A Personal Lesson in Patience

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Donna Wright was 30, had two young children and was planning to enter law school when her life took a sudden turn. A friend asked her to put her undergraduate education degree to work by filling in for a pregnant high school math teacher near Knoxville, Tenn.

Wright agreed, and it changed her life. It also laid the groundwork for the tenets that would guide her work for the next 34 years.

Wright, 64, is now superintendent of Wilson County Schools in Lebanon, Tenn., about 30 miles east of Nashville. The district is booming, with enrollment jumping more than 12 percent in the last two years, to more than 18,000 students.

She is busy overseeing a raft of major building projects — new elementary, middle and high schools, another elementary school to come in a few years and several building renovations. But she says her focus remains on children and creating the conditions in which all can learn.

She still harkens back to that first frightening foray into the math classroom. She had little background in math, so she depended on her husband to help her with the lessons she would teach the next day.

Wilson’s husband would get frustrated when she didn’t catch on. Wright learned firsthand how students feel when they are trying to learn despite gaping holes in their knowledge.

“It was one of those things that really profoundly changed how I thought, not only about how kids learn, but how important instruction is,” she says.

To this day, the superintendent queries young teachers, “Have you ever had difficulty learning something? How did it make you feel?”

After eight years of teaching, she rose to assistant principal and then principal of the struggling West High School in Knoxville. One of the first things she did there was learn the names of all 630 students.

“Just to be known, just to be understood, recognizing that they might be different, they might have struggles,” she says. “When you create that community of caring from the top, you change that building.”

Meanwhile, she studied highly successful schools elsewhere and took a team to Adlai Stevenson High School outside of Chicago, where Richard DuFour had recently been principal.

“The thing that everyone zeroed in on was a system of support that was invented in that school for every student,” she says. “There was no way for a student to slip through the cracks.”

Wright spent 30 years in the Knox County Schools, the final eight as assistant superintendent. She accepted the leadership of the Williamson County Schools in Franklin, Tenn., in 2012, and then moved with her husband to Wilson County, settling in the same county as their two grown children. Two years later, she was named 2016 Superintendent of the Year by the Professional Educators of Tennessee.

Mickey Hall, Wilson County’s deputy director of schools, says Wright brought in a huge breath of fresh air with her transparency and communication.

But he adds Wright does not tolerate adults who do not work hard to understand what each child needs. Wright agrees. “I have to remind them that you’re insulted that this kid fell asleep in your class, but you didn’t ask her why she was exhausted,” she says.

“Everybody has a story,” Wright adds, “and I want to know your story.”