Randy Rodriguez
An interview with Randy Rodriguez Head of Schools at
Michigan Virtual Charter Academy
“Seeing the power of education and what education could offer is one of the things that drove me into being an Educator”
Getting to Know Randy Personally
Tell us about your family.
I'm married with a family of four children and a daughter in law, so five now. My wife and I have been married for 31 years and I have been in education for 31 years. I’ve been a leader in education for over 20 years. I've served every role from paraprofessional to Superintendent. Now I'm serving as the Head of Schools for Michigan Virtual Charter Academy. I am a Christian and follower of Christ.
Tell us about your up bringing.
I'll go back to my parents. My dad grew up in a Hispanic, highly impoverished neighborhood. What was important to him, because he didn't have the opportunity, was that we get a quality education. So he made it a point to make sure that we were in good schools growing up. I think seeing the power of education and what education could offer is one of the things that drove me into being an educator, and really trying to provide those same opportunities for the next generation of students. To let them see how the power of education could open up opportunities for them.
Dad finished the 11th grade, while all of his eight siblings only finished the eighth grade. So he went the furthest of his family. He left school to enter into the military and learn a trade. What Dad made sure to do was, number one, he moved out of the neighborhood he was in, put us in a neighborhood that was in good school system. Number two, he developed our character. He was a strong disciplinarian with high expectations, but he loved us too and cared about us. He never abandoned his culture, that was always very rich in our family. He made education a priority, by ensuring that we did the best we could. We couldn't get by just doing enough. He pushed us, he made sure we gave it all we had.
So fast forward now to my kids. Here, you had his generation that nobody finished high school. Then in my generation, four out of 35 cousins went to college. Now, I have four kids and my fourth one just finished college. I think the power of education changed generations and it is just incredible. I think about my dad, his opportunities were very limited, and my kids I feel like their opportunities are widespread.
Randy’s family
So four children, Our oldest son Kyle is going to be a minister. He just finished up his masters of divinity at Calvin College. Our daughter Nicole is in graphic design. She's serving as a communications and marketing director for a nonprofit in Indiana. Cody is an industrial design major. He's a shoe designer, designing athletic shoes. He's in between companies right now. And Micah just graduated with a degree in engineering. As a matter of fact, today he just got results back. He passed his FE test, and so he is now officially in engineering training is what they call it. He's pretty excited. My wife Janae has an Administrative Masters in school leadership too, but she's been home for 24 years being the glue to our family. She's an incredible woman.
Randy’s thoughts on Leadership
Tell us a about your role as the leader of Michigan Virtual Charter Academy.
My position is the Head of School. It functions much like a superintendent in a regular brick and mortar school. We have an elementary, middle school and high school. I have a leadership team of eight administrators. I have a staff of about 190. My role is really to look at major functions of the organization, so obviously academics and instruction, looking at support systems for students, operations and finance, and then I have to be involved in policy and legislation, all the things that are going to impact the work that we do. There's five strategic areas that we're looking for including academics, culture, innovation, operations and finance. My job is really overlooking those five big areas and creating the vision for the school and moving us forward to accomplish that vision.
What do you think attracted you to leadership?
I have this tendency to raise my hand. I tend to look at things and always wonder if we could make it better. Is there some other way we can do this, can we re-frame this, can we wipe it out and start over, you know, what can we do to make this better? I've just always enjoyed and been willing to take the risk. Willing to raise my hand, take the risk and lead, whether I was in a committee at school, as a teacher or a district committee or even just being in the faculty lounge. I just like to always look at how we can make things better instead of wallowing in what's not going well. I think leaders are not afraid to raise their hand and to be willing to take something on.
“I’ve really had a great career and had great opportunities to be with a lot of wonderful people doing great things for kids. ”
What have you enjoyed most about your journey as a leader?
The fact that it is a journey is what I've enjoyed the most. As I think about young leaders, or myself as a young leader, I wanted to have all these accolades and accomplishments and conquer the world. As a mature leader, I've learned that it is about the journey itself. It's about enjoying the experiences and relationships all along the way. The successes come and the accolades come and sometimes the failures come. The reality is, this is a journey where I get to experience new things, new people, new challenges that we get to take on, new problems we get to solve. As I think back, I cherish the memories, but there's new challenges ahead of us, and so the journey continues. When you ask me what I enjoy most about the journey, it is the fact that it is a journey and I get to be on it every day and this is an adventure. Some days are hard and some days are wonderful but ultimately I've really had a great career and had great opportunities to be with a lot of wonderful people doing great things for kids.
What do you think was holding you back from becoming a leader?
I don't know if anything's held me back. I've just always been willing to do it. Even in school, I'll go for student council or I'll do this, I'll do that.
As I reflect, I guess I think what holds me back is, that battle in my mind. Sometimes you're in a place where you don't want to take risks. That will hold me back. As a mature leader, I've really been reflecting on the fact that the biggest obstacle to my success is the battlefield of my mind. What I've learned is we can't allow circumstances to define who we are. As a leader, and even when you're not a leader, there's always going to be challenges in life and things that are going to be difficult and things are going to be hard. If we constantly gauge who we are based on each circumstance, we're going to be up and down and back and forth instead of being out in front and living into who we are. If our character remains the same, we'll get through all those tough times. But sometimes when you're in the middle of hard things, and your mind starts to doubt, the battlefield of your mind is going back and forth, it can deter me from wanting to move forward. I have to continually feed my mind with scripture, with positive, with encouragement. I have to continue to make sure that I'm reminding myself who I am. All of us face tough times and when we do, sometimes we start to tell ourselves lies, what are other people going to think about this, what if I make the wrong decision, what if I fail, you know, I just don't want to do this anymore.
I think I've matured in my leadership and I've been humbled a lot in the last 10 years. I’ve learned that we are the ones that tend to hold ourselves back. Recently, I have really resonated with Psalm 55. The psalmist starts by sharing the torment that is on his mind. He is speaking of the things that keep him up at night and the thoughts he wrestles with. Then he goes into his first response, if I had wings, I would just fly away. Like the psalmist our first response is often to just “fly away”, or to not have to deal with the situation. So you have these struggles, and then you're like, I just want to get out of this. The author then recognizes that the conflict is very personal and caused by a person with whom he once walked with. In leadership, our conflict is often with the people that are close to us, that we work with each day. I think that sometimes, that “friend” can even be ourselves. We get in our own way. The psalmist finally surrenders and realizes he is not alone. He has to trust God and lean into the situation. Face his fears. So I'm not articulating that very eloquently, but Psalm 55 to me takes us right through the process of wrestling with conflict which we do so often as leaders.
Fear is the perfect word. So this study that I've been doing with Psalm 55, all came out of the verse John 14:18, which says love casts out all fear or perfect love casts out all fear. If you read different versions of the Bible, one vesion uses the word torment. So what keeps you up at night? When you go to bed at night, and you're trying to sleep and something's keeping you up. There's your torment. Right? Your torment leads you to your fear. So fear is the battlefield of our minds keeping us from wanting to move forward.
People can do things to hurt us, but if we have the right mindset, we don't need to take that on. Ultimately what I would say is, in the last three years in particular, I've really been working on developing my mindset, and recognizing that power of our thoughts have over our actions. When we allow negative thoughts to simmer, we tend to be unproductive and held back. With a positive mindset, I think we can do a lot more than we think possible.
How did you learn leadership?
Experience, raising my hand. Jumping in and making mistakes, reading, observing other leaders out there that were out in the world, trying to follow leadership models. I've done a lot of self reflecting, seeking wisdom, a lot of reading, seeking out not mentors but heroes, if you will, role models.
Share a time when you failed and how you overcame it.
Early on in my career, my first role as Principal, I had a situation where we had a reading program, and the staff was split on that reading program. It created a huge divide in my staff and I had to make a decision on what we were going to do. What we were finding is that the reading program was bringing results. We went from 35% to 75% of our kids on grade level in four years. I didn't bring the program in, it came the year before I did, but I had to make a decision if we were going to keep it or not. So I counted the cost and how many teachers I might lose if I kept the program and I thought I might lose about five teachers. I had a staff of about 50. There was more that were disgruntled with the program, but I kind of counted the cost and I made a decision to keep the program and I ended up losing about 16 teachers. What I realized was the value of people and relationships over the program. I think I had to learn to trust people. I also learned the value about truly counting the cost. I think learning the balance between relationships and responsibilities was something that I've been cultivating over the years because of that failure. Numbers tell a story, but they didn't tell the whole story. I needed to spend more time with people learning their whys, what drove them, what was important to them, uniting the vision, before I just made a decision about a program in or out. I didn't take the time to unite that element. That was probably one of my biggest leadership lessons at a very early stage. That was a really hard situation. In Yuma, to put some context to it, if we had 10 jobs open in the district, we might only have four applications. So losing 16 teachers was a tremendous setback for us. You also realize that no matter how good a program you have, I lost seasoned teachers who knew how to manage classrooms, how to teach kids, how to build relationships, for the sake of a program. The program didn't last, but it took us a long time to recover for the people.
what are some costs of leading?
The cost of being a leader, you have to make tough decisions and it sometimes hurts relationships. Sometimes it hurts your family. I mean, I could have not led and not been involved as much in things and spent more time at home. So there was a price to pay at home. I know that my family is understanding and they were tolerant and forgiving but I've had to learn to find balance. You have to learn to try and minimize the sacrifice but the reality in leadership is you do sacrifice some things. You have to start being more aware of what it is you're sacrificing.
“Loving people and caring for people and listening to people ultimately made a difference in their lives.”
What have you learned about leadership the hard way?
There's a price to be paid in leadership. That's what I've learned the hard way. Sometimes I paid a price I didn't want to pay, my family paid the price often times. While there is a price to pay, there is also a tremendous reward. The price you pay sometimes is you sacrifice personal things but the reward is that you serve other people.
So just as you and I are conversing, we are building a relationship. That is more important than the details of the conversation. A couple nights ago I am cleaning out my barn and come across an old box full of cards. These were personal cards colleagues wrote to me thanking me for helping them in a situation and caring for them. I never kept letters that just said, Thank you and their name. These were all letters that people really took time to write and it was a box full. It was so powerful to read and remind me that the reward of leadership wasn't about the program and it wasn't about the statistics. It was about the people that I worked with, that I served with, that I served, that grew, that became better teachers, became better leaders, became better children, whatever the case may be. While there were many sacrifices over the years, that reminder of the impact of serving others was very rewarding.
Why do you say you learned this the hard way?
I think when I got into the journey of leadership, my eyes were on the leadership. They were focused on the challenge and the journey and the things that we were doing and I lost sight at times of some of the things that were being sacrificed. When you realize you have sacrificed some things you didn’t intend, you could try to make it right but the hard thing is I couldn't take it back. So that's the hard thing.
I love leading. It's just my nature. I do it at church. I do it here. I do it in the home. I mean, everywhere I go. Maybe this would be a better way of framing this, learning the hard way there are sacrifices for leadership and you have to continue to keep your eyes wide open so you don't sacrifice the wrong things.
Sometimes you're so focused on what you're doing that you don't realize what you're sacrificing.
We’ve all heard the statement, Nobody said on their deathbed that I wished I would have worked more.
When I read those letters in my barn, I realized that my leadership was a lot more than a title, accolades, and scores. When I go to apply for a job I tell them when I led the school we took it from 35% to 75%. Not one of those letters had anything to about that statistic. They said thank you for listening, thank you for caring, thank you for your time. They were all about the relationships. When we took care of teachers, they were taking care of the kids and that is when they move students to 75%. It wasn't what I did, it was what they did. I was overwhelmed by their reflection, it was about loving people and caring for people and listening to people ultimately that made a difference in their lives.
Michigan Virtual Charter Academy
What's the purpose of Michigan Virtual Charter Academy?
Our purpose is to create an educational environment for students in k-12 school.
What current goals do you have for the organization?
We're just launching a new vision. We've launched a new vision to build systemic educational systems that would increase our student achievement. That's the ultimate goal.
how is this school different than traditional brick and mortar schools.
We are completely virtual. All of our students work at home, all of our teachers work from home. Most brick and mortar schools have a geographic area. They're in a community and they draw students from that community. Our geographic area is the entire state of Michigan. We have students in the UP, we have students in Detroit, Flint, St. Joe, Grand Rapids, our students are all over the state. Our students have to have a learning coach, which is someone in their family, generally a parent, but it could be a sibling, or an aunt or an uncle or a grandmother, but somebody who's going to be connected with them in their education. The model we have is a little different in that, the families are more engaged with the educational process for the student. They attend school much in the same way they just do it online. We have what we call synchronous and asynchronous work. Synchronous is live teaching sessions like you would go to an algebra class at high school you go to an algebra class here. However, we have asynchronous work where they have to go on to certain places on the web, and do certain assignments and things of that sort that they do independently with their learning coach. The learning coach is one of the primary differences that we have. We have tremendous support teams also that just work to support families, to reach out, help motivate, inspire and hold students accountable for the work that they're doing. There's so much I could say about what we do.
What makes your school unique?
You have to remember this is very new. This is our 10 year anniversary. That means this virtual k12 School is only 10 years old. When I think about the regular school system being over 200 years old. We're still in our infancy, we're learning, we're growing, we're developing. It's really a frontier, if you will. Our name is the trailblazers. We really are blazing this trail on what education looks like. Our students are also blazing the trail because they had to be willing to do this and a lot of our students come from very different circumstances that prompted them to look at this as an alternative. For most of them, that traditional school setting was not meeting the needs that they have, or they felt they didn't fit, they felt they couldn't be successful in the regular school setting. They needed a safe place that they could get their education. I think a lot of the things that our kids would tell you is that they don't feel judged here. They don't feel the peer pressure. They feel the freedom to focus on their education. Our kids really value that safe place. They can be there with their families, the people that love them, that are helping and guiding them through this process. It's almost this combination of home school and public school colliding in this space.
What's got you excited professionally right now?
I'm really excited about our vision. We just launched a vision in February, with our board. We just started to implement with our staff when COVID hit. In all actuality, that was a blessing for the vision, definitely not a blessing for our kids or staff or anybody else. But I think what happened was we had a language and a framework to look at our work and what we were doing with kids during this time. You have to understand we're in a unique situation. The brick and mortars close school, they sent everybody home. So there's 15 schools with maybe 10,000 students that stayed open. They were virtual schools. We had families at home that had some kids in virtual and some in brick and mortar and when some of those brick and mortar students came home, some of their parents lost jobs, so those families were in this tough situation. We have teachers at home, whose kids went to public schools are now home, and some of their spouses lost jobs, but we had to keep on keeping on. We had to keep on providing instruction, keeping our kids in schools. There was a lot of mindsets out there for some of our kids that felt like, the other kids are home why do we have to keep going. We were able to use our vision to pull our team together and motivate them with the purpose of these kids that needed us to continue to give the best education we could while our staff was still dealing with all the issues that were going on in the world. The vision and the language really brought that together for us.
In the course of this time that we've been dealing with this, we've been building on that language and building on that vision. We did a survey for our staff satisfaction and we've had the highest staff satisfaction, they've had probably in five years and we've had a 30% increase in staff satisfaction over the two years that I've been here. 40% increase in staff morale for the last two years. So the launching of the vision has just worked out really well for us, and that's what I'm really excited about.
Random Thoughts
What do you think the best advice you ever received was?
It’s hard to say, so many people have spoken into my life. I think the one thing that stands out is from my dad when he said “no one can ever take away your education”.
Why did that come up in this context of the best advice?
As I said earlier, education made a significant impact in just two generations. Education is the great equalizer.
“Everyone should use whatever gift he has received, to serve others faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms. ”
If you had a mantra what would that be?
Professionally, our mantra is “Delivering Hope”.
Why?
Frankly, I like that personally, too. So I guess there's two things I'll tell you. I like delivering hope because when I look at our students and we talked earlier about the battlefield of the mind, our job is to keep hope in front of people. When you look at what's going on in the world today, and the dissension and the division, we as leaders need to keep putting hope in front of people, that there will be a better tomorrow. That is our mantra, if you will, for our district. We have kids that come in lower performing, they don't see a future for themselves. Our job is to help paint that picture for them so that they can see it and that they can have it. They know there's something for them and that they're capable and they're gifted and they're talented enough to do these things. So that's our mantra professionally.
Personally, I have a life verse that says, Verse Peter 4:10 says, everyone should use whatever gift he has received, to serve others faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. I just believe that we're all gifted. We need to cultivate that and me as a leader, it's not just about the kids, it's about the people I'm working with, it's about my family, my kids, is to cultivate the gift that God's given us to be able to use it to serve others. I've had that life verse for 20 years and if you talk about personal vision, that's the why of my personal vision.
What do you struggle with most - Time, Team or Money and why?
I probably struggle most with time. My mind is constantly drawn back to the things in front of me. Time in and of itself is not the important issue. What is important is creating the solution. It's the accomplishment, it's the completion it's the resolve. Those are the things that are more important to me. Money is a resource. I can put money on the table, on the shelf until I'm ready to use it. So I'm not necessarily losing that. So probably of those three issues, team is my focus, how are we resolving, how are we doing this, what are we doing. Time is constantly going by. I tend to struggle with that the most in the sense that I can't stop it while I think through things and come up with a solution and then start it again and get moving. The clock is constantly ticking. I can spend, back to the cost, I can spend evening and weekends trying to find the solutions. Time just seems to get away from me.
Progress or Perfection?
Progress. I'm not about perfection. I'm about continuing to make things better. For me in my particular business it's about how do we create system processes so this becomes more efficient, more effective, allows us to do our work. We are never perfect, there is always room for improvement. Circumstances always change things, circumstances change, a lot of variables. It's about continuing to make progress. I'm in this position for such a time, when I'm gone somebody else is going to come in and see it differently. So perfection is not, to me, the most important, it about making progress, moving forward.
Who are your greatest influences?
Jesus Christ and the people who are closest to me. The people that I care the most about. My wife, my kids, my friends, it's the people that really know me. I typically think of this question like who's the person out there that you most respect and admire, that you want to be like but at the same time when we talk about influence it's the people that I surround myself with. I surrounded myself with the people that their thinking inspires me. The way they can see me for who I really am and give me truth. Those are the people who actually influence me the most.
If you could recommend one book what would it be?
The book that is not written yet. It's called Restoration, Relationships and Responsibilities. A Guide to Biblical leadership.
Who is going to write that book?
I am. I think there's so many good books. I think the most influential book I read was Good to Great. Jim Collins just really does a great job of identifying our purpose and our vision and really laser focus on what we do and why we do it. So that is one of the most influential books that I’ve read personally on leadership. One that I apply the most is John Maxwell's book Five Levels of Leadership, because it's really about developing leaders. The way it's written I think it's a simple book but the complexity comes when you apply it. Because I can enter and exit any stage of leadership at any time with any person. It's not just this linear passage. It's this ebb and flow of leadership and relationships with people. I've used that as a corner stone for my leadership and with working with my team.
favorite technology catching your interest?
We're in it everyday. I like to get away from technology. I'm not a gadget person. In the last three months I think people have learned the relational side of technology and how we can relate with people all over the world verses just what technology can do for me. I think for us and with the virtual education setting it's not about the gadget and what the gadget can do but it's how can we use the gadget to engage with one another and build meaningful relationships. In my case, have real learning taking place with students.
soapbox topic?
My soapbox topic would be personal responsibility. We talk about this a lot in men's ministry and my area of teaching is a lot of developing other men. I think it fits for everybody, we have to reject passivity and accept responsibility for the things that are in front of us. I think so often it's easy to have opinions and to think about things, to blame others, to judge others, but the bottom line is in order to make the world a better place we all have to accept the personal responsibility of doing our part. I think that would be the soapbox that I would continue to grow and develop.
how do you manifest that and live it?
I think we need to identify all the roles we live in life. For me it's a father, a husband, its a leader in the school district and in each of those entities I have responsibilities that are mine and I can't abdicate those responsibilities to other people. There is a difference between abdicate and delegate. As leaders we delegate a lot of things but we are still ultimately responsible for those things. If we abdicate we leave it to somebody else without any accountability or responsibility on our part. That means we cast our burdens one somebody else. For me, the way that I do that is continuously trying to understand what my responsibilities are and not be passive with those but make sure I am accepting responsibility. Even when I delegate, am I encouraging, am I following up, am I assisting, am I doing the things I need to do to make sure that person knows that what I delegate is ultimately still something that I am responsible for.
The interesting things about leadership is, there are thousand of books on leadership and they all have this different lens. I think it’s important for us to have values, I think it's important for us to learn leadership, but I don't think people can just learn leadership. You have to experience it. You have to have the responsibilities. You have to have the conflict. You have to have problems. You have to have the things in front of you to be able to mobilize people to accomplish a goal, a vision, a mission. I can't teach somebody how to do that. I can give them skills and I can teach them aspects of it, but every situation is going to have some variable in there that makes it different. The only way you can do it is to do it. My wife would like me to quite doing it. She says can't we just take a class without you being the leader.
To learn more about Randy Rodriguez and Michigan Virtual Charter Academy, check out their website @ https://mvca.k12.com/
Or
To meet Randy personally, join him for one of our BLConnect events