Lovell Schools: High standards, strong values, well rounded students

In Lovell, we sat down with District No. 2 Superintendent Doug Hazen, incoming superintendent and current Lovell Middle School Principal William Hiser and Lovell High School teacher Caleb Sanders. Here are their responses.

If you were going to tell someone from another part of the state or elsewhere about Lovell schools, what would you say to give them a first impression?

William Hiser: I would say we have strong community values, and we have high academic standards within the school district, and those two intersect here in Lovell. I often say that we’re rural, we’re small, but we’re a mighty district. We try to offer a lot. It’s not only to our staff, but to our students. And so we believe that every student can be successful, but we also provide opportunities for our staff for continued growth in their own profession.

Caleb Sanders: I like what Will said on community values. I think that is what is unique. That’s what makes the education here strong, those community values. So it translates to many of the kids.

Doug Hazen: I think, too, there’s good, I don’t know if collaboration is right, but the district tries to very much help support the community, the values, all those things within our community, and then vice versa. I think the community supports the school. So there’s a good interplay between the two.

What kind of educational culture are we building here?

Hazen: I think that we’re trying to strike a pretty strong balance between, of course, high academics but also the whole student, the whole person, making sure that we’re taking into account what the overall experience looks like. So you know that we talked about a small and mighty district, right? We have lots of offerings for a small district. We want to make sure that not only are we strong in basic core subjects, but also our career tech ed. We want strong academics, but it’s not just about a certain test score. It’s about the overall package.

Hiser: In addition to what Doug said, we support our teachers, and we have student centered instruction or classrooms. We try to align what we do with the state standards and best practices.

Sanders: Doug said something about whole person (teaching), and to give some context to what I’m going to say, I saw my brother yesterday in New Zealand. He’s teaching people from various Pacific islands how to use spreadsheets, how to use basic things, but they’re tech illiterate. He doesn’t come from an education background, but in this brief three months, he’s learned that you’re teaching people. We have that phrase “teach people, not content.” And so the “whole person” is teaching people, not content. He’s learned a ton in just a few months.

Hazen: If you’re looking purely for culture, like outside of students, I think that because we’re a smaller district, we have a more personalized culture. I think even from a staff perspective, like whether you look at policy or procedure type stuff, in bigger places you’re just a number, right? There’s no human side of things. I believe at times we can be pretty human in our district. Whether it’s students, staff or others, there’s a personal side to it. We know most people, and we like that. I think that’s part of the community. You want to know the people you’re working with.

How do you strive for excellence? Can you tell me about the quality of education in our schools?

Hazen: I don’t want to just point at the high school, but the high school often can be a good example, because they show the strength of the system overall. We have bumps along the way. We’re not perfect in every content area, every grade level, but generally speaking, if somebody goes through our system from K to 12, I think we get rather good results, whether that be ACT scores or WY-TOPP scores -- those are the metric type things. But I just think the health of the system shows the type of kid that we’re generally graduating.

Too, you could point to a little bit of excellence, not only in education, but we’ve been quite successful in athletics, as well. So I think we strive for kind of a good balance in there. I think a lot of times for our classes, those that have good academic success are also classes that have good (athletic success). They’re both athletic and academic. They often go together. It’s not a one or the other all the time.

Hiser: As far as excellence, we set high expectations, and the teachers are pretty good at doing that. Then to follow that up, they do the hard work necessary to be able to meet those expectations, not only for themselves but to help their students meet them, as well.

Sanders: I think we have a high volume of people with high integrity, that characteristic of being honest. I’m speaking mainly about the professionals who work here, not necessarily students, although I could, but I just think, when I’ve looked over the years in this district, and I look at what I consider to be top teachers, like what’s going right in the classrooms, why are they succeeding? Why do they have respect from students? I think they have high integrity. They follow through with what they say they’re going to do. They don’t need a monitor; they monitor themselves. That’s what I’m thinking of when I think of honesty, integrity. I’m not claiming it’s 100%, but it’s pretty high.

How do our schools stand out compared to others? What makes our schools unique?

Hazen: My answer is always going to be that the people are what stands out. That’s what makes us great or better or whatever. Caleb talked about that quote, that we teach people, not curriculum or content. I think it’s the same, that what sets us apart are the great people that we have in the system.

Sanders: The people I’m trying to replicate as a teacher are the people who are – I use the word integrity – they’re full of integrity. Yes, they care about students. I think a lot of people care about students. But when you combine that with integrity, the practice of integrity, you get awesome results. That’s who I try to replicate anyway.

Hiser: Our students have choice. We’re a small school, but we try to maximize the number of choices, electives and opportunities that students can have, whether it be academic or athletic or activities. We do quite well with Knowledge Bowl and FCCLA and Skills USA. We try to maximize opportunities for kids, even though we’re a small district. The CDL program is new this year, and we’re continually looking for more to offer.

Hazen: I think that’s when the high school is at their best, when you have students that are multifaceted. They’re high academic, they’re high athletic, they’re highly involved in a diverse offering of activities. I think when you have that right mix, everybody sees that and kind of strives for the same thing. And that might just be anecdotal, that might just be me, but there’ve been phases where I’ve seen the same thing and thought, “That’s why we’re really good right now,” because they’re involved in everything. They’re doing everything.

Sanders: I was thinking, when you’re talking about the community connection, that kind of builds that. I think when you see these kids who learn multiple things, from athletics to academics, you also see the families who are involved in several things. I’m not saying it’s good to just load your plate, but I see community connection. These same families are involved in helping with Mustang Days. They’re involved with their various churches. We’re represented by multiple faiths in our school, and the kids are proud to represent the values of their faith. I think that makes a difference.

What are the benefits of public-school education at Lovell schools?

Hazen: I’m biased, because I’m a product of public school, but I very much believe in not only just public school, but Wyoming public schools, I think, are amazing. I think if you ever look up the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) scores, which is a national norm test, we’re always in the top five or seven. We’re always best in the west or close to it. Our NAEP scores are generally very high. Again, normally we’re best in the West, or very close to it. I think this year Wyoming has the highest ACT score of any state that makes all of their kids take the ACT.

And the resources: I can complain about resources with the state as much as anybody, but the resources the state allocates to education here, and the emphasis they put on it all the way down to the Wyoming Constitution, and how much they value education from the building blocks of the state in Wyoming, I think, has set it up for success. I’ve had my kids in another state, and the level of education in Wyoming is really second to none, in my view.

Hiser: No matter the background, we ensure that we’re going to offer these kids a quality education. And on top of education, we offer them all these other experiences that come along with the public education: activities, athletics and clubs and other programs that they don’t get anywhere else.

Sanders: I remember my dad saying, don’t give up on public education way back in the 90s. And what I see is it’s an environment that produces more like that community, where you’re less individualistic. I think that other offerings could turn into more of it’s about the individual, and this helps you think outside of yourself a little bit more as a community, which is not a bad thing.

What kind of educational experience do our students have, from the classroom to the field and gym to the stage?

Hazen: Well, I just had a tour with a guy this morning. He was with our at-risk insurance company, and he looks at all of the buildings. But he’s from Chicago, and he looks at our middle school wood shop class and just says, “You don’t see these. I don’t see these in the inner city. You don’t see these in Chicago.” Like, they would never have a wood shop class, especially at the middle school, maybe at the high school level. They still have some of those in different places, but definitely they wouldn’t fund it enough to have an offering at the middle school. And I think we, as a district, try to make sure our offerings reflect our community and area, but I think we’re trying to be diverse so that there’s something for everybody. And that is the beauty with public school, that there’s a little bit of everything, and you get to grow into yourself a little bit in high school and discover what you might be interested in long term. And that’s part of the school process.

Sanders: Along those lines, I think that I read here recently an article about specialization, some of the dangers of specializing at a young age. And so I think, if anything, we give kids an opportunity, it’s already been said, to be involved in a multitude of things. I taught in a little bit bigger school one time, 700 kids. I don’t think it was possible to do multiple activities. Where I was at, if the dance team had you as a student, you were theirs, and you couldn’t be involved in other things. They were very specialized. And we don’t necessarily have that.

Hazen: I think even in sports, sometimes, we promote being multi-sport athletes. I’ve never heard the track team say, “Don’t go out for football or volleyball” or, really, vice versa. I think we promote competition and being involved in all sorts of activities.

Sanders: As student council advisor I may only have half of my student council on an activity, but the others are doing other things, which is a good thing. I just see lots of opportunities for kids to experience a lot of different flavors.

What challenges do you face as a district moving forward?

Hazen: I do think that public education has been a little bit under attack. I think messaging has not been accurate. I think far too often you’re going to hear messages like we’re not getting the bang for our buck, that we spend too much and our reading scores aren’t good enough, or this isn’t good enough when, personally for me, I don’t think they’re telling the whole story. (There are) not enough articles saying we’re the best state in ACT scores for all those that take the ACT. There’s just not enough press on the good stuff, and some of the bad things get politicized. Of course, recently there’s the push for education savings account type stuff. I don’t have an issue with competition. My frustration is, I don’t think those other entities that might get the money are held accountable. My understanding is they’re not going to have to report their WY-TOPP scores in the same way, with the same transparency we do. I don’t think they have to take every student like we do, and maybe I should say that nicer, but we take every student, regardless of who they are. I don’t think every private school, every charter school, every home school, does that. I don’t think they provide special education services to all kids at the same level that we do. So I think that there’s just been poor messaging recently, and then at the same time, we can put a little bit of that on ourselves, like we just need to continue to figure out how to shine the bright light on public ed, because I don’t think as many people are going into it as a career, and that’s impacting the number of applicants we have for positions, which ultimately impacts the level of person we can hire. So to me, those are some of the major pieces that are affecting our district and public ed moving forward, and we’ve experienced that. We definitely are not seeing the level of applicant pools that we used to in the past.

Hazen: I think there’s a real phenomenon that, if you asked people nationwide, “How do you rate public schools?” We’ve heard national narratives like public schools are failing, right? But if you poll our community about how they think local schools are doing, I actually think there’s a very favorable feel or vibe that there would be a positive report, and I actually think that that’s true in most places. So again, there’s a disconnect where you’ll hear nationally schools are failing, but if you ask people about their local district, they’re very positive most of the time. Like, they do great work. They do good things. So somewhere in here there’s something getting lost. I’m not saying nobody has a gripe. There certainly is that. But on a large scale, communities are proud of their school district, ours, Greybull… You could do this everywhere, and they’re proud of it. But then there’s this big narrative, again, failing schools not getting bang for your buck, you know, that kind of stuff.

Sanders: It’s like one bad apple doesn’t ruin the barrel, but we tend to focus on negative things that we see and just make knee jerk reactions to change the whole thing. And I think that we need to focus more on the positive things that are going on so we don’t get confused. I’m actually quite optimistic about the future of education. It excites me. You know, I’ve been teaching now for 20, I don’t know, 23 years. And to be able to say that makes me feel really good, because I don’t think a lot, well, I don’t want to say a lot, but not everyone can say that. So I’m optimistic about it. There’s a ton of philosophy things I could go into, but I’m not going to, so don’t worry (laughs). I think there’s good roads ahead for us, I really do.