Still Applying Her Science Know-how

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GROWING UP in Mississippi, Gwendolyn Page Shannon, now superintendent of the Southampton County Public Schools in southeastern Virginia, thought of a career in education as a “just-in-case thing,” a reliable backup if her real passion didn’t pan out.

“My first love has always been science,” she says. “I always thought I would do medicine or science.”

She majored in microbiology in college with a minor in chemistry and took a job as a chemist in industry after graduation. But as a “people person,” she says, she found the chemical lab isolating. She tried substitute teaching during the day while working at night and took the National Teacher Examination. Within a year she was a full-time high school biology teacher.

Even so, Shannon continued working toward a science or medical career, earning a master’s in biology while teaching high schoolers. Before long, she concluded her backup plan was becoming her dream job.

“I realized the impact I was having on the lives of the children that I was interacting with and I loved it,” she says.

Shannon moved quickly to earn a master’s in educational leadership and then a Ph.D. At 32, she was appointed superintendent of the East Jasper School District in Heidelberg, Miss. Now, 45, she is in her fourth year as superintendent of the 2,800-student system in Southampton County, 50 miles west of Norfolk, Va.

Education was prized in Shannon’s hometown of Lula, a tiny farming community in the Mississippi Delta. Her mother was constantly studying as she pursued her nursing career but always made time to help her with homework. Because the school district didn’t offer busing for after-school programs, she often spent more than an hour ferrying Shannon and her friends across the sprawling district.

I realized the impact I was having on the lives of the children that I was interacting with and I loved it.

Southampton County is also a widespread rural district, and Shannon has made busing a key focus there. She has established a real-time ridership system through which parents can use an app to determine where their child’s bus is at any moment.

She is nothing if not hands-on. In her first superintendency, she responded to a spate of school shootings nationwide by taking a six-month police academy training course to learn more about building safety and police procedures. She earned certifications in CPR, emergency vehicle operation, firearms and taser fundamentals. As part of her training, she had to be tased, an experience she recalls as “very, very, very, very painful.”

Anthony Rawlings, a pastor and father of three students in the district, says Shannon’s work ethic and communication skills go beyond what he has seen in any other school leader. He marvels that during a snowstorm in 2018 that closed the district for seven days, she traveled to all six schools on three different occasions and streamed live videos so parents could see the conditions at each school.

School board chair Deborah Goodwyn points to the innovations Shannon has introduced. These include computer coding in kindergarten through 8th grade. “She researches ideas and is able to present them to the board in such a way that we can understand their significance,” Goodwyn says.

Coding instruction is optional in the high school, which also features a drone certification program, 3-D printing and virtual reality. While those offerings may reflect her love of science, she says she has no regrets about her ultimate choice of careers.

“I did not know that this was what I was called to do,” she says, “but once I heeded to the calling, I couldn’t see myself doing anything else.”