City Spotlight | Effingham | Season 3 | Episode 16

Rameen: Coming up on City Spotlight, the focus is on Effingham Schools with the superintendent of Effingham School's Mark Doan.

We'll talk about the Effingham Regional Academy and where that's going with future planning.

We'll also talk about growth with the CEO program at Effingham High School.

We'll end the program with a feature on award-winning teacher from Effingham High School, Joe Fatheree.

That's all next on City Spotlight.

[music plays]City Spotlight is supported by Consolidated Communications.

CCI is honored to salute the cities and their leaders in the area, as well as providing TV, Internet, and phone service for the local homes and businesses.

We live where we work, and are proud to support the communities we serve.

More information available at consolidated.com.

And welcome to another addition of City Spotlight.

Today we are focusing on Effingham.

Effingham schools in particular.

Welcoming first time to the studio, Mark Doan, superintendent of Effingham schools.

Mark: Thank you very much.

Rameen: We actually had Mark on last year, February or so, and we were at Effingham High School talking to you there as well as Joe Fatheree.

We'll talk to Joe, obviously, later in the program.

Mark, welcome to our studio.

Thank you for taking the time to be here.

Mark: Well, it brings back memories of coming back on to campus and being back in Buzzard Hall.

We were talking earlier, it's been a few years since I've been here.

Got two degrees from here.

The place has changed.

People have changed, but it's always great to get back to EIU.

Rameen: Thank you for coming up from Effingham.

We have a couple things we want to talk about.

Really excited to share some information with the folks at home about the Effingham Regional Academy.

This is something that's been in the works.

I think the one thing that you said, Mark, you're ready to do this.

Tell us what it's all about.

Mark: Well, a consortium of groups of individuals and groups have come together, it's a collaboration between Lakeland College, K12 schools in Effingham, and the chamber of commerce business community in Effingham County and the region.

We have an area that manufacturing and business is growing, but we don't have a place where we can train our students to become, at least K12 students, ready to become workers in the workforce immediately after school.

Each of the school districts try to do that, but it's very difficult with the budget constraints and teaching constraints to try to meet that need.

Along with that, the what we call incumbent workers, those who have lost jobs who are in transition who don't have positions, there are business in our area that need workers.

We started with that discussion almost three years ago, how are we going to address this and help our business community and our communities thrive?

Out of that has come the Effingham Regional Career Academy and that's really kind of moving forward.

It's been a year and a half or so of meetings and planning and we're making those first steps.

Rameen: Think you just answered the question.

A lot of people will benefit from this, not just youth, but you mentioned unemployed workers, displaced workers, veterans obviously.

Why is it needed in Effingham County?

Mark: Well, as I mentioned earlier the business community continues to grow and we're a regional hub now, our county is, and we have plans, city plans and county plans of trying to entice future employers, larger employers.

One of those key carats is a workforce that's prepared to work and skilled.

That is an area that always needs to be addressed, continue to be addressed and so that's kind of where that impetus came from along with the idea of how can we help our younger students, I.e., the high school students who many of them are not going to go to a four year institution and are ready to work right after high school.

How can we get them prepared to help some of our businesses in the area?

Rameen: A building, what's the process of you have a building that's gonna potentially or be built in the future?

Mark: Sure.

Long term plans would be, this is the only project on Lakeland colleges building plan.

It is on the state budget list, however we all know that that's up in the air at this point.

We understand and the plan is, if that and when that gets approved it'll be a 36 month turnover in regards to having that actual building.

Lakeland College, we already have Kluthe Center down there outside of Effingham and there will be a new 36,000 square feet building put right next to i, which would house this along with many other classrooms as well to meet the needs of the area and LLC students.

Rameen: Now, the building, something to be built down the road, but you told me about classes gonna be started next fall for this?

Mark: It's important that we're not going to wait.

We can't afford to wait for the state.

I think our county's been pretty proactive for many years on many topics and this is another one of those issues where we have a need now and so we're gonna start and we've started planning for the future short term.

In the fall of '17, next year, we're going to start three more classes.

We already have classes in our county that are shared.

The CEO class, the health occupations class, the C tech class, construction skills class.

Those are already in place and so we're expanding those.

Next year we plan on having a county wide class of manufacturing skills, which'll be open to any student in the county.

Also, we're looking at a welding class.

Both of those will be housed at Effingham high school.

The AG class will be one that maybe 40 students, Effingham students, would be able to go to other schools in the county if the seats are available.

We're not going to wait until we have a brick and mortar building.

We want to provide kids opportunities and so we're going to move forward with that.

Rameen: That's a really unique thing that you mentioned there, Mark, about the flexibility of students in other school districts within the county being able to go regardless if it's in their own home school or another, to be able to take advantage of whatever it is that could ... Mark: Sure, if they have an interest that Effingham High School can't offer and we can't offer.

In fact, two years ago we introduced manufacturing skills class at the expense of an auto class.

Our students don't have that opportunity.

If that opportunity is available in another school district then we should let our kids have that opportunity.

That's the basis of this whole process is to help kids get opportunities and so that's kind of where we're going with this and we're taking those first steps.

Like I said, we already have programs in place.

We want programs already in place so when there is a building there's a site to host them.

If that doesn't work out then we'll continue doing what we need to do.

Rameen: Something that's being worked on and continue to be worked on and hopefully the building gets built in a few years.

You said you have a lot of committees set up right now that are doing a lot of work.

Mark: Sure.

We have the overall governing board, which is quite a large committee, an executive committee.

We have a marketing committee, funding committee that wants to get moving forward but there's timelines to that.

There's an operations committee, curriculum and programing, workplace readiness committee.

There's quite a bit and a wide range of individuals from different groups, businesses, schools, higher education, chambers, city, county, that are all participating.

It's not one entity.

That's what makes this situation different than many across the state and sometimes across the country is that it's a true collaboration of different groups working together for the betterment of their area and our students.

Rameen: I think to wrap up our comments here about the academy, it'd be a model that other people can look to Effingham towards down the road.

Mark: Sure.

We try to share whatever we can through health occupation, CEO, C tech, any of those programs we would be happy to share and try to mentor other groups because what's good for Effingham and Effingham County is good for our area and should be good for everyone.

In fact, down the road, this is a regional career academy.

The idea is it's not just Effingham County down the road.

This is for the region.

We have to take smaller steps, get established, and get those plans in place, then hopefully we can expand that more.

Rameen: Very exciting.

Can't wait to see what it will develop to and look forward to it opening with a new building down the road.

You've mentioned a couple times the CEO program and we've talked about it here on City Spotlight on Effingham episodes.

One of our most recent City Spotlight episodes was on Shelbyville.

They're getting the CEO program started over there in Shelby County and superintendent of schools there, Denise Bence said she came to Effingham to see how it works, to get it started there in Shelbyville and Shelby County.

It's something that you've had going on there in Effingham and you said it's just exploding nationwide.

This is a great program.

Mark: In a transition right now in regards to, as we talked a little bit earlier, looking for a new facilitator for next year.

Just two years ago expended in Effingham County from one section to two because of interest.

That process opened so many doors to students that we hope will come back and stay in Effingham County and help the business community there and become productive citizens, which we know they will be.

I believe it's in eight to ten states already and it continues to grow, but I think not only Shelbyville but also in Douglas County I think is looking at starting another one.

I'm sure there are many others that I'm not aware of.

It's again, based on student opportunities and that's what's good, but it also helps local areas.

When I say areas, cities and counties.

It's very exciting that it started in Effingham and continues to grow.

We want to support it and we'll help, and our whole area wants to support the growth of that program.

Rameen: As I learned recently on the Shelbyville episode, great opportunities for students to go to businesses and there seems to be new businesses blossoming in Effingham almost daily.

What feedback have you heard from the businesses that have been able to have some of these students come into their workplace and learn about those skills?

Mark: Let's be clear, as a business owner, wanting to reach out to those future employees is a great opportunity.

For those employees to be skilled at such a young age, many of these are college bound students, which is great.

Some may not.

The fact is a majority will be.

The idea is to identify those individuals to be a part of a winning group or winning business.

There's also a mentoring program that goes along with that and as we all know and as I've heard, the mentors get as much as the mentees.

Being able to share, how much they wish they would have had that when they were starting out in their professional career.

We're really helping giving those students a leg up against competition from other students and other people for those positions and that's whatever we can do to help, again, with the long term.

Hopefully they can come back and help support our area.

Rameen: We've touched upon two programs, two things that are going to benefit students and learning skills, working with local businesses.

Last thing I want to talk about here mark, with just a couple minutes left, is the teacher leadership development and this is helping teachers put them in leadership role positions.

Mark: Unit 40, Effingham, we've undertaken a goal of trying to help support leadership of our teachers.

With the situation the educations in now, budgetary and time and commitments and the evaluation systems and things like that, it's just we've put in our profession teachers in leadership roles without support.

What we want to try to do is to make sure that they get the support they need to be successful.

We are a family, we can't get things done, they can't get things done in the classroom without administrative support and administrators can't get things done without teachers support.

It's all for the basis of the students, correct?

We have to work together, we need to provide them skills and help and support.

Sometimes that's just time to be successful.

We're trying to address that a couple ways.

One is through just those that are already on committee structures, how to work with adults, adult learning theory.

What are some ways to handle meetings?

Some discourse, how do you come to consensus?

Just really building confidence as well.

That they are vital aspect of our school district.

The other side about the innovation group where we try to bring some of those strategies that we have in Joe Fatheree's class and some of our other teachers already had those skills going on and strategies in their class, but how do we branch that out and give them the support and confidence to expand those strategies into their classroom?

Our goal is to not only get it in the high school, but also throughout our school district because in the end it helps students and that's our goal.

Rameen: As you mentioned throughout in our previous discussions before we started taping, all these things we've talked about are about providing opportunities for students.

Mark: That's the reason I got into education and I believe all of our educators got into our profession for that reason.

It's important that we continue to keep that at the forefront because decisions, even tough decisions become much easier when the true reason for making decisions is known.

That's for the betterment of the students, providing opportunities, because as parents, educators, citizens we need to help students succeed.

Rameen: A lot going on here with Effingham schools.

Superintendent of Effingham schools, Mark Doan, thank you for taking the time to be on City Spotlight.

Mark: Certainly appreciate it.

Rameen: Thank you so much.

Coming up next here on City Spotlight we'll have a feature on Effingham High School teacher, Joe Fatheree.

First, let's take a look at some of the upcoming activities going on in Effingham.

[music plays] Joe: I'm really fortunate, I have some of the most creative kids in the country that I get to work with every day and so we put together a selection of artifacts of their work and it doesn't take anyone a lot of time to sit down and look at just the creativity and innovation they had and it usually catches people eyes really very quickly.

We've done everything from 3D printing an Iron Man mask and being able to do an intensive paint job on it.

Being able to do a lot of silhouette work for Veterans Day where we filmed a tribute for that.

Films on a wide array of different topics from documentaries to fictional pieces that they wrote.

We always put a compilation together every year of those top pieces and showcase that.

They're head turners and I'm really proud of what the kids do in here every day.

I think the biggest thing is, we don't really worry about the technology.

You can be creative with a cardboard box and if you go to a third world nation, you can go and see kids are making incredible things just out of trash.

We'll be doing some lessons on that later in the year where they're going to be challenged to do those things.

We start with the kernel of an idea and how do they flesh that idea out and so when we take that idea and start looking at the different processes, then they get to choose the medium.

We're fortunate that we have everything from 3D printers to drones to digital camera.

We use high end editing equipment.

Those are the pieces that they have available, but I'm much more interested in whatever they choose, what's the story behind the artifact that you're getting ready to produce.

I feel like if they can produce a quality story out of it, it really doesn't matter what the medium is.

We try to challenge people, too, to think outside the box so if you're wanting to do it initially in a film, how would that span over to book.

It'll be like in a podcast.

What would it be if we made a 3D object like that and really force them to start thinking out of the box how those ideas can transfer from medium to medium.

It may be a student here may not get to go on and have a career in filmmaking, but maybe they go into biomedical research and it's a student who has got somewhat of a solution here but if they do two or three iterations of it maybe that becomes a cure for cancer or maybe it is a new type of fuel that takes us from 40 miles a gallon to 100 miles a gallon.

Trying to help them really think outside of the box how things apply to scale.

Chris: He's helped me through so much and to be in this class is an awesome opportunity.

Actually, to build a relationship with him.

It's just interesting to me in general to make movies.

I enjoy it a lot.

One of the main points that brought me back was Mr. Fatheree because he taught me so well and to have a teacher like that to help you along with this kind of class it's just, what else could you ask for?

Before we started the project that we're doing now, we had two prior projects and it was shorter than this one that we're doing now.

We were pretty much learning the angles of the camera.

We were learning how to use cameras.

We were learning how to operate in front of the camera and just all the technical stuff that you have to do with movies.

Now that we have that down we're gonna try and put it into a bigger project and show what we've learned.

Joe: The most important thing I think a classroom teacher does is create a culture.

We can have learning standards, we can have all the instructional materials sand all of those things, but if you haven't created a culture that promotes students to overcome failure, that lets them develop confidence in things; to me those things are meaningless.

The student is always going to be afraid to take one step forward because there could be failure there.

That may stop them in every classroom they've got, outside of the classroom, life, and so to me that most important thing is culture.

Secondly, is we look at the kids, I want them to be global ready.

When I was a student I didn't worry about what kids in other parts of the world were doing.

Today, we have a global society where are jobs are going overseas.

These kids go home every night and they're communicating with people around the world.

They have to have the skill to know how to be able to work with those individuals, they have to have the ability to take the knowledge they've got today and to be able to apply it across maybe five or ten different jobs during the course of their careers.

For myself, when I first came out of high school your job was kinda like this, it was linear.

Today for these kids it's all over the place.

They have to have that ability to be able to move and do things.

They also have to have the ability to have confidence in their self and what they can do.

Not extreme confidence where it's arrogance, but confidence in their ability to do things.

We try to teach them to be confident in themselves, to be able to learn how to promote themselves, to learn how to have empathy for others, and those are a lot of things that used to happen in our culture because I believe it takes a village to raise a family, but the villages have changed a lot and a lot of our students don't have those things.

We really, one of the most important things we build in here is family.

We work really, really hard at it and helping them learn to respect those around them.

Like I said, it doesn't take a lot of effort to walk around in this classroom and see that those students do that everyday.

Anna: It is absolutely inspiring.

Within the first three days of the class all he talked about was how he is going to impact my life and I was just blown away by all of the things that I was going to learn, all the things that I have learned, all of the things that I was so excited to learn about.

I was just mind blown and it's been an amazing experience having him as a teacher.

This is multimedia 1.

There are some multimedia 2 students in here.

Basically, we learn about the filming process.

We are currently studying on how to tell a story.

It's been an experience for sure.

We've done a lot of fun little short films.

He's given us a prompt, about two class hours to work on it and it's turned out amazing both times.

He's been a big help in the process.

He talks about how he went to Dubai last spring and hung out with Matthew McConaughey all night and just all of the big things that he does just really shows me how amazing life can be, how big I can dream and how far those dreams can take me if I put in the effort and put in the work.

Joe: For our students to be able to have positions of employment, they're going to have to learn how to create and innovate.

What we work really, really hard on it challenging students to take that kernel of an idea they've got in their mind and how do you take that all the way through where you develop product and have them hold it in their hands?

I've got a student in my class right now who's building costume and props for his film.

I love that.

I love seeing him come in everyday and just building this stuff and I love seeing it come in and seeing it not right because life isn't always right.

I love the persistence we've got.

In the other room I've got a group in there that's doing stop motion animation.

Somebody watching this could say, "Well, they're probably not going to be a filmmaker."

They may not be, but what they're learning in collaboration and project management and budgeting and how to overcome failure, those are life skills, those are career competency skills, they can be used at any job in the world.

I believe that you can take innovation and you can put it in any classroom on the planet and it will help the kids grow.

Some of our most innovative students in the world are kindergarten kids.

We use this example in here a lot that if you put a dot on that board over there for a five year old and you ask him what it is, it's a fly on the wall.

It's a polar bears nose in a snow storm.

It's an asteroid about to wipe the earth out.

By the time they get to high school, or even worse, my age, it's a dot on the wall.

Everybody's afraid to raise their hand.

What we want these kids to do is to look to see the potential in that dot and where it can go because it could become a million different things.

Speaker 1: If you had one word to describe Mr. Fatheree, what word would that be?

Chris: Inspirational.

Speaker 1: If you had to choose one word that described Mr. Fatheree, what word would you choose?

Anna: Amazing.

Just amazing.

He is probably the most interesting person to talk to.

He has such an outgoing personality.

He's so down to earth and humble and I feel like all of those in one word is amazing.

Joe: If you spend anytime in my classroom, it's my kids.

It's why I come back every year without a doubt.

I have a lot of opportunity outside the classroom.

I work and I consult in a lot of different areas around the world now, but I love the fact that I can be here everyday with some of the most creative minds on the earth and they're fearless.

They get out here and they really push the envelope on things.

It keeps me young, it makes me think about things when I go outside of the classroom and I'm working either on policy pieces, or I'm doing consulting work for a company that they're struggling with failure and success everyday.

I run into the same things.

It gives me, I guess, the vitamin shot that I need to be able to continue the work in the other arenas.

I just like being around kids and I like having the opportunity to open doors for them that I didn't have.

I really believe that, and I tell this story a lot, I think there's a kid somewhere in the United States that has the cure for cancer locked away in his or her mind and they're just waiting for a teacher to come in and help do a couple of things that will help them see it's okay to overcome failure and then all of a sudden they develop a new vaccine or a drug to stop that horrific disease.

It's our job as educators to be facilitators of that knowledge, but it's also our job to create a culture where they can fly and they can do and find success.

Rameen:City Spotlight is supported by Consolidated Communications.

CCI is honored to salute the cities and their leaders in the area, as well as providing TV, Internet, and phone service for the local homes and businesses.

We live where we work, and are proud to support the communities we serve.

More information available at consolidated.com.

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