Matt Coleman
Director of Secondary Education for Springfield School District
Fresh from his University of Oregon graduation and in need of income while on a waitlist for medical school, Matt Coleman spent seven months as an educational assistant with special needs students in Springfield. This experience made him question whether medicine was really his path. Having spent his entire life in Oregon as the son of a ministerial family, Matt decided it was time to break out of his sense of isolation and have an adventure. He applied to Teach for America and was accepted.
After a two-month induction, Matt began teaching science in California at Oakland High School, part of the Los Angeles unified district. Given an emergency license, he taught during the day and took night classes so he could become a licensed teacher. “I’m an abstract-random thinker,” Matt says, “so being thrown in with Teach for America was good for me. It was a deep cultural experience.” Ninety-five percent of Matt’s students were African American.
“Even though there was a cultural gap, I had an open mind and I knew how to get along with folks: my family had prepared me to give unconditional love and to have an open heart. I was good with the kids; I’m not sure how good I was at teaching. Working with thirteen and fourteen year olds was a lot about survival. I could see the systems were dysfunctional; we had three principals in two years.”
Matt’s two-year adventure became the launching pad for a career in education. He spent four more years teaching in Beaverton, Oregon – two at Beaverton Middle School and two at Beaverton High School. His middle school principal pushed him to do an MAT and IAL at Lewis and Clark which he completed when he was teaching high school in 1999. At the time, there happened to be four vice principal positions open with only 36 applicants for all four. Matt threw his hat in the pool and was picked to be Vice Principal of Aloha High School. He feels he was selected because of his diversity of experience: two years urban, two years middle school and two years with high school at risk and TAG students. During his time at Aloha High School, the biggest thing he accomplished was being part of a team that led the school in a change from a semester to trimester block schedule.
In 2001, Matt began the University of Oregon’s doctoral (D.Ed.) and CAL program. After four years at Aloha, he was asked to become principal of Mountain View Middle School which was a feeder into Aloha – four hundred eighth graders went from Mountain View to Aloha. In his new role as Principal of Mountain View Middle School, Matt applied concepts and methods he was learning in the D.Ed. program. He focused on quality relationships, Positive Behavior Systems and literacy intervention.
After two years at Mountain View the principal position at Westview High School became open and he applied. He was selected from a pool of eight applicants. Some of Matt’s work during four years at Westview is described in the feature for this issue of admin update.
This July, Matt became director of secondary education for Springfield school district, returning to the site of his first teaching job. He made this career move for a couple of reasons. First, it provided an opportunity to work with Nancy Golden. Secondly, while doing his D.Ed. and working with Jerry Tindal on assessment and Bridgit Flannery on high school PBS, he realized that there was a distinct advantage in having connections to research. Having applied theory in a high school building, he found it appealing to be connected to research as a practitioner. He saw that in Springfield he would be able to put things in place for grades 6-12. Matt misses being high school principal, but he’s adjusting to his new role by reminding himself that it wasn’t easy going from vice principal to principal.
His current challenge is a double whammy: he’s both in a new position and in a new district. It’s harder than just changing schools. He has left established relationships in Beaverton where he was one of the more tenured administrators. Before he can make systemic change, he must build relationships in the Springfield district. That takes time. It will also take time for him to get his head around the difference between making systemic change from the building perspective to a district wide perspective.
“I’m trying to broaden the base of people knowing who I am and me knowing who they are. I’m attempting to build relationships around a content challenge that the district is calling the PBS reboot and it includes working with formative assessment. I’m guiding the development of building level expertise and linking into broader resources. We’re looking for persons who want to be Rob Horner for a particular school.”
The move has been great for his family. He and his wife like being in a small town where they can get anywhere in ten minutes as opposed to the 45 – 60 minutes it took in Beaverton. The four kids go to Edgewood and they love school. They live out in Fox Hollow where they enjoy seeing deer and turkeys.