Career Path Interview: Diana Guzzi

Diana Guzzi has been principal of Bowen Elementary School in Newton, MA since 2009. Prior to that, she was a kindergarten and first-grade teacher at Horace Mann and Ward elementary schools and she taught for one year in Mexico. Diana recently completed her Ed.D at Boston College and researched job satisfaction of teachers and administrators of color. She has led many changes in her school including a student mentor program called Bowen CARES. We sat down on August 22, as she was gearing up for the start of the school year.



When did you know you want to be a principal?


I actually didn't know that I wanted to be a principal until I went back to school to study school administration. I originally went back to the program because I needed more credit. When I got involved in the program, I realized it wasn't just teacher leadership that I was drawn to. I was really drawn to the idea that not only could I impact a class, but I could impact an entire school as an administrator. Pretty quickly from enrolling into the program, I decided that actually, I don't want to just become a better teacher. I wanted to become an administrator.


How did you prepare for interviews for administrator positions?

I took preparing for the interview like it was my full-time job. I hadn’t interviewed for a position in 10 years and I wasn’t sure what it was going to be like. Through my administrative program, we did mock interviews and I studied how friends responded to questions and what kind of questions were being asked. I then eventually collected about 30 interview questions from districts through friends from all over and I came up with answers to these questions. For about a week, my father interviewed me and I would practice and then he would give me feedback on what answer was working and what didn't. I would go back and rewrite a kind of script. I had a script for all of these questions. What I realized I needed to do was to create stories from my experience. So even if I didn't have the exact question, I had a story that I could make a connection to the question. So I came in with a bank of about six to ten good stories from my experience that then I could tweak depending on what the question was from the committee.

Do you feel that helped during interviews?


It was great because I got all my jitters out with my dad, who I trusted, and felt confident that he would give me real feedback. So yes, but nothing really prepares you for the actual interview. My first interview was with 30 people. So a one on one interview with my dad did not prepare me to walk into a room with 30 people sitting around ready to ask me questions and listen to each response that I had.


What were some things that you did as a teacher that prepared you to be a successful principal?

I was always open and willing to help out my principal and I took any and all opportunities to volunteer and help out whenever I could. I also, and I still do, really like to observe leaders, and I like to understand why they make decisions and choose to do one thing or the other. I had a really positive relationship with my principal. I could ask him, “so tell me about why you plan that first staff meeting” or “I'm feeling that our school culture is kind of buzzing about this, what are you going to do”? I knew that he would answer me and help me understand these decisions. Then it allowed me as a teacher-leader to go back to my friends and say, like “let's think about it differently” or “maybe we should give this a try”. Also, I was really fortunate that I had strong friendships with my teacher team and whenever I wanted to try something new, they were willing to do it. For example, I got really excited about PLCs and my team was willing to try it. But our school district wasn't doing it. They were willing to do it because they knew I was passionate about it. Also, it was through that experience that I got to bring PLCs to the school because my principal wasn't so sure about it. I think the other piece is that I always focus on making relationships with the staff. Those friendships and relationships were really important, no matter what grade or what their job was. That was important.


Now that you are a principal what are three things that you make sure you do every week?


One is being present visible, so my staff knows I'm there. My door is rarely closed and I want staff to know I'm here and they can pop in. We've had conversations about when you do pop in, it has to be okay for me to say, “I don't have time”. But at least I know that there's a connection. Another is dropping in the classrooms and just saying hi. It's important to be doing this probably like every day when I can. One thing that is not really a weekly practice but a daily practice is I at the end of the day, I would celebrate something that went well that day. So at the end of every day, I wrote down a note something that was really positive about the day so I ended my day with something good. Now I do it so much that I don't need to write it down. I just know as I walk out the building, I think of something that went well and that's like my general approach to school at all times.


What bit of advice would you give a first-year principal?


To remember that we are going to make mistakes and mistakes are okay, as long as we learn from them. So for me, it's less worrying about what the mistake is, but more about “what did I learn from that” and “what can I do differently”. Another is for people to take care of themselves. For me, it's going to the gym. So if it means taking a half an hour and walking or cooking or doing something for themselves, they should make sure they do that. Finally, don't be hard on yourself.


For your dissertation, you researched job satisfaction of teachers and administrators of color. What did you learn?


So one of the reasons why I was so interested in my topic is that at my school, it has been a focus for us to increase the diversity of our staff. We already have a diverse staff in comparison to the rest of our district. I wanted to understand the factors that help or improve the job satisfaction of educators of color. In summary, it's connections with kids, connections with colleagues and connections with administrators that has a huge impact. And that I do notice here at my school, as well as the school that I studied. At Bowen we’ve had, pretty honest conversations with my teachers of color of what their experiences have been and how we can improve it. While we're not there yet, we have talked about how we can establish a mentoring program within our own school because we have the resources and staff willing to do mentoring for other educators of color, which is something that came out from my dissertation as well. Again, the importance of just building a relationship with them and listening to my teacher.

You have a mentoring program for African-American students at Bowen called Bowen Cares for So what has worked with this program?

This program is awesome. And you can see my smile, it's been really successful.

Four years ago we liked the idea of doing a mentoring program. We needed to make sure there was actually an interest or and that we weren't just guessing that kids weren't feeling connected. So while we had a rough outline of the mentoring program, we did a very informal survey of all of our fifth graders that year 88% of our black or African American students talked about feeling treated differently by teachers and feeling less connected to teachers specifically. So that supported our hypothesis of our black kids aren't feeling as connected. And then we move forward to try this mentoring program. And then we launched it to our staff saying, we're asking you to volunteer to be a mentor, you will meet a minimum of 30 minutes a month, because we thought that was reasonable and that you will engage in professional development monthly, because we need to start having conversations about race and the impact of race on both ourselves and the students were working with. We thought that we would have 8 people volunteer and we got 19 staff to volunteer to do it. We also have a family component, so families are involved three times a year too. And so so now just completed our third year and we now have 25 students second grade through fifth-grade. In our district survey, these students feel more connected than the average Bowen student. That's pretty good!

Learning from a New Teacher's Journey

As the school year begins I was curious about what is going on in the minds of first-year teachers as they embark on this exciting journey of teaching. During their first year, teachers can be bombarded with information that they may not need immediately, but at the same time, they may be too nervous to ask questions. Too many new teachers leave the profession within the first three years of teaching. So what are the best ways for administrators to support new teachers?


To learn more about what new teachers are thinking about, I spoke with Susan Jachymiak who just began her journey as a 4th-grade teacher. She is from Orland Park, Illinois and recently graduated from Illinois State University this past May. She is passionate about growth-mindset and helping students achieve their full potential. During the 2017-18 school year, she blogged about her year in student teaching and this year she is chronicling her first year as a teacher. On her blog she writes, “I would not be where I am today without my former teachers, and I am lucky that I get this chance to shape the future”.

Through our conversation, I was reminded of the excitement of first-year teachers and as well as the kinds of questions about teaching that they are trying to figure out.  Susan helped me to remember that new teachers are driven to develop their own personality as a teacher but also need the support in order to grow.  You can read her blog at http://msjachymiak.weebly.com/ and you can find her on Twitter @MsJachymiak where she uses the hashtag #newteacherjourney.


You just finished the first week in your first year of teaching. How did it go?
Well, I have a few chatty students so I’m trying to figure out a new system that would work because students were not buying into the one I was trying. My fourth graders are very into tangible rewards, so I'm trying to figure out a classroom economic system that I'm implementing this week to see if that will work. It is based on rewards. I'm hoping it teaches life skills and builds the financial literacy that they might not have at this age. I thought it'd be interesting to see how that goes.

What were some of your best takeaways from student-teaching?


As a new teacher, I feel more confident due to having done a full year of student teaching. I was able to see how my cooperating teacher figured out the classroom management and got to figure out other classroom procedures. I felt like I have a better take on those procedures going into my first year, but of course, there's a lot more to learn.


Describe your job search process? What were some of the strategies that you used that helped you get this job?


I went to the job fair at my university (Illinois State University) which was helpful because I got to interact with a lot of principals and employers who were interested in hiring new teachers. It was nice to be able to talk to them and get tips and feedback going forward. I initially didn't have a narrow search because I was kind of interested In going wherever I could find a job as a first-year teacher. But after a while that I started to decide that I wanted to go back home. So focusing on that area helped to limit my search a little bit. But then again, it also opened up doors because I was able to get calls from my district and it all ended up working out in the end. But the job search is a process of trying to figure out how to showcase myself positively.


Was there an interview question that you heard pretty regularly?


The most common questions were about how I incorporate technology into a sample lesson. I talked about some lessons I did during student teaching. I do not have a lot of experience so a lot of it was based on student teaching and figuring out like which lessons worked and what I could have improved on.


Twitter helped as well. It was good to be able to interact with other people that were helping me during the job search because they would have connections from their district and they would message me things that I could apply to my process.


What advice do you have for administrators on how they can best support a new teacher?


I would say to be open to suggestions. I think that as a new teacher we're afraid to share out ideas that we have because we don't want to be pushed down. When you're new, you come in with these bright ideas and you want to change or you want to try out some new things and, I think, just having an administrator that is supportive is beneficial. Today I just emailed my principal about trying this new classroom management system, so she knew that what I was trying that out and to see if she had any questions. I don't want to change the status quo, but I also want to do things in my own way. So I think to be supportive and realize that new teachers don't have all the answers. Also, I know that new teachers are afraid of asking questions. And while I'm trying to steer away from being afraid I sometimes still forget to ask. I have to write down all of my questions because I end up getting distracted by things. When you're new, you don't know what to expect, and you’re just figuring it out on your own. I think administrators forget that we have a lot on our minds.


I also wonder if new teachers don’t know what questions to ask either.

Yes, I get caught up in situations where I'm like oh yeah I should have asked about that.


Through your blog, you chronicled your student teaching and now you are chronicling your first year teaching. Also, you are also using Twitter regularly. How has social media helped your development as a teacher?


I started going on Twitter chats after being connected to an educator that I met at ISU, and then I started going on Twitter weekly. I started interacting with other teachers who are also passionate, and from there I expanded my use. So now I’ve started my own chat and I've been able to start a blog. It's been amazing to start off my career like this because I feel like I have the support. If I'm afraid of something or I need advice on how to handle the situation, I reach out, and I get answers. It's been so helpful to have that support system. Blogging has helped because I’m able to reflect on how my week went. Blogging is how I thought about switching my classroom management system. I was thinking about writing a post today about my first week and in the process of writing I was like, “what can I do to provide rewards that motivate students.” And then I was like “oh, maybe this will work, and I can reflect on that process.” If I end up not using it in the long run, at least I have a starting point. I find blogging is a great way to reflect on my teaching practice and I can go back to my blogs down the road.