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/638"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/dean.richards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/dean.richards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":234,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/dean.richards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions\/234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/dean.richards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/dean.richards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bend.k12.or.us\/dean.richards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}