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Dr. Sonia Matthew, NBCT - Assistant Principal - Charles County, Maryland - Teacher Appreciation Week
342 Plays7 months ago
This Teacher Appreciation Week, tune in for an inspiring conversation with Dr. Sonia Matthew, a National Board Certified Teacher and assistant principal. Drawing from her experience as an accomplished educator and instructional leader, Dr. Matthew will provide invaluable insights into fostering positive teacher morale. Learn her proven strategies for creating a supportive environment where teachers feel empowered, valued, and motivated to have maximum impact in the classroom.
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Transcript
Honoring Teachers: Insights from an Administrator
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of National Board of Conversations. We've got a very special episode for you. It's Teacher Appreciation Week, so we wanted to bring on an administrator to talk about how she shows love to her teachers and their hard work. Asking what you're needing and make it happen. So I would say just giving them that time and respect, you know, respect and honor for just the great work that they do every day.
00:00:37
Speaker
Dr. Sonya Mathew is a National Board Certified Assistant Principal in Charles County, Maryland. Dr. Mathew brings a lot of energy and drops some gems on how the show teaches love from an administrator role. So be sure to take notes. I won't keep you any longer. Here's my conversation with Dr. Sonya Mathew.
The Role of Appreciation in Education
00:00:55
Speaker
Dr. Sonya Mathew, thank you for joining me on the podcast. Great to be here. Thank you for having me. How you doing today?
00:01:02
Speaker
I'm doing great. Thank you. All right. Well, so we're going to get right into it. We got Teacher Appreciation Week coming up, and I thought it would be cool to have someone in administration on the podcast to show a little love to the teachers in the classroom doing work on the front lines with their students, even not trying to diminish the work environment because you guys do a lot of heavy lifting too. But just want to show teachers a little love. But before we get into that, can we get a presentation of yourself, give you a current role and a little bit of how you got here?
00:01:29
Speaker
Yes, of course, Eddie, first of all, teachers are the ones who do the most, I feel, even though our work is hard, their work is harder. That's how I feel. I am currently an assistant principal in Charles County, Maryland, Southern Maryland, and I've been an assistant principal now for three years. The first two years we're in a middle school. Okay, so now we're gonna get into a little bit of personal side of you. What are your three favorite foods?
00:01:57
Speaker
Oh my gosh, I love almond butter and dates. So that's my first one. I don't know why I have this because I'm trying to be healthy and it's healthy, but it's still really sweet. So if you eat too much of it, if you eat too much of these dates, it's not good. I love Indian food, anything that is, you know, curries, anything spicy. Love to eat Indian Thai food.
00:02:26
Speaker
Love to experience all different types of food, but definitely has to have flavor.
Getting to Know Dr. Sonya Mathew
00:02:32
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Last three songs on your musical playlist. Oh my gosh. Okay. So last three songs. So there's a reggae song. Okay. So you got me on this because I was not expecting these questions.
00:02:53
Speaker
So I'll just say a reggae compilation. I love reggae and calypso, anything that can take me back to tropical kind of vibe. So that's what I was listening to. I can't give you a specific title. And I do listen to a lot of praise and worship music. So I would say the last song this morning was a reggae soca compilation, but I also had
00:03:19
Speaker
I listen to a gospel track as well. Diversified and just go with the flow when it comes to music and food. Let's just say it like that. If good was a genre, you'd be listening to it. Vibes only. Yes, sir. Yes.
00:03:44
Speaker
All right, so the one sports team that has your heart, and if you're not a sports fan, one movie you can recite line for line. Oh my gosh, these are crazy questions. New York Giants, and I am a sports fan. Football is awesome, and I learned a lot about football through my son, who's a quarterback. Okay, last one, and then we're going to get into your teaching career. Okay. You just want to make sure you sound like a little human. Oh my gosh. Use your favorite fictional TV movie or book teacher.
00:04:14
Speaker
I don't know the title of the book, but it's a, oh, wait, what is it? The movie. Oh my gosh, this is so hard. I can't even sing at the end of the day. Oh my gosh. Let me just go with lead on me. Even though the principal, I think it was Mr. Carter, he's not actually, he's actually a principal, but he's still an educator.
00:04:40
Speaker
So I just, you know, I like that movie. I think it had, I think the tough love and discipline has a place, you know, even now, even today, you know, there's parts of, you know, I'm not a complete disciplinarian like he is, but I definitely think that we have that. I think I'm a tough love type of administrator and teacher, so I'll go with that.
00:05:04
Speaker
All right. Love to hear it. All right. Now we're going to dig into your career a little bit. Get away from the crazy question. Oh my gosh. Yes. Can you share why you became an educator and remained in education?
Inspiration and Empathy in Education
00:05:14
Speaker
Absolutely. So I grew up in Canada. My parents are immigrants. So they came from India. They had to kind of struggle through life. And I really didn't have a lot of
00:05:30
Speaker
you know, understanding of just how, you know, growing up as a kid and just trying to navigate life. And it was the, it was really the teachers who kind of stood in the gap for me. And so I, you know, really, truly want to be that impact for kids because I didn't necessarily have the role models that I would have liked.
00:05:57
Speaker
So what were you like as a student and how did that influence your style as an administrator and a classroom teacher?
00:06:04
Speaker
So as a student, always been very, very curious. Um, and so that got me in trouble a lot. So even with, uh, and that's why I can relate to our students who I think, you know, sometimes are misunderstood. It's not necessarily that they're not, um, you know, bad kids or what have you. It's just really understanding where they're saying, you know, where, you know, how they think and how they learn and what makes them tick.
00:06:29
Speaker
So I was definitely a very outside the box, creative thinker. And so did you have a second part of that question? Yeah. How did that influence your style as an admin and as a classroom teacher? So I think that empathy piece, just really being able to understand that kids are not all the same. We're all, you know, we're human and we have so many different
00:06:57
Speaker
layers to us, you know, and so I think that empathy is really what keeps me going in this work.
The Journey to National Board Certification
00:07:07
Speaker
So not only are you an administrator, you're also a national board, you're also national board certified. You did that while you were in the classroom. What put you to pursue and what was your journey like?
00:07:18
Speaker
Well, it was a leader of mine, a school principal I had at the time, who is really a principal who is a learner. So she encouraged me just through the way she led. And that was constantly asking questions, constantly trying to understand how can we make instruction better for students.
00:07:41
Speaker
Being around that type of mindset, it not only improved my craft, but it also encouraged me. And then she would put me in situations where I would have to help teachers. So with those opportunities, I wanted to make sure that I was the absolute best at my craft.
00:08:06
Speaker
And I had that seal of approval or that badge of honor if you will. And so she encouraged me to pursue national board certification. I think a leader has so much influence if they're truly leading with that desire to help their teachers grow and to create that type of impact.
00:08:30
Speaker
And so she did that for me. And the process was, it was, oh my gosh, it was long, let's say that. But I have to mention, so I had five years to complete everything. I was almost not going to complete it because of the standardized assessment component that I had to take and I wasn't successful. I'm more of a,
00:08:59
Speaker
um you know a qualitative person i love to write i love to dig deep and so when going back to how i was as a kid so i really felt stifled you know taking that multiple choice exam um but then i learned that that component really wasn't that heavily weighted
00:09:16
Speaker
So it was a mentor who actually spent some time with me and explained this is how the weight system works and you don't necessarily need to take the exam. But if I did not take the exam, which I took a think twice, I would have to do a component over. And I was very discouraged, but I only had that one year left. But again, just like my principal, she encouraged me
00:09:46
Speaker
She believed in me, and she supported me. So I went ahead and did that last component, and I knocked that one out the car. I was, OK, this is exactly what I should have been focusing on, other than spending so much time trying to just do the test and get it done with. So we really have to be sensitive to the weighting of the different components.
00:10:14
Speaker
And just as a practitioner, the type of writing for National Board, once you go through that process, it really does keep you very clear, concise, compelling in your writing. So it was definitely a great learning in so many ways. Yeah, it sounds like you learned a lot. And it sounds like your support system was really imperative and important to you.
00:10:43
Speaker
getting to that final step.
00:10:45
Speaker
Absolutely. And that support system is vital, even in my role as an assistant principal. Teaching was hard. So we started off when you said that, hey, teachers work hard, administrators work hard. I always, always believe that the job of an educator is by far the most difficult, especially when we do it effectively. And we're actually teaching our individual students how they best learn. We're assessing them.
00:11:14
Speaker
you know, constantly just, you know, it's just so much, it takes so much out of us. And we're dealing with, you know, their families and dealing with, you know, just so many things. And so
00:11:26
Speaker
You know, as a school leader, I always told myself, you know, I don't want to ever forget how it feels like to be in the classroom. And then going back to that support system, I'm able to really internalize what that feels like because I needed it. Just like as a child, I needed that teacher. As a teacher,
00:11:52
Speaker
I know that we need, teachers need that support system. So, you know, it's critical that I'm there to provide that support like others have done for me. So you were touching on that there a little bit on a second. How does having your national board certification give you a bit of a deeper understanding of what classroom teachers need regarding support and recognition?
Changing the Narrative: Teaching and Certification
00:12:21
Speaker
I think we saw the narrative.
00:12:24
Speaker
many times you know just in anything we hear the negativity right we hear about like just how how hard how how teachers have it's so hard um and we do hear that teachers work hard but what does that look like you know is it is it that they're dealing is it you know they're dealing with behavior is it that they're dealing with the fact that you know students don't want to learn like there's just so many places we can put the i guess the
00:12:52
Speaker
maybe like the blame, I guess, is it, you know, what is it? But I think if we go back to the practice and we think about, you know, what is quality instruction? What does that look like? You know, what are the standards say? What has the research told us? What is great evidence-based practice? When we go back to the practice and we put the, you know,
00:13:19
Speaker
you know, the focus on best practices and teaching, I think that shifts what the narrative, you know, can now become and we can really focus on what matters. And, you know, being a National Board Certified Teacher, you know, they
00:13:36
Speaker
It's a very, like I said earlier, it's a, you know, it's truly a badge of honor. So you do, you know, you do get that respect, you do get the opportunities, you do, you know, you are you people know, it's hard. So it's difficult. But once you get through it,
00:13:55
Speaker
you know, it's a great feeling. So I would say, you know, we have effective teachers everywhere and sometimes they don't themselves realize how great they are because of the narrative that might be out there. And that's going back to leadership, you know, it's important for us to encourage them, but to also
00:14:16
Speaker
help them understand that they're already doing great things and going through the process of national board certification is really what you're already doing. You're already creating great formative assessments based on your instruction, you're differentiating that instruction, you're making sure that your students are growing, you're collecting evidence of that, you're reflecting on your practice,
00:14:41
Speaker
So we're doing these great things anyways. We just have to be the types of school leaders and teacher leaders who are going to now encourage our colleagues to take part on the journey. That's awesome. That's awesome. So what are some meaningful ways that you appreciate and recognize teachers there at your school?
Methods to Appreciate Educators
00:15:09
Speaker
So I think the best way is just the gift of time and attention. So listening actively, I definitely leave little positive notes and I definitely do the little things of handy and stuff like that. But I have found just really taking the time to listen and to come up with
00:15:33
Speaker
together come up with those next steps. So whatever this teacher's need in the way of support, you know, tell me what you need. Let me actively listen. You know, let me show you that I'm going to follow through with what you're asking or what you're needing and make it happen. So I would say just giving them that time and and respect, you know, respect and honor for for just the great work that they do every day.
00:16:02
Speaker
Yeah, you can. I feel like some of the teacher friends that I talked to, they always ask about, they always say their free period is not really free. And giving them that little bit of extra, like being able to actually have a planned in period will be nice. Absolutely. And I think, you know, just as like, you know, that emotional intelligence, understanding like, hey, these are humans, like these are people working hard, and they have their own
00:16:26
Speaker
you know, everyone has their own things they're dealing with. And you got to come into a classroom with like 30 kids, in my case, little, like little ones that can be, you know, a lot. Right. So we know that empathy again, like we got to understand what they're dealing with. And we got to feel that. And again, if you forget, you know, and if you forget that as an administrator, you know, that's not, you know, that may not be the best.
00:16:52
Speaker
you know the best outlook it's you know take you know go back and reflect and just kind of put yourself in their shoes again because um you know it's definitely it's the patience that you have to have you know and the intentionality that you need to have to just be the best that you can for your um you know for your kids and so um it's definitely a lot so
00:17:18
Speaker
So along those lines, what advice would you give to administrators to trying to build trusting relationships with teachers?
00:17:25
Speaker
Yeah, so I would tell administrators just, you know, again, put yourself in their shoes, you know, spend time in those classrooms. If you're not, maybe if you can't sometimes because it's so busy and we're, you know, sometimes putting out a lot of fires, just build that time in your schedule to go back into the classroom more often if you're not in those classrooms. And if you are, just
00:17:51
Speaker
take that time to listen to teachers and provide them with that support that they need. A couple more questions and then we'll get you out of it. If you had to sell the education profession to someone looking to get into it in one to two minutes, what would you use as your elevator pitch?
00:18:15
Speaker
Oh, gosh.
The Impact and Rewards of Teaching
00:18:18
Speaker
We need the right people in this work. You have to have a heart for it. So I would tell them, hey, you know what? The rewards are endless. You have the opportunity to plant seeds. I've been in the public education space for 26 years. And I have kids who come back to me like who are whole adults with kids of their own. I just had a...
00:18:43
Speaker
conversation with a student of mine that I had 15 years ago in the fifth grade. He is now, whatever the math is, in his 20s. But let me tell you, he was about to sign pro NFL. He was, oh my gosh, I remember him like it was yesterday. And he just actually, 2022, just got shot six times.
00:19:04
Speaker
due to mistaken identity, was about to sign with the NFL, and he's alive, he's got a new outlook on life, he's going around the country, motivating young people, and to know that he has come back to me
00:19:26
Speaker
and has given me my flowers you know just says a lot about just the power and influence of a teacher so planting those seeds that's the opportunity that you would have as a teacher and it's just it never is there's no price tag there's no you know payment there's no paycheck that could replace that
00:19:46
Speaker
So definitely a lot of great success stories. And so we have that opportunity to provide hope and really plant the seeds to so much success for our young people. All right.
00:20:05
Speaker
And we have a feature on the podcast called the shoulder tap. It was like when your principal's tapped you on the show, don't let you know you're ready to become national board certified. So on here, you'll give them a quick shout out and we'll encourage them to go through the process on social media. So Dr. Matthew, who are you shoulder tapping? Who am I shoulder tapping? Oh my gosh. On social media or anyone out there?
00:20:29
Speaker
OK, so my mentee, her name is Julia Coleman. She's out in Virginia Beach. She is a second year educator of special students with special needs out there. And she is amazing. And I am going to tap her right now. Go get that National Board Certification girl. Dr. Mathy, thank you for joining me on the podcast. This was fun. So fun. Thank you so much for having me.
00:20:57
Speaker
Dr. Matthew is a great character and brings so much insight and inspiration to the profession. Let me thank her again for taking the time to chat with me and thank you for listening to this episode of National Board Conversations. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, and we'll see you next time.