ENTERING MICHELE'S WORLD The Words and Ways of an Extraordinary Educator
	June 2004

by Shelly MacMahon
Photos by Brad Shifflett

Michele Gaudinier is the principal at the Vintage Parkway School, an Oakley K-5 public school. She's a California native, born and raised in the Fremont area. She and her husband, Bill, have been residents of East County since 1983.

Michele has been at Vintage Parkway School for over a decade and a principal for half that time. She said that her move to the school represented a blessed career change from her previous position as a customer service supervisor at an insurance company. She added that the job had no heart and forced her constantly to deal in non-creative ways with angry and unhappy people.

Michele said that she loves children and had always dreamed of being a teacher. She also wanted to follow a career that would make a difference in her life and provide a channel for being a positive influence in the lives of others. So, she followed her heart and became a teacher. After three-and-a-half years, she became an administrator.

Taking Care of People, Including Herself
Michele said that Vintage Parkway School has become a joyful environment for working and learning. She admits that this is partly due to the fact that she realizes how large a role she plays in the well-being of her staff, and knows that she can make a huge difference in their lives. She remembers when she was an employee herself, and how much power her boss had to make her day happy or miserable.

Conducting relationships on the level of the Golden Rule is one of the primary elements in developing a culture in which people can be happy and effective. Michele said she feels like the mom of the school. She tries to mentor and nurture everyone who comes within her sphere of influence. "Let's ask Mom," people sometimes say when they encounter a problem.

Like moms everywhere, Michele wears a lot of hats in her job and maintains almost no boundaries in the things she will do in her role as principal. At times she's janitor, asthma specialist, dog pound assistant, and traffic cop. She added that she's the one in charge of taking care of the scorpions and tarantulas that kids bring to school.

All the elements of the Vintage Parkway School culture are working well together in part because she came into this job with a vision to create a nurturing atmosphere. Whenever she gets into a situation with potential conflict, she always asks herself questions like, "How would I feel if someone talked to me like this?" "How would this affect me if I were sitting where this person is sitting?"

Loving the Kids, Teachers, and Parents
The fact is, Michele Gaudinier is a person who really loves the people she works with; loves the teachers, the staff, the students, and the parents. She said, "It is difficult to be angry, or at least to remain angry, with someone who really loves you and wants only the best for you."

Michele said that she loves what she does and enjoys getting up in the morning and coming to work. The thing she likes best about being principal, she said, is being around the children. She likes making a difference in their lives every day. She especially loves to stand in front of the school and greet them as they get out of their cars. She said, "I can tell the first moment I see them what kind of day they are having."

When her kids are having a tough time she tries to meet them at the point of their difficulty. She always keeps a supply of crackers and goodies to get them through the day if they are hungry. She gives them a big hug if it seems they haven't had one in a while.

Michele said that another great thing about her job is the wonderful set of teachers and staff, many of whom love coming to work as much as she does. She added that they work together as colleagues and collaborate as a team in making the school work.

She said that the Vintage Parkway teachers are great with the kids and exceptional with each other. She loves the fact that she never has to monitor them. If they have to be on duty someplace, she knows they will be there. Michele said that her teachers know they can call her any time — at home, on weekends, whenever.

Michele really is running a happy ship. One of her office administrators was overheard to say that she would do her job for nothing if the school needed her to (and if she could afford it).

Another thing that helps with the success of the school, Michele said, is that the Vintage Parkway parent community is comprised of a fabulous bunch of people who are very supportive of her programs. Parents help with garden day, planting flowers, cleaning up the school, and, she said, "They are always here when we need them!"

Parents do a lot of work for the school behind-the-scenes, Michele said. Most importantly at this time, parents are coordinating her bond-measure drive to build two more elementary schools.

Not Yet Paradise
The school is remaining a great force for good in the lives of the students who attend here in spite of the increasing challenges always being created by the changing East County culture. During the past decade, for example, she said that she's witnessed an increase in the number of free and reduced lunches that she serves. A lot of moms used to stay home with their kids, but now many of them are out there in the workplace. Students come in without breakfast, sometimes, or come in late, unhappy, or sad.

Michele said she can't imagine how kids survive some of the stuff that she sees going on. She's trying to support the kids and the parents. If she senses that parents don't have books, for example, she find books for them. If kids are coming to school without warm clothes, she finds a way to provide for them.

"I feel so blessed," Michele said, "that it is a joy to be able to do whatever I can to make children successful." She feels that she is part of a community of generous people, and that her attitude typifies that of a lot of people around her. She said that she can put a note out to her parents about something she needs, and then she just gets it. Every time!

One of the techniques Michele uses to reinforce change in behavior is to make contracts with students. For example, she might say, "If you can come two weeks in a row, you can have lunch with me."

Another effective technique, she said is to appoint the child as an office helper for ten minutes a day for a specified number of days. When the students report for duty, she said, she tries to make a big deal out of their time in the office. She encourages them to feel like they really did something worthwhile — something to feel good about. She added that it is remarkable to see how the little acts of service sometimes assume an importance beyond any actual good the students accomplish. In some cases, she said, if they can change their behavior for two weeks, they might be able to change it forever.

Strategies that Work
One of the themes Michele is pushing these days is getting into winning strategies. Stephany Harveys wrote a book, Strategies that Work, which has become something of a Bible for curriculum improvement at Vintage Parkway School. Harveys' book advocates teaching strategies, which he calls "winning strategies," that reinforce the learning that goes on at every level of her school.

The point of winning strategies is to support children in a process of becoming thinkers while they are learning to read. The children learn to predict and infer as they read. She actually begin teaching this in Kindergarten. Children are taught to use "schema," which is the technique of bringing prior knowledge and experiences to bear on the subject of whatever passage is being read.

Michele said that it is a real kick to hear a kindergartner say, "I have schema about this book." They might say, for example, "This is about alligators. I have schema. I went to the zoo last week and saw alligators." The youngest students can begin to learn to do this even before they become readers, she added. They can look at a picture book and begin making connections between the pictures and the knowledge and experience they already have in their lives.

"As children develop the skill of being able to identify connections between past and current experiences," Michele said, "they gradually learn the life-changing habit of using the higher thinking processes that involve critical and synthetic reasoning."

The type of learning promulgated by Strategies that Work can only take place in the context of the kind of loving, nurturing environment that Michele and her team is creating at Vintage Parkway School. Michele said that the whole school district is trying to get on this bandwagon with Vintage Parkway School. "Our school is leading the rest of the district in this effort," she said, "because my teachers are so enthusiastic about the program." Good teachers can smoothly integrate this kind of learning, together with the phonics and math skills, she said.

She added that the winning strategies curriculum change has become a real revolution in her school and has changed the culture of the school for the better.

Pressing for Excellence
Like every other school in America, the people at Vintage Parkway School are hoping to see their test scores improve. She said that the school is not currently making the progress she would like to see in every area. Nevertheless, she firmly believes that processes of teaching and learning go on in a healthy classroom that lead to much more important development than merely doing well on test scores.

Michele intends to continue to promote teaching the strategies uniformly in every classroom. The learning culture that this promotes across the school will make the test scores soar.

Another important part of her pressing for excellence includes classroom visits, which she schedules two days a week. She has learned from experience that spending time in the classroom with the kids is the way for her to learn who they are and a way for the kids to learn who she is.

Sometimes it is difficult to break away from the demands of her office in order to get the time in the classrooms that she needs. Occasionally, she said, some serious discipline or facilities issue is going on, but she still tries to get away. Sometimes she will just walk out of the office, telling the staff, "I need a kid break."

In this way, Michele added, she is able to flee, at least for a few minutes, from whatever unpleasant or nasty issue was keeping her back, in order to drop into a classroom and to revel in the happy environment where children are engaged in the activities of learning — which, after all, is what the whole thing is about.

Michele, along with the entire school district, is depending upon the success of the bond measure that Oakley voters will be hopefully approving in November. The district really needs two new elementary schools. "If the bond issue fails, then things will be a lot different around here," Michele said. "A lot less fun and a lot less educationally effective."

Michele said, with a great smile on her face, that it is a great thing for her to be in the position of doing what she wants to do and doing it with people she loves and even admires. "I constantly feel that I have been led by the hand to a good and happy place," she said. "I'm so grateful!"