At Mid Valley Elementary School, it’s the same occurrence every May, as dependable as the annual arrival of one’s birthday. Fifth graders flock upstairs to the dark and cluttered storage closets and unearth ancient pieces of cardboard and plywood. Back downstairs, volunteers take this motley collection of materials and transform it into the booths that make up the annual Mid Valley Carnival. There’s Putt Putt Golf, nothing more than a putter, a golf ball and a sloped piece of wood covered with artificial grass and drilled with a single hole. There’s “Go Fish,” consisting of a lone fishing pole, a painted sheet depicting the ocean, and a bucket of prizes kids can hook. There’s the Bean Bag Toss, and the most popular of all, Face Painting. Yet on a warm evening in May, children raised with iPads and Xboxes find these dozen or so booths just as entertaining as the high tech toys they’re used to.
For a few hours, the county allows the school to close off the road in front of our building, and the parking lot is cleared of cars. The empty pavement is soon filled with taco trucks, popsicle vendors, and old cafeteria tables. Over the course of the evening, hundreds of tacos will be consumed, along with snow cones and ears of corn. Music fills the air as The Cake Walk, a circuitous path made by drawing on the pavement with chalk, is populated with folks hoping to win a donated dessert.
What the Carnival lacks in sophistication is more than made up for by the incredible sense of community everyone feels. Grandparents visit with new babies and teachers share tacos with their students. Kids dress up in traditional Mexican outfits and perform dances for the crowd. High school students, many of them alumni of Mid Valley, volunteer to run the booths. When the Carnival is over, lots of folks form a clean-up crew that makes quick work of the mess.
The Mid Valley Carnival is over for another year. The booths are back in storage, and the popcorn machine has been cleaned and put away. While much remains the same, much will also change in the coming year. Fifth graders are moving on to middle school, and with them go their parents who have been vital to the school’s PTO. Several teachers, myself included, are leaving the school’s staff. And the fearless, creative leader of Mid Valley Elementary, Dennis McCauley, is retiring.
Dennis came to Mid Valley 11 years ago after a long career as a teacher and administrator working for the Reynolds School District in east Multnomah County. During the principal selection process, our staff reviewed Dennis’s resume and letters of recommendation, and interviewed folks from Reynolds about him. No one had anything but praise for Dennis. When he accepted the job at Mid Valley, the Reynolds community wept as we cheered.
Principals have a difficult, often thankless job. Among other tasks, they must balance budgets, attend to disciplinary issues, evaluate teachers and maintain their buildings. They arrive early, and often leave late, attending evening meetings on a regular basis. But aside from all the “have to” tasks Dennis has taken care of while principal, he has added his own long lists of “musts.” He personally built a ramp on a family’s home so their handicapped child could negotiate the home from her wheel chair. He helped an older boy, an alumnus of Mid Valley in danger of flunking out of high school, complete his senior project. He sat with children while they took their state assessment tests, his supportive, quiet presence essential to their success. When the kids finished the test, he played air hockey and one-on-one basketball with them to celebrate. He goes to the homes of consistently absent children and personally drives them to school. He walks the halls every day, greeting each and every student and staff member as though they are his best friends. He found the funding to provide enrichments activities for our students, and has trusted his staff, giving them the autonomy to teach their students as they know best. He has turned the school into a true community center, adding a pre-school and a satellite county health department clinic. And always, always, he has found opportunities to make kids smile, dressing up as everything from a leprechaun to Captain Kindness, from a cowboy to a super hero complete with phone booth. His costumes are a metaphor — they remind us all that, with effort and creativity, we can transform ourselves if we want.
Several years after Dennis became principal at Mid Valley, I was chatting with him about those unofficial interviews we had done with the Reynolds community. At the time, Dennis drove a red Miata, a flashy car that often turned heads. Several people in Reynolds had described Dennis as “that guy who drives the red sports car.” Soon after our chat, he traded his sports car in for a practical Prius. When I asked him about the vehicle change, he responded that he hoped to be remembered for the good work he did, not the car he drove.
He need not worry as he retires from Mid Valley. His legacy as an innovative leader, caring boss, and advocate for children is secure.
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