Mr. P

Mr. P

Monday, March 8, 2010

Principal El and Love the true educator

Being a future educator I always am looking to learn from those who have experienced much in the education field. For two of my education classes I was offered extra credit to go and listen to a guest speaker from Philadelphia. The only problem is that I would have to get off work one hour early and so I debated is the extra credit worth the money. Let me tell you that YES it was well worth the money.

Principal El is a principal for a high school in the inner city of Philadelphia. He grew up and went to the same school as a child and can remember more kids getting murdered each year than those who would go onto college. With a mom that always pushed him he graduated in communications and than felt that he needed to go back and teach. Many people are so grateful that he did.

With the passion and love for the children he associates with he has helped his school become one of the best schools in all of America. His experience is truly amazing and it really helped me realize why I want to become a teacher. Some of my favorite quotes from his presentation include...

"Believe in them until they begin to believe in themselves"

"Discipline is a form of love"

"Smart is not something that you are but something that you can become"

"It is so important to be in touch with your mission as a teacher"

"Leadership is about service, if you don't serve you cant lead"

"Teamwork makes the dream work"

"Their is unity in diversity" and my personal favorite

"I love them before I meet them"

All of these quotes were just part of his overall message of how to help the students. He was such an inspiring many and if I could describe it in one word it would be LOVE. In my multi cultural class we discussed the differences of cultures and I have realized that the one part of education that can be the same across all the world is if LOVE is shown. Principal El showed love and I could even feel that he loved me and he did not know who I was.

His success is simply amazing when you think about it. He started coaching the chess team when he first moved to the school and amazing things happened. Even though he did not have a strong history of chess he helped the students understand how it worked. In his chess teams very first year they traveled to a huge tournament in New York that had amateur players from across the world. That included college kids from Ivy league schools.

In this very first tournament one of his kids from the inner city beat a kid from the Bucknell University Chess Team. With all the success that his kids had they were invited to dinner at a very expensive hotel. He had one rule for them. Nothing inside the hotel leaves the hotel. He expressed the fact that some of these kids had never had a steak in their lives and had the opportunity to eat anything they wanted to on the menu.

His chess teams have gone on to win the national championships 8 different times for high school and lets remember that they are form the inner city ghetto. That simply did not matter.

One other great story he told was about being able to go to the first college graduation of one of his students. The quote "Rather go to Jail than to Yale" was popular in the school and he changed this thought. Having a kid graduate from college let alone high school was amazing for this area.

With the love that he has shown most importantly by example he has been able to create a success story that most anyone would love to read about. Luckily we can watch it. Disney is making a movie about his story soon and Principal El will be acted out by Will Smith. I cant wait to watch it and see in action the great man that I was honored to meet.

I just hope that I can be an educator half as good as he was.

Also check out his website at principalel.com

1 comment:

  1. Great post! It has been my experience that the extra credit is worth the money as long as you still have a job when you get back. So I'm glad you found that to be the case.

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