LaTishia Wilson

Principal
Albemarle County, Virginia

Sometimes a person is born to teach and LaTishia Wilson is that kind of educator. She knew she loved teaching when she began to tutor and play school with foster children who were fortunate to land in her parents’ home. As a special education teacher, she chose a path where success may come more slowly but in her opinion, the often slow to come and hard to achieve successes of children served in special education bring great joy and a sense of accomplishment to the children, the teacher, and families. Today in her role  as a principal, she reflects on children she taught and that’s why she looks out for those who may not voices that are sought out or even heard. She thinks about the talents of children who fall outside the traditional academic values of school. It’s why she wants to see her school as fostering a culture of talent development where every child is valued for what they can do, not what they can’t. 

Commitment Begins at Home

In a rural elementary school in the woods of Central Virginia Tishia Wilson is committed to building “a culture of talent development,” a culture where every child finds a path to life success, and the whole faculty sees every child through their capabilities, interests and passions. 

Stony Point itself is a tiny dot on the map. There are not two road signs indicating “entering” and “leaving,” but just one. You are here, and then you are not. Outside of homes there is the school, a fire and rescue company, and a tiny grocery that hosts live music in it’s parking lot on weekends. It connects to the world via Virginia Highway 20, which winds through the Southwest Mountains - a ring off the Blue Ridge Mountains that surrounds Charlottesville - and historically connects Jefferson’s Monticello to Madison’s Montpelier. The difficulties navigating the winding, shoulderless, often fog-shrouded roads keeps Stony Point relatively isolated. 

The community itself, like most in the rural south, mixes grand plantation style farms, middle class homes, and, mostly in the mountain hollows, houses barely more than shacks. This complexity of race and class has driven the school, since 1990, to try and make learning active, culturally responsive, and personal. And to base that learning in the skills of communication, including on-going embedded efforts in writing and the arts.

Understanding Built on Life Experience

Tishia Wilson’s family expected her to go to university, and expected that she would be a leader. Her childhood was spent not just as the oldest of siblings but as the mentor for the many foster children her parents invited into her home, who often arrived with special needs.

“I've always had a heart for kids. Throughout my career I’ve seen kids that just aren't able to realize the potential they have either because of a lack of resources or because of a lack of home support. Or, it could be because of a lack of good instruction. Sometimes teachers don't have the knowledge or maybe don't have the passion. I know I have a vision for learning, a vision for school, that has just given me the desire to want to do everything I can to help students learn.”

“When students demonstrate behaviors that can be perceived as negative or outside the norm,” she says, too often the, “consequences involve taking away opportunities for students when it can be those very opportunities which would motivate the student or change their mindset about school and make it more positive.” Based in a life of understanding the frustrations of high needs children, she continues, “in my work as a leader I have tried to be very intentional about responding to behavior especially when I've been tempted to think of taking opportunities away as a logical consequence.I don’t want to take away opportunities way from students.” 

Tishia has her own experience with the challenges faced by students who don’t meet the norms of the dominant culture. Her parents expected her to go to college and she was admitted to the University of Virginia, but there her dream was thwarted. Wanting to major in education she applied to the Curry School of Education at UVA, only to be rejected, her life experience as teacher within her family was deemed unimportant. So she majored in sociology, after college working in an insurance company.  Despite success in the business world she never lost her love of education. Watching her educator husband go to school everyday she found the motivation to go back and get her teaching license in special education. Then, encouraged by a mentor principal who told her “you would be a good administrator,” she returned to the university for an advanced degree.

A Deeper Purpose

“I feel that educators in general do a really good job getting to know their students and building relationships with them. That, however, just makes you a good person. In education, we must have a deeper purpose for our relationships and that means finding out as much as we can about kids. We must get to know them deeply. Once we know what they're interested in and we know what they're passionate about then the next step is for teachers to intentionally infuse those things into their instruction and into the experiences that kids have at school. I feel like that's how we're gonna get there. Afterall, if you don't know your students then you're not going to ever be able to make those connections because you won’t get to that spark that really motivates them.”

That belief in deeper purpose can be seen in the way Tishia supports faculty and staff professional learning, in her constant push to ensure that Stony Point Elementary School is a place in which every child is seen through their interests and passions, and in which every adult in the building will make learning active, culturally responsive, and personal.

“We use an integrated approach among our specialists- art, music, library staff - and they collaborate with classroom teachers to create a culture where everyone is sharing and talking about kids to provide information into what they see and where they see students excel.This helps teachers during the main instructional time to infuse that information to help students learn. I really love it when I go in a classroom and see students thinking and they've been presented with something that causes them to have to persevere through a problem. They're talking to others and collaborating to solve a problem. We always tell students that you can do hard things and that it is okay to make mistakes and take risks. That's part of the learning process. When I see students being stretched or I see teachers who are very motivated and enthusiastic by what they’re able to facilitate or support kids through - well, that makes me very excited. I feel when teachers are doing their best work and they're proud of what they're doing and they're feeling good and the students are engaging in work that is going to grow them as learners, that’s my vision in action.” 

The Challenge

“I know we have challenges. Having multiple students in classrooms and a variety of learners in a classroom is a challenge for us as educators to connect within that setting and within those parameters,” she says, discussing the tendency for so many schools to resort to mass instruction where all children are expected to learn the same way at the same speed. “How do we make those connections for each and every kid? My vision is really that we will find the way to do that and then be able to even expand the boundaries of what typical education looks like. I do not believe that students should necessarily be in a specific grade or classroom just based on their age or when they happen to be born because they're in a certain grade. My vision for education is bigger.