She’s secretly a student
Published: September 19, 2006
It takes a special principal to hush 2,000 teenagers in an echoey gymnasium — especially without being there.
Doherty High School’s Jill Martin walked into a silent gym Monday morning where students, colleagues, family and friends surprised her with news that she has been named the 2007 National High School Principal of the Year.
Martin had been lured away from the school for a business breakfast as hundreds of people, including school band members, packed the gym.
When she returned, her secretary told her there was an emergency in the gym involving scoreboard equipment. Martin didn’t take the bait, so the story was embellished: A student had fallen in the gym.
Instead of paramedics, she was greeted by cameras and cheers.
“This is one of the few times in my life where I honestly have to say I don’t know what to say,” she told the crowd.
Principal at Doherty since 1999, Martin was selected from among hundreds by the National Association of Secondary School Principals and MetLife, which together coordinate and fund the award. She received a $5,000 grant for the school or for professional training.
Martin was honored for a lengthy list of accomplishments, from improving student attendance and decreasing the dropout rate to implementing several programs.
Principals were judged on their leadership, academics and people skills. State winners were chosen this year, and a national judging panel selected and interviewed three finalists.
Martin has a reputation among students as being a good listener. “She’s like one of us,” said sophomore Gloria Angel. “She’s secretly a student.”
Sarah-Rose Gundel, a senior, attended middle school in New York before coming to Doherty. She went from feeling like a number to a person, she said. “I was tearing up in the bleachers when I saw her walk out,” Gundel said.
Martin spoke to The Gazette last week about her status as one of three national finalists, not knowing she was the winner. She said she was honored to have gotten so far when she considered the competition. “I’ve been around long enough to know how many good high school principals there are,” she said.
She also happens to live with one of them. Her husband, Paul, is principal at Cheyenne Mountain High School and was Wyoming’s principal of the year in 1984 — a time when there wasn’t a national competition for state winners.
Her husband is her mentor, Martin said. She bounces ideas off him at home.
The journey to becoming National High School Principal of the Year began last school year when she was nominated for the Colorado award.
Maybe it began further back than that, Martin mused. She said she ran “schools” in her backyard as a youngster, charging 25 cents to conduct activities for younger kids, which she now realizes parents saw as cheap baby-sitting.
She said she didn’t have plans to be a teacher at that point.
That came later, when she watched her brother — who has gone on to a successful career in television — drop out of school. She wanted to find out what made him dislike school, which she loved.
She became an English teacher 37 years ago and said she’s “getting there” when it comes to answering the question about why some kids don’t want to go to school.
In her doctoral dissertation, she found that truant students wanted to be successful at school but didn’t think it was possible.
They were the same students who didn’t necessarily qualify for special programs at school to help them be successful, she said.
That’s driven her mission to start new programs, including one in which students periodically meet with teachers or advisers to set goals, review their academic progress and draft improvement plans.
Another program, Spartan Connection, provides groups of 30 students with a chance to meet weekly with two adults to talk about anything on their minds.
“The goal there is to personalize our school,” Martin said.
All students should feel they have at least one adult who is an advocate for them at school, she said. That adult may be a teacher, the custodian or Martin, who has a group that meets during Spartan Connection time.
About 130 Doherty students take elective classes that teach skills to make them more successful in college in a program initiated by Martin.
Teachers and counselors say Martin’s focus on the students never seems to waver, and she fosters a team environment where teachers talk regularly about students and learning and how to improve them.
“She’s always there to recognize when students do well,” said Doherty band director David Williams.
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