Pat Howard: Finding Wings

January 31, 2008

Striving and Thriving

Highland Meadow Montessori has three different buildings for classrooms and all three look like part of a farm home. They are white frame with red shutters and dark red shingles. The driveway is named “Miss Pat’s Way” after the school’s long-time Administrator and guiding spirit, Pat Howard.

Things at the school are done “Ms. Pat’s Way,” but not by coercion or command. Ms. Pat is petite—one of her teachers is four-foot-nine and towers over her—but people listen to her. She carries the power of a guiding vision, and she inspires other people to share her vision. When you hear the clarity of her vision and see how she has brought people together to make it real, it’s difficult to believe she had no idea where things were headed when she stumbled onto Montessori education.

Vision Starts With An Unmet Need

Things were set in motion when Pat’s husband at the time wanted to move to a rural community near Dallas-Fort Worth so he could keep horses on their property. The local school district had a weak reputation and the schools were far away, so she asked about private schools. She was told there were a couple of Montessori schools in a nearby town.

The closer school didn’t have any children the age of her older son so she drove to the larger school to check it out. The man who would teach her third-grader was wearing shorts, sandals, and a flowered shirt. Pat was relatively comfortable with rural Texas. She wasn’t very comfortable with flowered shirts and sandals.

With parent recommendations and a lot of faith she enrolled both her sons. The open concept and self-directed activities left her wondering for quite a while. Until she pulled up to the school one day and saw her older son on the roof.

He and another student were up there—on the flat roof—working on a math problem. They were exploring and discovering things to help explain the math concept. They were safe; the teacher knew where they were and they had borrowed a ladder. From that day on, her son loved math, and Pat loved Montessori.

Turning Necessity Into Opportunity

A few short years later Pat was going through a divorce and the school offered her a position as secretary at their small satellite in a developing community. She worked in exchange for tuition so her sons could stay enrolled in the main school. She started learning more about Montessori and started discovering her talents for leadership, organization, and motivation.

Supporters of the school found a property in a rural town on the edge of the suburbs and helped the school buy it. At the time there was a single home on it. Over the Christmas break of 1987 Ms. Pat, her two sons, a couple of volunteer dads, and a teacher who is still at the school, Ms. Marisa, packed up the school’s belongings in a horse trailer and moved everything to the little house.

The first day school was supposed to start back, there was a winter storm. This was fortunate for Pat, because it meant she had more time to put together the classrooms. They made shelves by painting cinder blocks and boards. She rolled up her sleeves and organized and arranged until the chaos settled into a manageable mess.

The school had about twenty-five students when it opened at the new location. Many parents volunteered to help with the tasks, like making classroom materials and continuing to transform the house into a school. A music teacher showed up, having just moved from Santa Fe, and was able to teach music and offer piano lessons. The universe was pitching in.

Sometimes Someone Else Sees Your Wings Before You Do

Soon after the teacher who had acted as director was no longer interested in the dual role. The school’s board asked Pat to consider the position. She was passionate about the Montessori philosophy and was invested in the school by then. It had become like a family to her and her sons through their upheavals. But she was scared by the responsibility of the position. She decided to trust the judgment of the directors and accepted the position, now earning a tiny bit of salary on top of free tuition.

Early days were very difficult because the school was still a small satellite. Pat would drive half an hour or more to get to the main school to pick up classroom and office supplies on a regular basis. People at the main school focused more and more on keeping the main location viable and gave little thought to the satellite. Pat focused more and more on a long-term plan of growth for her school.

A Big Vision And A Patient Plan

With a group of dedicated parents she was able to negotiate a separation from the original school. In 1990 they founded a separated non-profit corporation and signed a contract to purchase the building and some of the land. Pat got very busy. During the day she ran the school and met with people and slowly filled it to capacity based on referrals, word of mouth, and her personal presence in the community. At night she was taking classes to get certified in Montessori education.

With the classes full, she went to the board to share her long-term vision. She could see what the campus would be like in the future, with additional buildings for additional classrooms and activities. She encouraged them to start the first stage. They agreed to get a small loan and build an additional building on the property with two more classrooms. The classes filled within two years. They added a class for older children (9 through 12) and hired a former teacher from the original school to help direct that class three days per week.

The Second Stage Follows Quickly

By 1994 the original expansion was paid off and Pat had a vision for Stage 2. This would require a higher level of financing. Large national corporations were buying up local banks so her father suggested she find a small-town bank nearby. Driving to one location, she got lost and pulled into Justin, which was mostly a farming and ranching town at the time. She found a local bank, put together her information and got up her courage, and finally drove back out. She pitched her idea to a bank vice-president who agreed to consider. Two days later he showed up at the school with the bank president. She laid out her full dream to them, they listened, and a week later told her “yes.”

The second addition was a larger building with two large classrooms for the elementary classes. With the classrooms completed, a main part of Pat’s vision was realized. The school could have children from eighteen months through twelve years. And the classes filled up.

Striving—It’s Always Part Of The Process

There were bumps and bruises along the way. People with a different vision tried to influence the board to go in a different direction. They wanted to take control of the school and tried to get other parents and teachers to go along.

But Pat laid out her vision for the school and shared her heart with all the parents and staff. She let them know how much she values the fact the school as a second home to many students and a place of connection and community for many parents. She explained why she wanted a smaller school and how believed the children deserved comfortable relationships with their teachers and staff over several years. They overwhelmingly supported her and committed to continuing her vision.

Oh, It Gets Better!

Pat had a high school sweetheart named Cecil. He went into the Navy and she went her own way after high school. He was also a friend of her brother so he attended her father’s funeral. They started talking again. He was recently divorced and had just retired from the Navy. She had stayed single for years. He was finally able to live wherever he wanted, so pretty soon he decided to move near her.

They got married nearly ten years ago. He’s part of the school family now, showing up to help out at all the school activities. He’s also the handyman—he’s a retired Seabee who’s constructed embassies so building maintenance is a breeze for him!

The Vision Realized

With the first expansion paid off and the second expansion paid down, the board agreed it was time for the final stage of the campus expansion. In the spring of 2006 graduation was held in a brand new gym at the school. The building has a stage for the school’s programs and parent events. It has a room for music and a room for other enrichment activities. It even has a serving kitchen for school-wide family events. It’s the building Pat has been planning for nearly twenty years.

Pat says people have told her, “If you owned that school you’d be set now.” She doesn’t see it that way. She doesn’t think it could have happened as a for-profit business. The non-profit corporation is the vehicle that carries the vision forward. It has taken many parents volunteering in lots of different ways over all the years the school has been open to help bring the vision to fruition. It has been possible, and it has survived through some lean and uncertain times, because other people committed their time, energy, and money to a long-term dream.

Trusting In Wings
Sometimes you’ve got to jump off cliffs and grow wings on the way down.
~Ray Bradbury

The directors from the original school who asked Pat to take the job of administrator were right. She was the perfect person for the job. I doubt they realized at the time how much she would accomplish, but they knew she would protect the dream and move it forward.

Pat didn’t know, when she first started looking for a school for her sons, where it would lead her. She didn’t know what was ahead when she started working as a secretary in exchange for tuition. When she accepted the position of administrator, I know she was afraid, but I think she glimpsed the vision. She had ideas about what needed to be done. She just doubted if she was the one to pull it off.

She took the leap anyway, and now she is soaring.

Posted in Striving and Thriving, Zine 4: January 2008