Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 29, 1990 TAG: 9003290643
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MARGARET CAMLIN NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"He doesn't like recognition," a teacher said of McCoy, who's been principal at Harding Avenue Elementary School since it opened in 1973. She and other staff nominated him on the sly because they thought he might protest.
Montgomery County's chambers of commerce started the Excellence in Education Award this year. An anonymous committee chose the school principal over seven other nominees.
Loyalty to McCoy runs thick among the school's staff members, who don't hesitate to say why he is so appreciated and admired.
"He doesn't dictate rules to you," Pat Cross, a third-grade teacher for 13 years, said while taking a short break in the school's open, airy library. "He works with you and treats you as a professional."
Susan Simmons, a teacher aide, says she's most impressed by the way children act around him.
"Children just go up and hug him - they just cling to him, and that says it all in my book," she said.
Teachers say the school is like an extended family - the nurturing, supportive kind of family.
"I don't feel like I'm going to work, I feel like I'm going to a second home coming here," said Joselle Edwards, the school's physical education teacher.
McCoy is the kind of boss with whom you can talk about most anything, says second-grade teacher Mary Biggs. If McCoy asked her to change her teaching style "I would do it without even asking why," she said.
McCoy's management style is one that business leaders have encouraged for years, said Phyllis Albritton, a broker for Wheat First Securities who is co-chairwoman of the education committee of the Greater Blacksburg and Christiansburg/Montgomery County chambers of commerce.
"He really respects his teachers and his children," Albritton said. "He's not a Type-A leader; he's a consensus-building leader."
This management approach does not come naturally for some. "You have to be very secure," Albritton added, "to respect others and let them co-lead with you."
McCoy's most important quality is his ability to relate well to children, said several parents who supported the nomination with written statements.
"He is calm, patient and encouraging even when responsible for the discipline of a child," said Cherry Pelt, the school's PTA president.
"He can be found at a PTA skating party helping a beginner, playing baseball with third graders, serving ice cream to the fourth graders, or calming a kindergarten student on his first day of school."
And, indeed, when a reporter arrived at Harding, McCoy was consoling a little girl in the front office and applying a Band-Aid to her scraped hand.
Heidi Schroeder, a fourth-grader, remembers the principal stepping in to help her in a crisis.
"When I chipped my tooth, he calmed me down because I was screaming and yelling," she recalled. "I was so panicky because I ate part of my tooth."
The teachers who put together a nomination packet had to find out McCoy's accomplishments by word of mouth; he doesn't keep a curriculum vitae on hand.
He'd have to be sick with a fever of 106 before he would talk about himself and his responsibilities in the community, quipped Barbara Crockett, a fifth-grade teacher.
Charlotte Sellers, an instructional supervisor, said she literally stumbled onto the fact that McCoy served last year on a legislative task force studying early childhood and day care programs.
McCoy has served on the county board of social services, as booster president for Blacksburg High School, as the director of Christian Camp in Craig Springs, and as chair and board member of the division of overseas ministries.
His method of recruiting and employing parent volunteers was a model for PTAs throughout the New River Valley for years, according to the chamber's Albritton.
McCoy initiated what is known by educators as "flexible scheduling" in the school's library. This is a new guideline of the American Library Association, but Harding is only elementary school in the county to follow it for all pupils. Two other schools are piloting it this year for older children.
Flexible scheduling means children can use the library whenever they need it - from the minute they get to school to the time they leave, rather than once a week at a pre-arranged time.
"When I asked Gary how he had come to such an arrangement . . . he responded that he did not think of himself as ahead of everyone else," Charlotte Sellers said. "`It just seemed to make sense and be what was best for the kids,'" Sellers said he told her.
Across the nation, reform-minded educators have called for a shakeup in the way schools are typically run. They say school administrators should relinquish some of their authority and pass it on to teachers.
They say teachers should have the freedom and autonomy to make important decisions - not just for their own classrooms, but for the entire school, and that they should be treated as professionals.
"It's called `site-based management' and it's been happening here all along," said Edwards, the physical education teacher.
McCoy "treats us as equals. We're allowed to make our own decisions . . . and that leaves us open to want to make the school a special place," she said.
McCoy flinches at all the praise heaped upon him. In fact, he agreed to be interviewed for an article only after being told it would focus more on the school than him.
And he gives full credit to his teachers and volunteers for the school's positive climate. He was completely taken aback by the chamber award, he said.
"It really kind of humbles you to think they think that much about you to do that."
by CNB