Serving Students Effectively with Dr. Gregory Gardner Transformative Principal 431

<p><a href="https://twitter.com/thatmancanteach">Dr. Gregory Gardner, Jr.</a> began his educational career in 2007 in the Griffin-Spalding County school system at Carver Road Middle School.  He spent seven years there as a Language Arts, Social Studies, and remedial reading teacher.  Over the course of those seven years, he helped to pilot the Positive Behavior Intervention System program and served as a member of the leadership team.</p> <p>In 2014, Dr. Gardner completed his doctoral studies in Curriculum and Instruction, and he began the transition process to become an assistant principal.  Later that year, he was promoted within the same school, where he spent four years as an assistant principal.  During those times, Dr. Gardner was a part of the administrative team that lead Carver Road Middle School to recognitions from the International Center for Leadership in Education (ICLE) as a Model School for 2016 and 2017, and the team continued to exceed performance measures through the use of a transformative model that led to a shift in instructional practice and a focus on teaching and learning.</p> <p>In 2018, Dr. Gardner was named principal of Kennedy Road Middle School, also in the Griffin-Spalding County school system, and he was tasked with turning around the school, which historically was underperforming based on the targets set by the Georgia Department of Education.  Dr. Gardner rebranded the school with #CougarAccountability and put a clear set of expectations which were pulled from the Learning by Doing Framework where there was a Focus on Learning, Collaborative Culture, and a Results Orientation.  This led to a huge culture shift, and at the end of the year 30% of the staff either resigned or were not offered a contract.</p> <p>The work was hard, and everyone wasn’t committed to doing the work.  The efforts Dr. Gardner and his leadership team put in place, however, led to a huge increase in the school’s College and Career Readiness Performance Index (CCRPI) from a 57.3/F to a 71.2/C, a 14.9 percenta