The best leaders lead by example. At the Gen. Louis Wagner Middle School at 1701 Chelten Ave., students are able to come into their own, succeed in the classroom, and prepare for their future because of the leadership roles and innovative thinking of the administration and teachers at their school.
“Some of our goals this school year was continuing to improve our attendance and providing trauma informed training for everyone,” said principal Maya Johnstone. “Last year, we improved our attendance to 42 percent by the end of the year, so our goal this year is to better than 42 percent. As of recently, we have 71 percent here so far.
“As far as the training, the trauma that our kids come to school with is on a completely different level. You can have the best lesson for a kid, but if you have a kid who doesn’t know where their next meal is coming from or wondering how they will survive once they leave school that lesson for the day may not matter to that kid. We’re trying to reach our kids by preparing everyone from the secretary to the building engineer on how to be more informed with our kids and their trauma.
“We’ve had two trainings already from the end of last year until now,” she added. “Lakeside has showed us how to recognize certain things. Our counselors have done some things on suicide prevention. Some kids act out, so you know something is going on, but you also have kids who don’t act out and may be going through something. Those are the kids that may be under the radar. You don’t want one kid to get by, so we’re doing everything we can to help our kids.”
To read the full article by Chanel Hill in The Philadelphia Tribune, click here.
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