ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, January 20, 1996 TAG: 9601220042
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER STAFF WRITER
SUSAN DYER WENT THROUGH a special Harvard program to learn how to be an urban education administrator. Now she is getting some practical lessons from that program's first grad to get a job, Roanoke's Wayne Harris.
Susan Dyer likes challenges.
She is the former principal of a Detroit school for boys at risk of dropping out because of academic and behavior problems.
Dyer set high academic and attendance expectations for the junior-high and high-school boys. She tried to create an environment where they believed teachers and school officials cared about them.
Because there were no girls, "The boys said they didn't have anyone to impress," she said. "They didn't have girls to distract them."
She persuaded basketball players for the Detroit Pistons to visit the school and be role models for the boys. The Pistons even provided basketball tickets.
Although the program involved sports personalities, it focused on improving academics and behavior, she said.
And it worked. Test scores improved. Most students graduated, and many went to college.
"The students bought into it. They felt like someone cared," she said.
Two years ago, Dyer, who taught history and social studies in Detroit for 20 years before becoming a principal, took on another challenge.
She enrolled in the Urban Superintendent's Program in Harvard University's graduate school of education. It is an accelerated doctoral program to prepare a new cadre of superintendents to lead America's schools in the next century.
Dyer, 52, wants to become a superintendent - and stay in the job longer than the average two-year tenure in large urban systems. In fact, she plans to write her doctoral dissertation on the tenure of urban superintendents.
"I want to take a look at why it's so short. Hopefully, something can be done, because students need continuity of leadership," she said.
Dyer is spending three months in Roanoke, doing an internship with Superintendent Wayne Harris, the first graduate of the Harvard program to get a superintendent's job.
Before coming to Roanoke in December, she was an intern in the Birmingham, Ala., system for five months.
Dyer was not familiar with Roanoke, but she chose the city because Harris had participated in the Harvard program. She heard him speak when he came to the university for a conference last fall. He is on a national advisory panel for the program.
As an intern, Dyer spends much of her day with Harris, shadowing him and learning what it's like to be a superintendent. She attends meetings with him, visits schools and sits in on conferences.
After Harris acts on an issue or problem, he reviews it with Dyer and asks what she learned and whether she would have handled it differently.
"What makes this so special is that he has experienced what I am experiencing because he has been through the program," she said. "It's almost like belonging to a select organization."
Harris said he is giving Dyer the opportunity to get a close-up view of a superintendent's life. He also will have top school administrators brief her on school finances and other issues.
He wants her to become familiar with all aspects of his job because the internship is a critical part of the doctoral program.
Dyer said she has learned that Harris has a much closer relationship with principals and other school personnel than do superintendents in bigger cities.
In Detroit, the enrollment is 170,000 with more than 200 schools. Birmingham has 42,000 students in 79 schools. Roanoke has 13,200 children in 29 schools.
"One thing that I've noticed is that as the school districts get smaller, the superintendent can have a more hands-on relationship with schools and personnel," she said.
Dyer said she has discovered a close relationship between the Harvard program's course work and daily situations confronting superintendents.
"Something will happen, and you will remember you discussed that in class," she said. "You don't realize how much you have retained, until different situations come up."
The Harvard program is very selective. Dyer said there were 400 applicants for 10 slots the year she began. Most students receive financial aid and fellowships to help cover their expenses.
Although Dyer has worked in Detroit schools her entire career, she wants to be a superintendent in a smaller urban system in the South.
She grew up in western Pennsylvania and attended college in Ohio before going to Detroit, but her maternal grandparents lived in Virginia. She likes the Roanoke Valley, particularly the mountains because they remind her of Pennsylvania. But she has been unable to see much of the area because of the recent snowstorm and her other activities since she came to Roanoke.
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON/Staff. Susan Dyer, a school principal inby CNBDetroit, visits with students at Lincoln Terrace Elementary on
Friday as part of her three-month internship in Roanoke. Dyer wants
to be a superintendent in a small urban area in the South. color.