Bice encourages ‘thinking outside the box’
Franklin County Superintendent Gary Williams, Sen. Roger Bedford, State Superintendent of Education Dr. Tommy Bice, Russellville Superintendent Rex Mayfield and Franklin County Assistant Superintendent Donald Borden pose for a picture during Monday’s teacher in-service meeting. | Photo by Kellie Singleton.
Teachers in both the Russellville City and Franklin County School Systems got a large dose of encouragement at their annual in-service Monday from one of the top state officials in their profession.
State Superintendent of Education Dr. Tommy Bice made a special trip to the RHS Auditorium Monday afternoon to speak at the combined in-service meeting and challenge teachers to “think outside the box” this upcoming school year.
Bice showed a series of slides from his “Imagine Public Schools in 2020” initiative that started off with a clip from the film “Dead Poets Society”, which showed a pivotal moment where Robin Williams’ character is urging his students to look at things from a different perspective by standing on a classroom desk.
“That line where he says, ‘Dare to strike out and find new ground’ – I love that line,” Bice said.
“That’s what I encourage you to do this year. Strike out and find new ground. Find new and innovative ways to relate to your students. Get to know them and find out who they really are. When you do that, I promise you will have a more productive year, and so will your students.”
As he was discussing relating to students, Bice encouraged all the teachers to stand up and take a “selfie” with their phones and post the picture to social media.
“I bet there’s some of you who have never done that before,” Bice said, “but your students have. You need to understand where they’re coming from and really try to relate to them.”
Bice also showed slides from several schools across the state who are already embracing the “think outside the box” mentality.
He talked about a high school that’s having classes from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. each school day because they are in a rural area where many of the students have to work to help support their families. Instead of making the students drop out so they could work in the afternoons, they created options where the students could do both.
“Who says the school day has to be from 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Monday through Friday,” he asked.
“Who says you have to do things a certain way? You should do whatever works best for the students – whatever will help them be successful.
“We’ve got kids that are ready to learn if we’ve got teachers who are willing to really teach them.”
Bice, who became the state superintendent in January 2012, has served as a teacher, a career tech director, and a principal prior to his role as state superintendent, and he said he still considers himself a teacher.
“I am here to be your voice in Montgomery and I take that job seriously,” he said.
“I don’t care about political parities or agendas. I have one group of constituents that I will fight for every time and that’s the 749,000 students that go to school in this state.
“They are my number one priority and I am working to make sure we have leaning environments that promote creativity and flexibility as the path to learning.
“Don’t get me wrong – we should have standards and we should strive to meet those standards, but there are many different paths to take to achieve those goals, not just one cookie-cutter path for everyone.”
Bice’s words were music to many teachers’ ears who have become bogged down with regulations and testing instead of actual teaching.
Judy Burcham, who has been a teacher for 24 years at the kindergarten and pre-k levels, said Bice’s words were refreshing to hear.
“This is what I went to school for,” Burcham said.
“Being creative and finding new and interesting ways to teach and solve problems – it’s empowering to hear those concepts being endorsed by our state superintendent.
“My only disappointment is that he came along at the end of my teaching career instead of years ago.”
“We appreciate Dr. Bice taking the time to come and talk to our teachers and offer them some inspiration for this upcoming year,” Franklin County Superintendent Gary Williams said.
“I think he gave them a lot of good advice and concepts to put into practice.”
Russellville Superintendent Rex Mayfield agreed.
“Dr. Bice is very relatable because he is one of us,” Mayfield said.
“He’s been there and he understands the struggles and challenges teachers face and he addresses those head-on. Hearing him speak was a great start for our new school year.”
