Relationships. That’s the starting point in Kristi Cole’s answer. Healthy, helpful, warm, caring relationships, but ultimately ones aimed at quality, high standards and progress.
My question was: What have you learned about what works when it comes to educating kids?
I don’t know of anyone else who has seen the local education scene in the past couple decades from as many vantage points as Cole. Her father taught in Milwaukee Public Schools for 38 years. He retired in 1991, the year Cole started as a teacher. She has been a school librarian, assistant principal and principal. She held major positions in the MPS central office, overseeing programs dealing with student safety and health as well as charter and alternative schools connected to MPS.
A year ago, she took a job that splits her time, three days a week as an administrator for the high-quality Milwaukee College Prep charter schools and two days a week as a coach for leaders of other schools as part of a nonprofit organization, Schools That Can Milwaukee. At 45, Cole is also working on her PhD in education.
Since her time as principal of Humboldt Park School almost a decade ago, I’ve looked to Cole as an example of how to do urban education well. I thought I’d learn some things myself if I asked her what she had learned. Beyond the emphasis on relationships, here are some ingredients she suggested for a high performing school: