Interview with Bill Cecil - 2003-04 Teacher of the Year
Announcer: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education, a weekly show featuring interviews with community leaders, school administrators, school business officials, and individuals who are passionate about the future of Michigan Education. Now, here is your host for Inside Michigan Education, Rob Huisingh.
Rob Huisingh: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education, this week we are joined in the Foxbright Podcast Studio by Bill Cecil. Bill has taught for 22 years in the Waverly Community School District, he is the author of a book titled Best Year Ever - Winning Strategies to Thrive in Today's Classroom and in 2003-04, Bill represented all Michigan teachers as teacher of the year during that year. Welcome Bill, it is a pleasure to have you on our show.
Bill Cecil: Thanks for having me today Rob, it is nice to be here.
Rob Huisingh: Bill, I was hoping you to -- just take a few minutes to tell us a little bit about yourself.
Bill Cecil: I teach fifth grade in Lansing, Michigan, Waverly Community School District, I have been there my entire career and I teach fifth grade General Education, it is a great district, lot of diversity which I really love. Other than that, I have been working on these other projects on the side, but teaching is still my first true love.
Rob Huisingh: Now, you were Teacher of The Year and I am curious, what was that like -- what does that involve?
Bill Cecil: It is probably the scariest roller coaster ride you ever are going to be on, it is an incredible year. I think the first thing about that year is, you have to clear up a lot of misconceptions to people, what it is and what it is not. I think too many people wanted to slap a label on me and call me the top teacher in the state which I never got comfortable with because, number one I am married to a top teacher in the state, my wife Andrea is an awesome teacher in our hometown Mason where we teach.
I work in a building full of top teachers and so really for me as I travel the state, everywhere I went, I ran into top teachers. So, really, I knew what it was from the beginning was, it was an opportunity to represent the 102,000 teachers we have in Michigan, many, many, many of which are top teachers in the state. It gave me a chance to go out and observe what was going on around the state in education, but it also gave me a chance to go out and this is really why I was interested in pursuing that position when I was nominated. It was not the award so much, it was the opportunity to really go out and to share a message that I wanted to share.
Rob Huisingh: Oh! That is awesome and it is full year stint, so you are not teaching during that year.
Bill Cecil: During that year, at the time I was doing it yes, we were out of the classroom for a year. Unfortunately, with the financial situation the way it is in the state right now, the current teacher of the year has to stay in her classroom, while she is still trying to fulfill these other duties.
Rob Huisingh: Now, you wrote a book and that book is titled, 'Best Year Ever' and the interesting thing that I noticed about it is that it is not just survive, it is slashed through and thrive and why do not you just tell us a little bit about that?
Bill Cecil: That book is definitely a passion of mine. I have always wanted to give back to education because it is been so good to me and when I was Teacher of The Year, one of the things I realized that really slapped me in the face was, how many of our novice teachers are struggling in this field.
The statistics at that time that I were looking at were our 0-5 year teachers, 30-50% we were losing and that is staggering number and I even heard the same thing going up to 60% in some areas. So, that really stuck with me and it really concerned me. I was already working on 'Best Year Ever' as a book for helping teachers to create a best ever experience for their students. But, as that year wore on, it became clear to me that I had to do more with that work.
So, I decided to go back and rewrite the whole thing and I think it is geared for all teachers, all educators, but I really wanted to keep the novice teachers in mind because you always hear that they leave the profession because of things like money, not enough pay and I do not believe that, I think most teachers know what they are going to be paid before they enter this profession.
I think what happens is they get into the classroom and they are overwhelmed, it is hard to teach, if you can not manage or if you can not lead. So, I think our Universities are doing a great job to help them build the bike. What I want to be is a set of training wheels, that they can slap onto that bike and use their first couple of years in the classroom where they are trying to find themselves and find -- so they have a management plan already in place and help them get situated and get comfortable and they can start to define it more themselves.
So, that is really what this book was about, so the word survive, most teachers want to survive their first year, I do not want them to do that, I want them to thrive. So, I think this book is a blueprint to help them do that.
Rob Huisingh: Right, now you are working on a video or you have worked on a Video on Demand series and this is in association with MIEM, tell us about that.
Bill Cecil: This is what I would call a radical experiment that I am trying and thanks to MIEM for giving me this opportunity to try to do it. As Teacher of The Year, the reason why I pursued that opportunity was because I really wanted to get a message out around the State of Michigan that, I believe that even despite all the challenges that we face, in fact I further described it as a perfect storm in an NEA Article with the financial situation, No Child Left Behind demands and to everything else going on, I do believe there are pockets of despair out there, even though I truly believe and have seen first hand there is ton more good going on in education than bad. So, really what I wanted to do was I wanted to go out and spread a message of hope and determination to those fellow colleagues out there, not just teachers, but all educators and there was a book at that time, that was a best seller by Malcolm Gladwell called 'The Tipping Point' and so I wanted to not start an epidemic, I think the epidemic has already started, but I wanted to help spread this epidemic.
The most interesting thing I found during that year was, that no matter who I delivered this message to, they responded so strongly. It was like giving somebody in the desert a glass of water, they truly loved the message. So, that was really uplifting for me as well to see them be uplifted. I think the hardest part of that year though was to be out of my classroom, I truly missed being with the kids everyday and doing what I do which is teach.
So, when the year came to an end, it was sort of bittersweet, I was glad to be going back to the classroom, but suddenly I felt like I had not done enough with the message. So, I told some close friends and people knew I was still trying to get out and speak as much as I could, but it is really limited when you are in the classroom full time. Well, I was lucky that the Executive Director of MIEM which happens to be Dan Pappas who also happened to be my first Principal, who hired me into the district. Dan is a great guys and he has always been a supporter of mine and he has cheered me on and I think Dan knew my frustration was that here is a guy that truly wants to stay in the classroom, but also wants to get out and deliver this message.
He agreed with me, that it would be a shame if more people could not hear this message. So, over the last few years, it has been trying to find a way to do this and finally Dan came to me and said, "I think I have an idea and I think we can go out and reach people with your message" and at first we were going to charge people for this message because we had to recover cost that MIEM was going to be nice enough to pay for it, but I was not comfortable with that.
So, I went in and asked to see Dan and another person at MIEM that is a big part of this is Debbie -- I want to make sure I get her name right, it is Debbie Kopkau and she is the Director of Operations and I went in then I said, "I love what we are doing, but I can not charge people for this message, it does not feel right, some messages you have to give away. So, I am asking you help me give this message away, not just to the State of Michigan, but let's go for the country, let us start a national epidemic if we can."
I was amazed, they both jumped right on it and so from there, it has been just a fun project, we are trying to get this out first to as many administrators and superintendents in the State of Michigan that we can, hoping that they will spread it to other people. I think the one thing we have to convince people of is that, it is free there is no hidden obligations or stipulations here.
The one thing we hope is that they will spread the message if they like it, so we have tried to make it very easy. All you have to do is go to the MIEM website which is www.gomiem.org, you will see my face punched up on their homepage, it says Bill Cecil if you need punch on the name or my face and you will get a ninety minute or more presentation of me talking about this message and even a few of the strategies that are mentioned in my book, that I think will help people try to build winning teams.
So, I can not thank them enough for taking this risk with me, but I think it will pay off and the thing I would really want to surprise people with is, you give something away for free and they might think, "Oh, what is the quality going to be." What I hope we do is we not only uplift them, but we shock them by giving them some true entertainment value as well and that is going to be fun to see the reaction we get from it.
Rob Huisingh: This might be impossible, but could you -- we have a little bit of time left and could you jump into that presentation and pick out the piece that you would like to share with the people in this audience.
Bill Cecil: There are so many pieces, but the first two segments; we broke it into six segments so you could break it up and show it over different staff meetings, professional development meetings. But I think the first two segments are my favorite, because that is really where I am sharing the message as Teacher of The Year that I tried to share with thousands of educators around the State.
The one thing I really want to try to stress to people is that, even though we are facing so many challenges and obstacles that we truly have a great opportunity before us to create a great moment in education and there is a -- you will hear me talk about it more in the video, but I talk about Herb Brooks, that Coach of The U.S. Olympic 1980 gold winning hockey team and Herb is talking to his group of college kids about to face this Soviet monster of the Soviet Union, their hockey team was incredible and nobody gave the Americans a chance and he looked at them and he gave the greatest quote, he said, "Great moments are born out of great opportunities" great moments are born out of great opportunities and I think Michigan and around the country, we have a great opportunity before us to create a great moment in education.
People are going to be talking about for years and years and years to come and my message is, "What is great is that we are the players in the game right now, so now is a great time to be involved in education." I think the two things we have to do to create this great moment are very, very simple. Number one, we just have to reeducate the citizens of this country of all the great things that are already going on in our schools.
Yes, there is room for improvement, but the media and the politicians tend to skew it so far to one way that you would think that this ship is sinking and that is far from the truth. We need to become our biggest cheerleaders and start telling to people what we are doing, all the great things that are going on. The second thing is, why not improve our game? We do not have to improve it a 125%, we do not have to do all these radical changes, if everybody just improves their game, 1 or 2 percent, we can get this done.
So, I really want to get people to understand that and also to understand that they are leaders, every educator out there is a leader with the team to lead. So, don't wait for that leadership to come and tell you and lead you to success, you figure out the fact that you lead yourself, you lead the people around you and you lead them the way, you want to be lead, model the way and we will get this done.
Rob Huisingh: Hey, it is fascinating! I can not wait to finish watching the rest of the video. Bill I want to thank you for taking the time to be on our show and for your works that you are doing, continuing the efforts that you started as Teacher of The Year and I just wish you all the luck.
Bill Cecil: Well, I sure appreciate you having me and just by having me on I am hoping you are helping spread the epidemic. So, thank you very much.
Rob Huisingh: If you would like to contact Bill Cecil, he can be reached by telephone at 1-800-690-1233, again that telephone is 1-800-690-1233. You can visit his website at www.bestyearever.net, again that URL is www.bestyearever.net and if you are interested in watching these videos by all means go to www.gomiem.org and click on Bill's photo, again that is www.gomiem.org. Until next week, this is Rob Huisingh with Inside Michigan Education.
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