Ron Pang and Sandra Leigh, Co-Schoolmasters of The Year
Ron Pang, Principal of Abraham Lincoln High School, and Sandra Leigh, Principal of Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, are being honored as Schoolmasters of The Year. There will be a banquet to honor them scheduled for March 2nd, at the Napa Elks Lodge. Beyond that, little is known about the award or the banquet. So I contacted the district for more information, which led me to this short biography of Principal Ron Pang:
I didn't grow up wanting to be a teacher. As a person with severe learning disability, I constantly struggled in class to keep up and spent more time in the principal's office than I would like to admit. It was a teacher who recognized something that I didn't see in myself that pulled me from that office.Congratulations to Ron and Sandra. If and when I hear more about this award, I will post it here.
That was my epiphany and has been a guiding principle for my entire career. I challenge myself everyday to not only recognize all 2350 students by name, but to see his or her strengths and to use them toward their success.
Born and raised in our 50th State, I received a bachelor's and a master's degree from the University of Hawaii. I taught special education students at all three levels for six years before moving to California in 1978, joining a private day care institution as an educational therapist before being asked to work for the San Francisco Unified School District as a middle school special education teacher.
One persistent administrator, Helen Chin, convinced me to get an administrative credential "just in case", and I received my second master's from San Francisco State. Unexpectedly, I was offered a school assistant principal position that led to principalshsip at that same middle school in two and a half years. Talk about coming full circle!
It was our current Superintendent Chan who persuaded me to leave middle school and to move to Abraham Lincoln High School, where I have been principal for some eight years. It is through her belief in me that I have become not only a better and wiser administrator, but also a better and wiser person.
Labels: Enrollment
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I've heard all those things about Lincoln too, and I would like to ask Mr. Pang:
Why are SDC students all required to eat lunch at the same table?
Why is there so little effort and attention paid to giving the special education student population opportunities to be included with the general education population? For a school that has an inclusion program, I would have expected a much stronger culture of inclusion.
The graduation stories sound downright horrific … very similar, in creepy exclusionary fashion -- to the attitude which I hear pervades Sherman Elementary School… last year -- the Kindergarteners at Sherman had a graduation ceremony, but children in Sherman’s SDC Kindergarten classes were not allowed or invited to take part in the Graduation ceremony, because “they would only disrupt the assembly and the ceremony and besides – they wouldn’t understand what is happening anyway. “ How hateful and backward is that?
And what a striking contrast to my son’s Kindergarten Graduation last year at Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy … my son has autism and loud noises and crowds are very hard on him, but he was lovingly guided and supported through the ceremony, sang the songs with the other Kindergarteners, and got up on stage wearing his graduation hat, and was handed a diploma …
denying chances to take part in our society’s rituals and rites of passage, just because a child has a disability, is appalling.
Oops. I was trying to remove a duplicated comment, but I accidentally deleted the wrong one. Sorry Rachel, my mistake!
Kind of ironic that Ron Pang and Sandra Leigh are being honored together, and especially since Ron Pang apparently has such a long history and experience with special ed. Leigh's school, Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, is one of SFUSD's most inclusive and tolerant schools toward students with disabilities. By contrast, Pang's Lincoln has not always treated its special education students with the most respect. The chief example of this is that SDC students who are not eligible for diplomas have never, at least in recent memory, been invited to walk across the stage at Graduation with their peers. Last year was the first time a student receiving a Certificate of Attendance instead of a diploma participated in Graduation ceremonies -- this only happened because the student's parents let the administration know that they expected their child to participate, and were helped by their child's teacher to make sure it happened. SDC students at Lincoln have to compete with each other for scarce mainstreaming opportunities because the logistics for including them have been made very complex (this would not have to be so if the administration truly made including all students with disabilities a priority). And finally, SDC students at Lincoln have in the past been segregated to their own table in the lunchroom in a misguided attempt to "shelter" these students from the noise and chaos of the cafeteria rather than figure out a way to integrate them naturally with their peers. Students with disabilities have much to teach their non-disabled peers, and deserve some chance to mix with everyone during non-academic times.
Ron Pang may be a fine educator, but someone with his long experience in special education should do a much better job helping students with disabilities fully participate as members of his school community.
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