Godwin Heights — Across the top of Karen Baum’s new desk, in the symbols of the periodic table, is the phrase “unearth genius.”
“We’d been reading the book ‘Cultivating Genius’ by Gholdy Muhammad, and even though cultivate didn’t translate well into a block design, unearth did,” she said.
The new West Godwin principal said the phrase serves as a daily reminder that “Kids come to us with genius, and our job is to unearth it.”
‘I want the energy to be flowing around here.’
— Karen Baum, new West Godwin principal
Other positions in education: Baum held several positions at National Heritage Academy including elementary teacher, K-8 intervention specialist, instructional coaching, assistant principal and dean of instruction for K-2.
She was hired at Godwin Heights in 2014 as an instructional specialist at West and North Godwin Elementary buildings. On the district level, she has facilitated new teacher orientation programs and worked with district mentors for new teachers.
Education:
- Bachelor’s in education, Calvin College
- Master’s in educational leadership, Grand Valley State University
- Master’s in curriculum and instruction with a concentration on STEM education, Purdue University
What drew you to Godwin Heights? “It’s really the people who drew me here, and once I got to the community it was all about the kids, and their families and the teachers.”
Why did you want to become an administrator? “I wanted to be able to impact students. Certainly in my last job, I was able to do that too. But I love learning so much and I’ve such great memories of myself in elementary school and of teachers who impacted me and friendships that impacted me, that I just want to build those same memories in the lives of kids as they’re coming through the doors of my building today.”
Describe your leadership style in seven words or less:
Energetic: “I hope that I’m very energetic and I hope that is very contagious in the building, because the kids come with a lot of energy and we can either leverage it to make learning wonderful and fun or we can dampen it down, and I don’t want that. I want the energy to be flowing around here.”
Collaborative: “I’m super collaborative. I love a team where there’s that energy that the ideas just start to become bigger than any one of us, because we’re just feeding off each other.”
Service to others: “In my heart, I hope that my leadership’s always about service to others. I just feel like that’s kind of my calling in the world, to serve other people, and I hope that I bring that to my job every day.”
Relationships: “You can’t serve anybody if you don’t know them, and building those relationships with parents and kids and I think in our world today, creating a sense of belonging for kids, is really, really important. There’s much in our world that is scary, even for little kids, and I think when you belong to a group of people who you know love you and care for you and support you and have your back, it’s a lot easier to get through life.”
Educator: “There’s this instructional excellence that I strive for, and I thrive when I see it, and I want to inspire people to reach for that in their teaching so our kids can develop every skill that they need to do whatever they want with their lives.”
Curiosity: “The last one is more about the age of these kids, going back to curiosity. I hope that I always ask more questions than try to give people answers. I think that kids come with that curiosity, and I really know that curiosity is the root of learning. We learn the best when we’re really interested in something and when there’s a question that’s kind of rattling around that we’re looking for the answer to. Kids come to us with that naturally, and we just have to learn how to leverage it.”
Dogs or cats and why? “I’m a big dog person. If I could have a dog right now, I would have a chocolate Lab. We don’t have a dog now, but we’ve had chocolate Labs.”
What song would you pick to define you? “I love the song ‘Brave’ by Sara Bareilles. I want to be brave in the way I lead even though I know sometimes I will fall flat on my face, but I just want to lead with that era of, ‘let’s go for it. Let’s take the risk. Let’s do the next thing that we think is right for kids.’ And I want the kids to be brave. I want them to learn to use their voice to say the things that are in their hearts and minds. I want them to take risks. I want them to learn that they can do hard things and all those things they just need to be brave to do.”
What book, movie, TV show or podcast have you loved lately? “I love to read, and I am a historical fiction kind of person. Kristin Hannah is one of my favorite authors. ‘The Women’ was one of the last Kristin Hannah books I read, and I just loved it. You learn so much when you read historical fiction, because it’s a time period that maybe we didn’t know everything about, and the characters are so good too.”
What is one thing on your bucket list? “Becoming a principal in a K-2 building just checked off a big one on my bucket list. I wanted this for a very long time, and this is just exactly where I want to be right now, and I just couldn’t be happier.”
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• Second-graders learn about communities by doing
