She came out of her office with purpose, like the CEO of a tech company with mountainous goals on her mind and 75 tasks to check off by the end of the day. Her hair is Posh Beckham hip as is her paisley top and tan slacks. Not at all the dusty principal of once upon a time you've come to expect.For the last seven months Heather Swanson had been interim principal at Catharine Blaine Middle School, and for about a year before that, she'd been assistant principal. But last week, after several days of grueling interviews and tests, she was selected as the school's newest principal.She faced a rigorous Seattle Public Schools interview process, a run up one might think reserved for a executive position in the private sector, but Swanson swam through it. She had to go through a paper screening, drive downtown to the John Stanford Center for a panel interview conducted by fellow principals; perform a learning walk, which is watching a teacher teach and then writing feedback; write a letter to the community and staff announcing the hypothetical grand opening of a new school over which she would preside; be interviewed by a team of teachers and parents at Blaine; go through a second learning walk at Blaine followed by a final interview with Superintendent Maria L. Goodloe-Johnson.The steps were grueling by anyone's standards, but Swanson streamed through each, bettering two other candidates and joking afterward that she wasn't "too bruised" from jumping through so many hoops."That interview was great," she said coolly of her final discussion with Goodloe-Johnson. "She had come out and visited before so she was aware of the work we're doing here, so the conversation was a bit different than if she didn't know who I was."Swanson makes sure to say hello to students and teachers as she walks through the school hallways. She knows their names and they know hers. Last week as she entered one of the school's three kindergarten classes, one of the students, her arm in a sling, ran up and gave her a genuine hug and smile. A flattered Swanson thanked her by her first name and returned the hug.The principal then sat down in a kid-size chair and listened while students talked about their fanciful, matter-of-fact and heartfelt stories and drawings done each day as part a yearlong writing development program newly instituted at the school and applied at all class levels.The writing project is important to Swanson, having spent the last year overseeing its progress. Blaine was one of the few schools in SPS chosen to apply the lessons developed from Teachers College of Columbia University of New York, the biggest premise of which is to have kids writing every day - their teachers, too. Educators from TOPS at Eastlake had paid Swanson and sand facilitator Amy Griffin a visit last week to learn about the program and eventually administer it. Blaine PTA President Monica Scheiber is thrilled about the program, too."It's been an amazing unity tool," she said, as it is a common denominator among all students. And there are other initiatives that Swanson had invested in that contributed to her deep desire to stay at Blaine: Everyday Math, the well-being of staff and Data Team in which teachers write their goals for the year and pin them to the wall outside the main office for all to see."When I was a teacher, you'd write goals, they'd go in a drawer and you didn't look at them again," Swanson said with a smile. "So this is a far more authentic way of teachers being accountable to each other and the kids." Data Team goals are updated and reviewed every month.Everyday Math is a new program implemented for kindergarten through fifth grade district wide. It's Goodloe-Johnson's effort to build uniformity among the schools in her district.And then there's making sure the staff is happy. As principal, she becomes the referee between management and teachers. Not an easy job considering she's management. So she has worked to smash that barrier and rebuild the relationship through informal get-togethers, barbecues and at the end of last year, a contest called Step It up, where teachers wore pedometers for a week."They really got into it," she said. "Some teachers were jumping up and down while they taught." The contest was done in stages and winners of each stage would get to wear a yellow jersey in class, a la Tour de France. An unintended consequence of the contest was seeing more teachers outside during recess and getting even more involved with students.Swanson had invested her time and effort into all of this. She wanted to make "a good school" like Blaine "really great." She gained a heavy dose of perspective on a trip to Africa last summer where she visited schools in Kenya and Tanzania. The conditions in classrooms there were tough, roughly 50 students per teacher at the third-grade level she saw. And yet, they muddle through, where here in the states, school systems are failing kids. So she wanted to do her part to get American kids performing at "really high levels."Swanson was confident that going into the application process for principal at Blaine, she'd be a front-runner. Yet had she been asked to oversee another school while a new person step in at Blaine, that would have broken her heart and forced her to rethink her next chess move. Would she move to New York City and join her sister in her graphic design endeavors? Or maybe scoop up her sister and take a trip to another country. In her cornflower-walled office, on the edge of her paper covered desk stood a red-framed picture of her and her sister waving from beneath the Eiffel Tower. "There's always fantasies about going somewhere else," Swanson said. "What I was worried about was being asked to go to a different school. They could have taken Candidate A and move me, you never know the behind-the-scenes stuff. But I think there would have been a lot of public outcry. People are really happy with what's gone on this year and they would have been disappointed."So Paris will wait and so will New York City. The night after human resources informed her that she would be the permanent principal, Swanson met with friends in Belltown for dinner and drinks at Marco's Supper Club, marking the new chapter of her career.[[In-content Ad]]
