037 Sharon Contreras on ensuring a high-quality education for all children

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 SoundAffect.

Sharon L. Contreras:

Thank you. It's great to be here today.

Megan Hayes:

We're so happy to have you. 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 we have to be able to make a compelling argument with someone to help someone change their perspective.

Megan Hayes:

That's such an important thing, I think, especially for young people to hear, but really for all of us to hear. Yeah, that was making me think about just in those kinds of conversations, it seems to me like the power of the story and storytelling is really where we can find some common ground, if not to agree, but to maybe find an emotional connection where we can at least recognize the humanity in one another.

Sharon L. Contreras:

Absolutely. And I find myself trying to do more and more recreational activities to get to know others. So gardening and joining gardening clubs and cooking clubs and events. Because when you get to know one another on a personal level, it's very difficult to be hateful and mean to one another. And we have to get back to just getting to know one another. And so I think it was very easy to start to distrust and dislike one another during a pandemic when we were so separated from one another. Before that, we were working together, we were office mates, we were in the faith community together. But then we were home and isolated and just engage in social media where you can say and do anything. So I think the more human interaction we have and the more we work to see where we are similar, then we'll have the opportunity to really work toward becoming a stronger community. And that's really important because I don't want my children or any child, to grow up in a world where they just distrust everyone around them.

Megan Hayes:

So you talked about self-advocacy. Can you talk about why and how you became an advocate for others?

Sharon L. Contreras:

So I think that it began with my parents who have eight biological children, but they then adopted two special needs children. So my mother always said, and she said it half jokingly, but she was also serious, "After five kids, it doesn't really matter anymore." And one of the children she adopted had cerebral palsy. To do that when you only have one parent who works, so we were pretty poor, working class, but when I think about it now, it was pretty poor. But what we have, my mother and father said, "You share." No child should be in foster care in this country. No child should go without a loving family.

My mother made sure that we grew up serving. So on weekends we would go to nursing homes and make pillows with the elderly. So she always just instilled in us that you not only work hard, work hard in school, or work hard to make a living, but you also serve others. Like your life is not just your own. You're not just here to serve yourself, you should serve others. And so we became advocates. My brothers and sisters are the same way. Not as forceful as I am. I think I have more of my father's personality, but we all believe that we are here to serve others.

Megan Hayes:

So in your work or in your life, how do you determine that someone needs a voice or needs help being heard? And what approach do you take? And the reason I ask this question is because as you're here on campus and visiting with young people, I think there are a lot of people who will be inspired by your story and by your call to action. But sometimes young and emerging advocates need a little coaching and maybe some perspective on ways to approach advocacy work.

Sharon L. Contreras:

So I think I've learned to ask the question and to teach my team to ask the question, "Who's not at the table? And who might this negatively impact or who benefits from this and who would not benefit?" So an example of this might be with parent teacher conferences to have parent... Or not parent teacher conferences, but staff development days. When I first got to Guilford County, there were 11 half days where students would go home early, so teachers could have professional development. And so I said to them, "What percentage of our parents have salary jobs versus hourly jobs?" And then we started thinking about, "What happens to children when the parents have to take off or can't take off? And how do we think those parents feel when we don't consult them, but we just place on the calendar, 11 half days." So the first big win I had in Guilford County was to remove those 11 half days, because we never stopped to think that the clientele, the people we were serving in Guilford County, had changed over the course of the decade.

And many of the parents, if not most of the parents, were no longer salaried. Many of them were hourly workers, could not take off to pick up their children to stay home with them. So children were either sitting at home by themselves or parents were losing their jobs to sit home with them. And then we would criticize parents when something would happen to a child when they were home alone because the parents had to make a difficult decision. And so I always say to folks, "When you are making decisions to make sure, one, you try to include everyone at the table, but when someone cannot be at the table, ask the right questions about who benefits, who doesn't benefit? How does this impact those who cannot come out to advocate for themselves or they don't know how to navigate the system to advocate for themselves."

Megan Hayes:

So I'm going to switch gears a little bit. One of the things I learned about you is that you gradually lost 95% of your hearing. Do you mind talking about this? And when did you begin losing your hearing and what was that adjustment like personally and professionally?

Sharon L. Contreras:

The doctors tell me, I started losing my hearing in my twenties, and it is hereditary. It's sensorineural hearing loss. And my friends noticed it as well. They said when they would walk into the house, the television would be playing very loudly. But I didn't really notice it until I was in my very early forties and I realized that I needed assistance. I could no longer hear in a meeting at all. And then I got sick. I was very sick, and the doctors had to give me a medicine to impact my autoimmune system, and it took most of the rest of my hearing at one time. That was very difficult for me. But my personality is such where I just say, "I have to persist."

And I thought about it and I said, "I can sit home and say I can't work anymore, or I can say, I'm going to learn to live with this and to work and to be an example for others." And one day, I think two or three years ago, there's an organization, a national organization that recognizes those who are deaf or hard of hearing, who have persisted and thrived. And they recognized me for being a superintendent and leading and being so transparent about this. And it was the first time I actually broke down and started crying. I had never taken the time to grieve the hearing loss. And as soon as they handed me the trophy, I could not get the words out. I was sobbing and I was embarrassed. And they shared with me that this sometimes happens, that we take care of so many others, that we never actually take time to grieve for what we have lost.

And I realize that I felt like this wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair that this happened to me. I didn't understand why it happened. There's no reason that it happens. It's just something that's hereditary. But then I got sick and this other thing happened on top of it, and it's a struggle. Every single day is a struggle to try to think about, "Where can I go? Will I be able to hear?" I've had to testify in Congress and they had to change the rules at the US Congress hearing.

Megan Hayes:

Okay, that's pretty cool.

Sharon L. Contreras:

Yeah. Because they have a set amount of time to speak and get responses, but they had to wait for someone to translate what was being said for me. I mean, those things happen every single day for me. And then I work with children, but I can't understand the voices of little children anymore because it's a high pitch sound. And I live with a fear every day because I gradually lost my hearing, and I don't know ASL, that I'm going to lose my hearing and won't be able to communicate at all. So the technology is advancing though. So two years ago I heard the sound of rain for the first time in about 20 years. And that was overwhelming. I cried again to hear the sound of rain. And I think we've become a society where we're not grateful for little things anymore. So my staff one day was complaining, "Oh, it's pouring outside. It's thundering." I said, "But you can hear the sound of rain, can't you?" And the room got quiet. And I said, "Let's be grateful for the small things."

Megan Hayes:

That's pretty powerful. You touched on this a little bit, but how did your hearing loss affect your approach to leadership and your education advocacy work?

Sharon L. Contreras:

I used to think I was so empathetic and such a big advocate for everybody, but I realized that when it came to students with disabilities, I wasn't as much advocate as I thought I was until I went through this. So with the bond passing in Guilford County, which was the largest school bonds had passed in the history of North Carolina and the third largest in the history of the country, I made sure those schools are designed really thinking not just about 80a compliance, but what is the absolute best technology available and how can we design these schools so that we are not just being compliant, but we're making life easier for people who have to live with disabilities.

And my very last week on the job was the first time in 12 years that any media ever did an interview with me about my disability. And the person sitting in the room with me, one of my staff members, she started crying. And so once the interview was over, she shared with me that her brother had a physical challenge, and they used to have to push him, her mother, and she had to push him to the back of the building. The ramp was in the back of the school. She said, "He was so heavy." And she said, "It was just so difficult." And she said, "We just didn't... The schools didn't think about that." And she said she was so happy that a superintendent had thought about that in the design of the new schools that we were putting the students with disabilities first. And I literally planned for that and took time, not as a afterthought, but said, "Okay, what's the latest and greatest we can do to make sure these buildings are accessible?"

Megan Hayes:

They weren't at the table.

Sharon L. Contreras:

That's right. That's right.

Megan Hayes:

So App State's founding history is as a teaching institution, and we have alumni who are educators in every county in the state. And I think your career progression will be interesting to our students and our alumni. So can you talk about how and why you made the move from teaching in the classroom to becoming a superintendent?

Sharon L. Contreras:

It has to do with advocacy. I was a teacher not far from Chicago in the early 1990s. And I remember seeing in Time Magazine, a story in Chicago about a, I think he was an 11-year-old gang member named Yummy Sandifer, who had committed a murder for a gang, and then the gang killed him to keep him from speaking to the police. Time Magazine did an incredible story about how he was in foster care, his grandmother was trying to raise he and his siblings. And the foster care system lost track of him. The school system lost track of him, and I said, "We can do better." And I felt like I could do more if I went into administration.

And at that time, there were no hybrid positions where you could teach and be in administration like you can do today. And that story just really grabbed at my heart. It was just so, and even today, it just gives me chills to think of children like that, that we just lose. Because yes, he did take someone's life, but how did he get in that situation? How did we contribute to that as the adults? And I don't want that to continue happening to children. And so I wanted to be able to impact policy, and that's why I started moving outside of the classroom. But I love teaching. I do.

Megan Hayes:

What do you see as the greatest challenges and opportunities to achieve greater equity in public school education?

Sharon L. Contreras:

So I think making people more aware of inequities and the root causes. I think there are far too many people who still believe that inequities are caused by personal choices. And they don't see that there are vast disparities in how we fund schools in certain communities. As CEO of Innovation Project, I get to travel now to rural schools and I see the different resources available to rural schools. And I visit Charlotte, for example, and you see all of the businesses and civic organizations and philanthropies. And then I travel to eastern part of the state and there might not even be a YMCA, a Boys and Girls Club. There's no one to partner with. And their agricultural communities are suffering. I mean, just nothing. No jobs, nothing. And this is happening all over the country. And we like to point the finger and blame and say, "If the parents just worked harder, this children would do better."

And there are just so many examples like this. We don't see the impact of defacto segregation, which is segregation because of housing patterns or that happens when there are inequities in college persistent rates and college access. It's just difficult. And so I think how we address this, just having conversations, making more people aware about the situation. And I think when people understand more, they're more open to coming up with solutions that they will deem as fair. I think they see many of the solutions right now as unfair because they don't understand the root causes of the problems.

Megan Hayes:

So as CEO of The Innovation Project in North Carolina, what two or three problems or issues will you be focused on in the coming years? And what roles will the concepts of innovation and change and renewal play in addressing those?

Sharon L. Contreras:

So that's great question. A few things right now. One is the issue of re-imagining the educator profession. I think that we've seen since the pandemic, there's worldwide changes in how we perceive work, how people work. But because we need childcare, we've not seen educators benefit from that as well. And educators have left the profession because they can. And it's been very stressful to keep up the same sort of antiquated calendar that has not been successful for all children and to keep up the same schedule that has not been successful for all children. We have not showed a lot of innovation around the school day and around sharing positions. I mean, it would be really great if two teachers could share a position or if they could co-teach, ending some of the educator isolation we see. Especially when you see so many children with mental health issues. You need some support in that classroom. It's just really difficult for educators right now.

And I think that it would be great if some teachers could work four days and some could choose to work five days, but students could come to school for five days. I'm not suggesting that they come to school less. I just think we could share positions and we could think about placing more than one individual in the classroom. We can do better by our teachers. We can think about different licensure procedures and processes so that we can get individuals from industry to come in and teach in public schools. Even if it's for a year or two years. There's so much that can be done that we're not doing because we are just sticking to the way we've always done things. And a lot of this happens at the legislature level. So if we want different results, different outcomes, we are going to have to allow innovation and let up on some of these regulatory issues.

And this is not just North Carolina, even though North Carolina tends to have a lot more regulations than some other states, but it's everywhere. We have to say, "We're going to allow innovation in schools and in school systems." And so we're working on that. We have an initiative called SparkNC, which is a incubator for high-tech jobs to introduce underrepresented students to high-tech jobs. And that is just really exciting for so many of our school systems, introducing students to gaming, for example, and our teachers to gaming and other high-tech pathways. So we're working on that.

We also have an initiative called The Jeanes Fellows. The Jeanes teachers at the turn of the century, were the first African American female principals and superintendents who went out into the community and got African American students into school before it was normalized for Black students to be in school. We've reinvented that so that they're out and just getting underrepresented communities engaged and their parents engaged in schools and helping to solve problems that are just dogging these communities. So really excited about those things. Working on telehealth. How do we get more telehealth and clinics into schools? Working on a partnership with code.org to get more coding into schools. So lots of exciting things to come.

Megan Hayes:

I want to go to school in Greensboro.

Sharon L. Contreras:

This isn't just Greensboro. These are 18 districts.

Megan Hayes:

Oh yeah, that's right. That's right.

Sharon L. Contreras:

18 districts. Yeah.

Megan Hayes:

That's very cool. So I understand your signature line is, "It's a great day to be an educator."

Sharon L. Contreras:

Yes.

Megan Hayes:

Can you talk about what this means to you and what do you want others to take away from that?

Sharon L. Contreras:

I think that so many people feel that being an educator is a lowly profession. And you are only an educator if you can't do anything else. And people are trying to get out of the profession. I feel blessed every single day to be an educator because every other career comes from what we do. And so it's a great day to be an educator, because none of you would be here if it wasn't for what we do every single day. And I think people should show gratitude to the nation's teachers and principals and bus drivers and custodians and para educators for what they do every single day we show up.

And I learned an interesting statistic. One sixth of the country is in a public school building every day. And I'm grateful that despite everything that's happened with the pandemic and the mental health crisis and sort of the culture wars and all of these things, that educators keep showing up because we love children and we love this country, and we want this country to thrive. And we understand that in order for a country to remain free, in order for a democracy to be sustainable and to thrive, you must have an educated populace. And that's why we do what we do. And I'm just proud to be an educator. It is indeed a great day to be an educator.

Megan Hayes:

Wow. So my final question is just related to what you did earlier today. You spoke to an audience of App State students, faculty staff, higher education administrators. You even had some young students from our laboratory schools. What are those key messages that you hope as you reflect on the day, that you hope your audience has taken away with them?

Sharon L. Contreras:

Well, today the message was about leadership and that we should do away with this notion that leadership is a formal position and start embracing that there is leadership in every single one of us. And we should lead from wherever we are and lead very authentically. Not try to lead like Sharon Contreras or President Trump or President Obama, or your principal or your CEO or the Chancellor of App State. But whatever you are destined and called to do or passionate about, just lead from there and realize that that action, that step, contributes to changing your campus community, your greater community, your state, and ultimately could change the world. And I want people to really embrace that, that you can positively and substantively change outcomes for yourself and for others permanently, by embracing the leader within and from leading exactly where you are.

Megan Hayes:

Wow. Well, Dr. Sharon Contreras, it has been my privilege to speak with you today. You spoke to my heart and my soul, and I have a feeling you spoke to a lot of hearts and souls today [inaudible 00:37:09].

Sharon L. Contreras:

Thank you. Thank you. I tell you, it is just a blessing to do what I do. And thank you for having me here today. I've enjoyed this very much.

Megan Hayes:

Thank you so much.