Jo Ann Thomas is principal of Kellar Primary School, a position she’s held for the past 14 years. She’s been a teacher and administrator in the District 150 schools for 37 years, with teaching experience at Calvin Coolidge, Sterling School, and Woodrow Wilson Primary.

Some of Thomas’ educational achievements include membership on the Peoria Public Schools Gifted Committee for the past 10 years; being part of the focus group for Project Grow Your Own Teachers through Illinois Central College; participating in the Schoolwide Enrichment Model at Kellar since 2000; and serving as president of the Peoria Association of School Administrators.

She has served on the board of directors for Friends of Benxi since 1994, is a past board member of the Peoria Association of Retarded Citizens (PARC), and volunteers as a Salvation Army bell ringer with the Peoria Public School administrators.

Thomas and her husband, Jim, have two daughters.

Tell about your background, schools attended, family, etc.

Reflecting back on my childhood brings pleasurable thoughts of growing up on a small farm near Gibson City. My favorite pastimes were playing with a barn full of cats; riding my pony, named Sweetheart; raising 100 chickens to sell eggs for extra money; raising sheep; driving the tractors during harvest; and walking beans in the summer. One exciting event I recall was bringing home a black calf my father bought for me at the Sale Barn in the backseat of the car. When I wasn’t playing farm girl outside, I was a teacher with my 15 dolls lined up as students.

My family consisted of one older sister and my two parents. I respect the fact today that when I got off the school bus and ran in the door yelling “Mom,” she was there to greet me. When my father wasn’t farming, he worked in Gibson City at the family car dealership my grandparents owned. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents at the automobile business. My Grandma Jones was quite a businesswoman and had a tremendous influence on my life. My fetish for nice cars, clothes, shoes, and purses had to come from this lady, with whom I went on many shopping trips and whom I observed hiding purchases in the trunk of her black Chrysler Imperial to sneak in when Grandpa Jones wasn’t looking. I’ve been called Grandma Jones on several occasions.

The Gibson City schools provided me with a good education. My teachers were the greatest. They were wonderful role models to prepare me for the profession I would later choose. I still run into some of them when I return to the hometown. It was a real thrill when I was invited to be the guest speaker at the National Honor Society banquet a few years ago.

High school days hold a special place in my heart since that’s where I met my husband, Jim. We both went to Illinois State University and majored in elementary education before coming to the Peoria area to teach. My entire 37 years in teaching have been in the Peoria Public Schools. Twenty-three of those years were spent teaching in the primary grades in three different schools. The last 14 have been in administration as principal of Kellar Primary, from which I’ll retire in June.

With my husband, who’s superintendent of Norwood schools, and myself both in education, our two daughters knew they were bound for college. Tara, 29, is an anchor and reporter for KWWL-TV in Waterloo, Iowa. Sara, 24, is a teacher at Columbia Middle School in the Peoria Public Schools.

Who or what influenced you to become a teacher?

Teaching is definitely in my blood. Both of my grandmothers went to Illinois State University in the early 1900s to become teachers and taught in one-room schoolhouses. My mother-in-law went to ISU in the 1930s to become a teacher. We’re very proud that our daughter, Sara, continued the tradition as the fourth generation to graduate from ISU as a teacher.

Why did elementary education appeal to you?

I really don’t know why I chose to teach the younger child. It’s always where my heart has been. I think the innocence and excitement in young children must be the attraction. I had no intention of leaving the classroom to become a principal until the Peoria schools reorganized as primary and middle schools.

What influenced you to later work for your doctorate?

My husband encouraged me to return to college and start work on a doctorate degree. The first class I took, I didn’t think it was for me. Since I’m very goal oriented, the challenge of getting a doctorate degree soon became more enticing to me. It took five years to complete the course work. Then I started getting an urge to interview for principal positions. On the third interview, I was offered the Kellar position. There was no way I could be a new principal and go home to write a dissertation. The doctorate degree went on hold for a couple of years. I constantly felt a huge load on my shoulders and something gnawing at me to finish. With my 50th birthday approaching, I decided I was going to walk down that aisle for a doctorate diploma before I turned 50, or this goal wasn’t going to be met. The rest is history.

How would you influence others to become teachers?

Teaching is a wonderful profession for those who have the innate ability and desire to deal with children. I get irritated at the statement, “If you can’t do anything else, be a teacher.” That philosophy is so wrong when we’re talking about what should be the No. 1 priority in our society—educating children. One of my many rewards for being an educator is encouraging others to go into the profession when I see an individual who has all of the signs of becoming a great teacher. There’s the saying, “The best three things about the teaching profession are June, July and August.” Yes, I did look forward to those three months off with my two girls. In what other profession can you get three months off in the summer, two weeks at Christmas, one week at Easter, and birthday observances? When the discussion of salary comes up, people like to ask teachers what they make. My response to that question is, “I make a difference in the life of a child.”

How has teaching changed in the last 30 years? What’s changed for students?

I’ve seen many changes in education over the last 30 years. Teaching was never an easy profession. The challenge of never getting everything done and not enough time to do it has always been there. It’s not a 9 to 5 job you can leave at work when you go home.

When public schools were established in 1640, their responsibility was to teach reading, writing, arithmetic skills, and cultivate values of a democratic society. The responsibility of raising America’s children has shifted too far from the family to the school. In the 1950s, we added driver’s education, more music and art, foreign language, and sex education. In the 1960s, we added Advanced Placement programs, consumer education, and career education. In the 1970s, we added special education mandates, drug and alcohol abuse education, Head Start, parent education, behavior adjustment classes, character education, and school breakfast programs. In the 1980s, we added computer education, global education, ethnic education, multicultural education, English-as-a-second language, early childhood education, full day kindergarten, pre-school programs, after school programs, alternative education, stranger/danger education, anti-smoking education, sexual abuse prevention education, and educators became mandated child abuse reporters. And finally, in the 1990s, we added HIV/AIDS education, death education, inclusion, Tech Prep, gang education, bus safety education, bicycle safety education, and gun safety education. I think you get the picture; schools can’t do it all. And we wonder why children aren’t proficient readers by the fourth grade.

The student of 2003 must deal with many variables that students of the past didn’t have to experience. Two out of three students live in a divorced environment or live with neither parent. Television and video games consume much of a child’s time. Diagnosis of attention deficit, hyperactivity, and autism is on the rise. Pornography on television and the Internet can be accessed at any time of the day or night. Many children come to school hungry and may not know where they’ll sleep that night. Children must fear terrorists, kidnappers, sex abusers, and drug dealers.

A few weeks ago, I covered a teacher’s class for an hour. I came to the realization that I could never go back to teaching. I would consider these students good students; however, they couldn’t sit still or keep from talking. Kids have changed!

On the positive side, students today are so fortunate to have television to learn about the rest of the world, technology to access information at their fingertips or write their term paper, and the opportunity to become whatever they choose to become. When I graduated from high school, my options were housewife, teacher, nurse, or secretary.

What is the most critical component for a young child’s education?

Home, home, home. I can’t stress enough that it’s the home environment that most influences a child’s education. The first five years are so critical with the basic needs of holding and, above all, reading and singing to them daily. As a child becomes an adolescent, friends are an important part of a child’s education. Choices, motivation, and drive are fostered with peers children choose to be around. The attitude of parents towards school and teachers will make or break a child’s chances to succeed. Show me a child whose parents support the school, and I’ll show you a child who’s on the road to a successful life. When a child misbehaves and is reprimanded at school, I have a difficult time understanding parents who put the blame on the school. If they only knew how they’re damaging their children.

How is your life different as a principal than it was as a teacher?

The first difference I noticed was the daily agenda. As a teacher, I could plan my day with the students and usually accomplish most of the plans. As a principal, everyone else plans my day. I have daily goals, but I may not get to them until 2 p.m. Additions to my agenda might be teachers with questions, prospective parents wanting a building tour, a child with a behavior problem, a class wanting to see the principal’s office, or a parent calling with a concern.

Both teacher and principal have stressful jobs, but the principal’s stress is more mental than physical. I have to constantly make shifts in the thought processes and respond to a bombarding amount of problems and questions. The old saying, “It never rains but what it pours,” is so true in my profession. At times I feel like all four limbs are being pulled in different directions, and others are waiting to grab on.

The most positive difference of being a principal comes from the children. I can impact good things to happen for 450 students instead of 25 in a classroom. It’s such a wonderful experience to walk down a hallway and get 10 hugs or have a little kindergarten student say, “Dr. Thomas, you look pretty today.” I had a good laugh when a parent told me her child came home and said, “I saw the President today, and her name is Dr. Thomas.” Those are the things I’ll miss when I retire.

How can Illinois encourage teaching as a profession and end the current teacher shortage?

Illinois Central College’s “Project Grow Your Own Teachers” is a great beginning to bring community people together to brainstorm how to encourage area students to go into education and stay in the community to teach. District 150 has a program in collaboration with Western Illinois University for minority students to go into teaching and come back to Peoria to teach. It’s critical that we attract good teachers to our community. If you attend an education job fair you’ll find the longest lines to talk to recruiters from Illinois are the Chicago suburbs. We must have competitive salaries to attract the best and the brightest. The community has to take an active role in promoting our public schools and send the message loud and clear across the nation that Peoria is a great place to live and go to school.

On teacher shortage, there’s no shortage in central Illinois at the present. Many young college graduates have had to take part-time positions with no benefits or turn to substituting because they couldn’t find a full-time teaching position. I was surprised when I heard Illinois State University put a two-year hold on any elementary education majors from entering the field. However, the teacher shortage is coming down the road. I predict in the next five years, there won’t be many “old faces” around our district. Districts will not only have difficulty filling teacher positions, but administrator positions as well.

What are the most important issues facing education today? 

The first most critical issue in education is finance. If there isn’t enough money to attract and retain good teachers and administrators, public education will die a slow death. 

The next most critical issue is discipline. Teachers and administrators must have 100 percent support when dealing with unruly children who are interfering with teaching and learning in the classroom. More alternative schools and alternative classrooms need to be established for students who won’t comply with the rules. High achieving schools correlate with well-disciplined environments.

The third critical issue in education is the need for counselors. There are presently no counselors in our primary schools. Professional interventions need to take place when the need surfaces.

What are the most important issues facing Peoria School District 150?

Student achievement is the No. 1 issue facing the Peoria Public Schools today. We have to get children reading at grade level by the time they enter fourth grade, or they’re in major trouble. All of our primary schools are working so hard to make that happen. The hiring of “reading coaches” in every primary school is a big step forward in addressing the reading problem. The Peoria Schools are taking President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” very seriously.

A real problem facing Peoria is losing quality families to outlying districts. We aren’t the first city to deal with this problem. When parents ask why they should choose the Peoria Public Schools, I tell them they won’t hear me talk badly about another school or district because education can be found at any of them. If religion is a priority, they should go to a parochial school. If academics are a priority, I will put us up against any private or public school. I also tell them a diverse population of students mirrors the real world. Both of our daughters graduated from Manual High School. I feel that experience has better prepared them to get along with all kinds of people in our diverse world today.

What resolutions/goals do you hope emerge from the district’s strategic planning sessions?

I feel Dr. Royster has made a positive impact in Peoria the short time she’s been here with her positive approach of involving the community to address the problems the schools are facing today. There has to be total community commitment and ownership for good results to take place. Our present system of public education was designed for another age. We must significantly change what, when, and how children are taught if we’re going to close the gap between what schools now provide and what our students need. Many teaching strategies don’t work anymore with the child of 2002. No school or district can make these changes without the understanding, trust, permission, and support of the local community. What should emerge from the strategic planning is the following: What do we want our children to know and be able to do when they graduate, and how can the entire community be organized to ensure all children reach the stated goals?

How can teachers and families better work together for the good of the student?

This is a tough question. If I had the right answer, I could die a famous educator. There are many families working with teachers and succeeding to raise productive adults that contribute to society. The fact is there are also many children who don’t have the luxury of the kind of family we would like them to have been born into. We can’t change the variables working against them, but we can keep working to help them beat the odds.

Over the last 14 years as principal I’ve counseled a lot of parents on tips for raising children. I’m the first to say I wasn’t a perfect parent by any means. It’s easier to step back and see the whole picture with someone else’s child than it is with your own. The No. 1 problem I see with parents today is teaching children who is the adult and who is in charge. Too many children come into kindergarten with the idea that they’re in charge of every situation. If they don’t get their way, then the world is going to come to an end. Verbal disrespect is rampant. Parents, take back control, and don’t allow your child to verbally abuse you or anyone else. You’ll be doing a big favor to your child and everyone they deal with when they grow up. TPW