AASA's Mentors Making a Mark

Executive Perspective

I became a superintendent at the tender age of 32. I applied for the job not because I aspired to be a superintendent but rather to maintain the position I held as assistant superintendent for pupil services.

I had just been hired for the latter position when the superintendent who hired me was dismissed. I applied for the job because I knew that the board of education would grant me a courtesy interview as an internal candidate, and I just wanted them to know who I was. To my surprise, the board offered me the job.

What to do? I hardly had any experience as an assistant. Fortunately, the senior superintendent in our region offered to be my mentor. His counsel and advice helped me through those early years and gave me the foundation to serve for 27 years as a superintendent.

Experienced Counsel

AASA’s Leadership Network offers several programs that include mentoring of the participants. Our mentors are all experienced superintendents, most of them still on the job, while others are now university professors. The program participants speak highly of the mentoring experience and frequently express their gratitude for the support they receive from their mentors.

One of our mentors is Maria Ott, who teaches courses on leadership and organizational change at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education. She offers an online course titled “Challenges in Urban Education: Leadership” that’s taken by students from across the United States and the rest of the world. We are fortunate to have Maria and Rossier as partners in AASA’s Urban Superintendents Academy.

Maria had been an administrator in the Los Angeles school system before taking on her first superintendency with the Little Lake City Schools, located southeast of Los Angeles. Some years later, Colorado’s former governor, Roy Romer, took the top job in L.A. and asked Maria to join his leadership team. The city’s current superintendent, Austin Beutner, asked Maria recently to support leadership development in the district. Two superintendents without an education background were savvy enough to approach a seasoned educator for leadership advice.

Maria believes the power of good mentoring lies in the relationship developed with those who look forward to your advice. It is not about telling the mentee what to do but rather helping them to decide. She likes to ask clarifying questions and then provide feedback. Sometimes the mentee is frustrated by a challenge so she will gently ask probing questions that eventually lead to a solution.

Maria says she likes to work with women who have plateaued in their positions but are reluctant to take the next step. They tend to see barriers they are not confident in overcoming. Maria points out the strengths she sees in them that they do not see in themselves. That is a personal lesson she learned from a mentor who, she quips, “pushed me off the cliff” and helped her gain her first superintendency.

Maria also works with Hispanic leaders, an underrepresented class in the superintendency, and serves on the board of the Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents.

Distinctive Know-how

Keith Ballard, a professor in the education leadership and policy studies department at the University of Oklahoma, spent 21 years as a superintendent. The experience he brings to AASA’s training program is unique in that for seven years he was the executive director of the Oklahoma State School Boards Association. He left the association to return to the superintendency in Tulsa.

Keith has worked both sides of the street, making him an effective mentor for AASA since we began our national certification programs for superintendents.

An avid reader, he loves to share articles with his mentees. Occasionally, a graduate student at the university will submit an outstanding paper and Keith will share that as well. He always makes himself available to his mentees and encourages them to call when they have questions or an issue needing attention.

Because of Keith’s experience with school boards, he can be especially helpful in facilitating problems that arise between the superintendent and their board members. He also enjoys making site visits to his mentees’ districts because it allows him to experience firsthand the problems facing the superintendent. Sitting in on school board meetings gives him a significant feel for the relations between board and superintendent. It is important, he says, for the superintendent and board members to understand their respective roles.

In our programs, the mentor is the superintendent’s best friend.