Every time Superintendent Jeanne Siegenthaler has started as a leader in a new building, she has gone on a listening tour. She has asked four simple questions of everyone in the school or district, from custodians to kitchen staff to secretaries to teachers:
- What do you love best about this district?
- What would you change?
- Who are the superstars in the buildings?
- What are your goals?
“I’m all about being student-centered, but if you’re not staff-centered, your teachers aren’t going to love coming to work, and that’s going to trickle into the classroom where kids are not going to want to come to school, and then you have parents who aren’t happy,” says Siegenthaler, who, since 2019, has led Wisconsin’s Richmond School District, a small feeder K-8 system outside Milwaukee. .
“There are five different generations right now in our workforce, and you have to be a master of how you support those different generations,” she tells host Amy Dujon on the latest episode of District Administration’s “A Good Lesson” podcast.
Siegenthaler is a member of the District Administration Leadership Institute and a founding member of the Leadership Network for Women. As superintendent of her one-building district, she is also a part-time principal and the director of curriculum, special education, communication and human resources.
She says she has worked hard to change a district climate that had become toxic in the year before her arrival. Gathering input from all stakeholders offered her a fuller perspective that may not have been visible to any single group, such as parents or teachers.
“It’s not my culture, it’s the building’s culture,” she adds. “From the leadership lens, you see things other people don’t.”
She gets a lot of her most valuable feedback when she’s walking the halls of her building or visiting classrooms. Body language is crucial, she notes.
“When I walk into a classroom, I always make sure I walk in with a smile on my face,” she syas. “When I leave, I try to walk out backward, make eye contanct and give the teacher a thumbs up.”
She also likes to send teachers positive notes, with messages such as “I love how you engage with kids.” She even keeps a chart to make sure she’s provided feedback to everyone on her staff.
Richmond has been named a top workplace by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for three years straight. “You’ve got to make it about the people you work with, not about you,” she concludes.
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