Neither Emily DoBell nor Martha L\u00f3pez Coleman spent her childhood dreaming of becoming a school principal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could have told you in second grade I wanted to be a teacher,\u201d says L\u00f3pez Coleman.<\/p>\n
When she was little, DoBell thought she wanted to teach, too. \u201cThen, as I grew up, I realized I really liked arguing,\u201d she says. \u201cI was like, \u2018Oh, that must mean I want to be a lawyer.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
And yet, both women now run schools.<\/p>\n
L\u00f3pez Coleman came aboard as principal of St. Patrick Catholic School in her hometown of Lufkin, Texas, in 2015. DoBell recently took a job as principal at KIPP Academy Lynn Collegiate High School in Massachusetts after serving for three years as principal of KIPP Academy Boston Elementary.<\/p>\n
Both women love their jobs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are times when I will see a kid who\u2019s struggling with math or something,\u201d L\u00f3pez Coleman says. \u201cI will be able to stop and work with that child and give him some one-on-one attention, which was always the part that I loved about teaching in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a principal, DoBell has learned it\u2019s possible to be warm with students while also demanding that they do their very best.<\/p>\n
\u201cKids rise to whatever expectation that you set, high or low,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen you give a kid feedback or hold a line, as long as it\u2019s a line that is reasonable, logical and meaningful, you are showing love.\u201d<\/p>\n
A winding path<\/strong><\/h4>\n![\"Photo](\"http:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/lopez.jpg\")
L\u00f3pez Coleman<\/p><\/div>\n
After graduating from Hollins armed with a degree in history and her teaching license, L\u00f3pez Coleman returned home to Lufkin, where she took a job teaching middle school and married her high-school sweetheart.<\/p>\n
The husband worked out better than the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had 150 kids over two days,\u201d she says. \u201cThat didn\u2019t give me a chance to get to meet kids, to get to know them, to do what I thought was best for every child. I was just surviving.\u201d<\/p>\n
A move back to Virginia to teach at a junior detention facility didn\u2019t leave L\u00f3pez Coleman any more satisfied with her profession. She began reminiscing about how much she had enjoyed her work-study position in the Wyndham Robertson Library at Hollins. \u201cIf people had research questions, you were supposed to turn them over to the librarian,\u201d L\u00f3pez Coleman explains. \u201cI would just field them.\u201d<\/p>\n
L\u00f3pez Coleman took a new job as media coordinator for an elementary school in High Point, North Carolina, while earning a Master of Library and Information Science degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. \u201cI felt like I\u2019d finally found my niche,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Once she finished that degree, L\u00f3pez Coleman started on a Master of Education from Averett University, while running a high school library in Martinsville, Virginia. She had an idea that one day she might like to work as an administrator, overseeing all the libraries in a school district.<\/p>\n
Her carefully made plans went tilt-a-whirl, though, after having her first child. She and her husband decided to return to Texas, where they\u2019d have support from their families. When she first got back home, L\u00f3pez Coleman worked as an assistant director at a public library before deciding to try the stay-at-home-mom life. That wasn\u2019t a great fit. \u201cI was used to being very busy and having lots of interaction with adults,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
She applied to the doctorate program at Stephen F. Austin State University, thinking the work would be good preparation for homeschooling her daughter. As she worked toward her Ed.D., members of her parish at St. Patrick Catholic Church mentioned again and again that the principal at St. Patrick Catholic School was looking to retire.<\/p>\n
L\u00f3pez Coleman knew the school well. She entered kindergarten there as a first-generation American who spoke little English. Her parents, who were born in Mexico, wanted their daughter in classrooms where everyone spoke English instead of in English-as-a-second-language classes. St. Patrick\u2019s was willing to do that. \u201cBecause I went to school here, I have a doctorate,\u201d L\u00f3pez Coleman says. \u201cIt taught me that I could do things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even so, she had no interest in running the place. \u201cBy nature, I\u2019m very much an introvert,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s really hard for me to talk to strangers. That\u2019s part of the job of a principal.\u201d<\/p>\n
By her third year in the doctoral program, people at church were still encouraging L\u00f3pez Coleman to apply for the principal\u2019s job. She thought about the adage that \u201cGod doesn\u2019t call the qualified; he qualifies the called.\u201d<\/p>\n
She got the job.<\/p>\n
St. Patrick Catholic School, which runs from pre-K to 8th<\/sup> grade, has about 80 students each year. L\u00f3pez Coleman does double duty by serving as St. Patrick\u2019s librarian.<\/p>\nEven though she\u2019s not a natural extrovert, L\u00f3pez Coleman has found her groove with the job. Each morning, she opens the school and holds a morning meeting, a time when she checks in on each of her students. \u201cI can make eye contact with every child before we get into the classroom,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve already got a feel for how my day\u2019s going to go before 8:15 in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019s happiest walking through the school. \u201cMy students see me,\u201d L\u00f3pez Coleman says. \u201cI hate being in my office because I\u2019m away from the kids. I\u2019d rather be walking through classrooms seeing what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
What kids need<\/strong><\/h4>\n![\"Photo](\"http:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/dobell.jpg\")
DoBell<\/p><\/div>\n
Like L\u00f3pez Coleman, DoBell studied history at Hollins. She also majored in economics. She planned to teach for a few years after graduation before heading to law school.<\/p>\n
In the spring semester of her senior year, DoBell remembers agonizing over whether she\u2019d end up in a private or a public school. Professor of History Emerita Ruth Alden Doan told her, \u201cAll kids everywhere need great teachers.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a piece of advice she\u2019s never forgotten.<\/p>\n
DoBell ended up launching her career by teaching special education at public middle schools in North Carolina and Virginia. She loved the work. \u201cIt\u2019s such a fun age,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re really exploring who they are.\u201d<\/p>\n
DoBell\u2019s passion for teaching made her forget all about law school. But although she was excited about the field, DoBell didn\u2019t think she was a very good teacher until she took a job teaching math in North Carolina at Gaston College Preparatory, a school run by KIPP [Knowledge Is Power Program], a nationwide nonprofit network of public charter schools. Here, another educator taught DoBell how to assess whether students were learning as she taught and adjust her approaches accordingly.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only are we having a fun time in class,\u201d DoBell remembers thinking, \u201cbut they\u2019re learning crazy amounts of math and then they\u2019re internalizing that they\u2019re good at this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Until the job in Gaston, DoBell had never considered working as an administrator. The principal\u2019s office, she says, \u201cseemed like the place you went where something bad was happening, and that\u2019s not where I wanted to spend my day.\u201d<\/p>\n
With KIPP schools, though, DoBell saw leadership positions as being more about helping other educators the way she had been helped. \u201cCoaching adults to be growing as teachers, so the kids could grow as students, did appeal to me,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
In 2012, DoBell moved to Massachusetts to work as a learning specialist for KIPP Academy Boston. The next year, she was selected for a Fisher Fellowship, a one-year program that prepares educators to found and lead a new KIPP school in an underserved community.<\/p>\n
DoBell opened KIPP Academy Boston Elementary, where she worked as principal for three years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought middle-school students learned quickly, but, dear lord, watching kindergarteners learn to read and write their names,\u201d DoBell says. \u201cI was like, \u2018Elementary school is where it\u2019s at.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Last spring, DoBell signed on as principal at KIPP Academy Lynn Collegiate, a high school. \u201cI wasn\u2019t sure I was going to love high school students the same way I felt about five- and six- and seven-year-old students. But they\u2019re just taller. They\u2019re the best.\u201d<\/p>\n
Throughout her career, Dobell says, she has felt twinges of guilt when she\u2019s moved from one school to another. That\u2019s when she thinks about what Professor Doan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really hard to leave a group of kids or a team of teachers,\u201d DoBell says. \u201cBut ultimately, it has led me to be in a position where I can impact even more kids through even more teachers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know that I would have allowed myself to look forward and think about the kids that I was about to meet if it hadn\u2019t been for keeping her words in the front of my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beth JoJack is a frequent contributor to <\/strong><\/em>Hollins<\/strong> magazine.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Emily Sullivan DoBell \u201906 and Martha L\u00f3pez Coleman \u201901 took different paths, but each is now a school principal. By Beth JoJack \u201998 Neither Emily DoBell nor Martha L\u00f3pez Coleman spent her childhood dreaming of becoming a school principal. \u201cI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8285,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[73],"class_list":["post-8248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-summer-2018"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8248"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8252,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8248\/revisions\/8252"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
L\u00f3pez Coleman<\/p><\/div>\n
After graduating from Hollins armed with a degree in history and her teaching license, L\u00f3pez Coleman returned home to Lufkin, where she took a job teaching middle school and married her high-school sweetheart.<\/p>\n
The husband worked out better than the job.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had 150 kids over two days,\u201d she says. \u201cThat didn\u2019t give me a chance to get to meet kids, to get to know them, to do what I thought was best for every child. I was just surviving.\u201d<\/p>\n
A move back to Virginia to teach at a junior detention facility didn\u2019t leave L\u00f3pez Coleman any more satisfied with her profession. She began reminiscing about how much she had enjoyed her work-study position in the Wyndham Robertson Library at Hollins. \u201cIf people had research questions, you were supposed to turn them over to the librarian,\u201d L\u00f3pez Coleman explains. \u201cI would just field them.\u201d<\/p>\n
L\u00f3pez Coleman took a new job as media coordinator for an elementary school in High Point, North Carolina, while earning a Master of Library and Information Science degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. \u201cI felt like I\u2019d finally found my niche,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Once she finished that degree, L\u00f3pez Coleman started on a Master of Education from Averett University, while running a high school library in Martinsville, Virginia. She had an idea that one day she might like to work as an administrator, overseeing all the libraries in a school district.<\/p>\n
Her carefully made plans went tilt-a-whirl, though, after having her first child. She and her husband decided to return to Texas, where they\u2019d have support from their families. When she first got back home, L\u00f3pez Coleman worked as an assistant director at a public library before deciding to try the stay-at-home-mom life. That wasn\u2019t a great fit. \u201cI was used to being very busy and having lots of interaction with adults,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
She applied to the doctorate program at Stephen F. Austin State University, thinking the work would be good preparation for homeschooling her daughter. As she worked toward her Ed.D., members of her parish at St. Patrick Catholic Church mentioned again and again that the principal at St. Patrick Catholic School was looking to retire.<\/p>\n
L\u00f3pez Coleman knew the school well. She entered kindergarten there as a first-generation American who spoke little English. Her parents, who were born in Mexico, wanted their daughter in classrooms where everyone spoke English instead of in English-as-a-second-language classes. St. Patrick\u2019s was willing to do that. \u201cBecause I went to school here, I have a doctorate,\u201d L\u00f3pez Coleman says. \u201cIt taught me that I could do things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even so, she had no interest in running the place. \u201cBy nature, I\u2019m very much an introvert,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s really hard for me to talk to strangers. That\u2019s part of the job of a principal.\u201d<\/p>\n
By her third year in the doctoral program, people at church were still encouraging L\u00f3pez Coleman to apply for the principal\u2019s job. She thought about the adage that \u201cGod doesn\u2019t call the qualified; he qualifies the called.\u201d<\/p>\n
She got the job.<\/p>\n
St. Patrick Catholic School, which runs from pre-K to 8th<\/sup> grade, has about 80 students each year. L\u00f3pez Coleman does double duty by serving as St. Patrick\u2019s librarian.<\/p>\n Even though she\u2019s not a natural extrovert, L\u00f3pez Coleman has found her groove with the job. Each morning, she opens the school and holds a morning meeting, a time when she checks in on each of her students. \u201cI can make eye contact with every child before we get into the classroom,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve already got a feel for how my day\u2019s going to go before 8:15 in the morning.\u201d<\/p>\n She\u2019s happiest walking through the school. \u201cMy students see me,\u201d L\u00f3pez Coleman says. \u201cI hate being in my office because I\u2019m away from the kids. I\u2019d rather be walking through classrooms seeing what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n DoBell<\/p><\/div>\n Like L\u00f3pez Coleman, DoBell studied history at Hollins. She also majored in economics. She planned to teach for a few years after graduation before heading to law school.<\/p>\n In the spring semester of her senior year, DoBell remembers agonizing over whether she\u2019d end up in a private or a public school. Professor of History Emerita Ruth Alden Doan told her, \u201cAll kids everywhere need great teachers.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a piece of advice she\u2019s never forgotten.<\/p>\n DoBell ended up launching her career by teaching special education at public middle schools in North Carolina and Virginia. She loved the work. \u201cIt\u2019s such a fun age,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re really exploring who they are.\u201d<\/p>\n DoBell\u2019s passion for teaching made her forget all about law school. But although she was excited about the field, DoBell didn\u2019t think she was a very good teacher until she took a job teaching math in North Carolina at Gaston College Preparatory, a school run by KIPP [Knowledge Is Power Program], a nationwide nonprofit network of public charter schools. Here, another educator taught DoBell how to assess whether students were learning as she taught and adjust her approaches accordingly.<\/p>\n \u201cNot only are we having a fun time in class,\u201d DoBell remembers thinking, \u201cbut they\u2019re learning crazy amounts of math and then they\u2019re internalizing that they\u2019re good at this.\u201d<\/p>\n Until the job in Gaston, DoBell had never considered working as an administrator. The principal\u2019s office, she says, \u201cseemed like the place you went where something bad was happening, and that\u2019s not where I wanted to spend my day.\u201d<\/p>\n With KIPP schools, though, DoBell saw leadership positions as being more about helping other educators the way she had been helped. \u201cCoaching adults to be growing as teachers, so the kids could grow as students, did appeal to me,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n In 2012, DoBell moved to Massachusetts to work as a learning specialist for KIPP Academy Boston. The next year, she was selected for a Fisher Fellowship, a one-year program that prepares educators to found and lead a new KIPP school in an underserved community.<\/p>\n DoBell opened KIPP Academy Boston Elementary, where she worked as principal for three years.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought middle-school students learned quickly, but, dear lord, watching kindergarteners learn to read and write their names,\u201d DoBell says. \u201cI was like, \u2018Elementary school is where it\u2019s at.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Last spring, DoBell signed on as principal at KIPP Academy Lynn Collegiate, a high school. \u201cI wasn\u2019t sure I was going to love high school students the same way I felt about five- and six- and seven-year-old students. But they\u2019re just taller. They\u2019re the best.\u201d<\/p>\n Throughout her career, Dobell says, she has felt twinges of guilt when she\u2019s moved from one school to another. That\u2019s when she thinks about what Professor Doan said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really hard to leave a group of kids or a team of teachers,\u201d DoBell says. \u201cBut ultimately, it has led me to be in a position where I can impact even more kids through even more teachers.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know that I would have allowed myself to look forward and think about the kids that I was about to meet if it hadn\u2019t been for keeping her words in the front of my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n Beth JoJack is a frequent contributor to <\/strong><\/em>Hollins<\/strong> magazine.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Emily Sullivan DoBell \u201906 and Martha L\u00f3pez Coleman \u201901 took different paths, but each is now a school principal. By Beth JoJack \u201998 Neither Emily DoBell nor Martha L\u00f3pez Coleman spent her childhood dreaming of becoming a school principal. \u201cI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8285,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[73],"class_list":["post-8248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-summer-2018"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8248"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8252,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8248\/revisions\/8252"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What kids need<\/strong><\/h4>\n