Dr. Sharon Contreras is a lifelong advocate for ensuring all children can access a high-quality, public education. Drawing from her own childhood experiences, her tenure as a high school English teacher and her career progression, which includes being the first woman of color to lead one of New York State’s largest school Districts, she is a consistent innovator in public education. On this episode, she relates some of her guiding principles and beliefs that have helped her have a powerfully positive impact on public schools across the country. Find out why every day is a great day to be an educator.
Links:
The Innovation Project
Transcript:
Megan Hayes:
Dr. Sharon Contreras is CEO of The Innovation Project in North Carolina, which brings together North Carolina School District superintendents to find and implement innovative practices in public education so that students in their communities can thrive. Growing up in Uniondale, New York with nine brothers and sisters, Dr. Contreras learned early to advocate for her right to an excellent education. At the age of 10, she was told by one of her teachers that she didn't belong in a new gifted program that included classmates she had tutored. After pleading her case on her own, and then with her parents, she gained a seat in the accelerated program. This event changed the trajectory of her life and stoked a passion for achievement and advocacy of others.
Dr. Contreras started her professional career as a high school English teacher before serving as a principal and district leader in Rockford, Illinois, and then as the Chief Academic Officer in school districts in Georgia and Rhode Island. She later became the first woman of color to lead one of New York State's largest school districts, serving as superintendent of the Syracuse City School District from 2011 to 2016. She went on to lead Guilford County Schools in North Carolina, one of the nation's largest school districts with 126 schools and 10,000 employees. She is driven to implement innovative policies aimed at closing achievement gaps and improving life outcomes for all students. In 2022, Guilford County school's graduation grade increased to 91.8%, its highest ever. Earlier this year, she took the helm of The Innovation Project. Dr. Sharon Contreras, welcome to App State and welcome to Sound Effect.
Sharon L. Contreras:
Thank you. It's great to be here today.
Megan Hayes:
We're so happy to have. Can you begin by just talking a little bit about yourself? How did you come to be interested in education?
Sharon L. Contreras:
That's a great question. My parents always laugh because they say every Saturday morning, as an elementary student, I would go outside and line up the children in the neighborhood and play school. We used to have in the seventies, those chalkboards you could buy from Toys R Us and I would teach. I've just always really had a propensity to be a teacher. But in middle school or at that time it was junior high, I had my first and only African American teacher in my K-12 experience, Mrs. Doris Hargrove, and she was just so amazing. She taught me Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, the Harlem Renaissance, and I wanted to be just like her. I thought not only was she an incredible English teacher, but she was beautiful. And I said, "I want to be just like her when I grow up." And I did that. I became an English teacher because of Mrs. Doris Hargrove.
Megan Hayes:
I think we all have that one teacher that we remember that really inspired us to do something in our lives. But sounds like you were a leader early on.
Sharon L. Contreras:
Absolutely. And there were many teachers that inspired me that were very good. Some people only had one great teacher, and I had a lot of great teachers, but Mrs. Hargrove was just someone special to me.
Megan Hayes:
So you learned self-advocacy at a very young age. Do you think it's important for kids to learn to advocate for themselves?
Sharon L. Contreras:
Absolutely. And at the time I didn't realize that this was something unique. I just saw something that I felt was an injustice. I knew I was tutoring students in my class, but they were in the gifted program, and I was not. I saw that I had straight A's on my report card. I knew I always did well in school, things came easy to me, and for some reason I was not in the gifted program. And I asked the teacher about it and she said, "No, you're not supposed to be in that program." And I said, "Well, why didn't you recommend me?" And she seemed pretty annoyed that I was asking that question at 10 years old. And I just went home and told my parents, "I think there's been some sort of error here." And my parents went up to the school, they talked to the principal, and the next thing I know I was in the gifted program, and that changed the trajectory of my life.
I don't think we understand how something like that does change the trajectory of your life. You could be in a totally different program or pathway. But being in the gifted program just prepared me for the state's flagship university and made sure that I was prepared for advanced level coursework and for the career of my choice. And I'm just so grateful that my parents, particularly my father, was always a fighter because that spirit was in me at an early age.
Megan Hayes:
So how can kids develop the skillset on their own? And how can parents and caregivers and educators help them develop those self-advocacy skills?
Sharon L. Contreras:
I do believe schools should be preparing students to advocate for themselves. That's part of being a good citizen. It's part of living in a democracy. It's knowing how to advocate not only for yourself, but for the public good. That should be part of the curriculum. I don't think we do it well in public schools. I think in fact, we like for students to sit down and just obey. And we consider that a good student. In fact, when students ask questions, many adults believe that they are out of line. And that's not a good thing. We should encourage students to respectfully engage with us and engage with one another and to say, "I disagree. I have a question about what you're saying. I question the policy, the procedures." Because that's the only way to perfect our communities, to perfect our schools, to perfect our state, to perfect our nation, and ultimately to become a better global community.
Megan Hayes:
When you were saying that, I was remembering my report cards from when I was little. In that area where they had that, the satisfactory or unsatisfactory needs improvement, I always got, "Needs improvement for self-control." And I think it's because I liked to say, "That's not fair." So.
Sharon L. Contreras:
Absolutely.
Megan Hayes:
Which it sounds like you stood up and did.
Sharon L. Contreras:
Sometimes it's not that you didn't have self-control. It's that you asked questions, you disagreed. And a lot of adults are very uncomfortable with that. And we have to prepare teachers better, so that they can be okay with students who say, "I fundamentally disagree with that." Now what we have to do a better job with, is making sure that young people know how to disagree respectfully.
Megan Hayes:
Yeah, I think particularly in the last couple of years, it's been harder just for us as a nation to have those conversations no matter how old we are.
Sharon L. Contreras:
Absolutely. And I talked about that today during my keynote speech. I said, "The difference that we're seeing or that those who survey us are seeing is that at one point we're partisan and we had partisan ideologies. Now we're starting to see that we disrespect one another and we dislike one another." That's not a good thing. We're neighbors. We're family. You can't survive as a nation if you fundamentally distrust and dislike one another. We have to dislike ideas, disagree with ideas, but still be able to sit down and have dinner with one another. And
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