Stanton District welcomes Strong

Stanton’s new principal has transitioned to her new leadership role within the district.
On Aug. 24, Tabor Strong officially began her tenure as principal, following the resignation of Katie Elwood last summer. Strong said she’s a native of Missouri but moved to the Southwest Iowa area following her marriage.
“I met my husband and moved up to Bedford while we were in college, and from there, we moved to New Market. We have two children. Tripp is six and my daughter Tulsi is getting ready to turn two. We love living in New Market,” said Strong.
Strong added that she initially went to school to begin a career in early childhood education.
“My passion early in life was preschool, kindergarten. I taught kindergarten for about five years. When I was done with that, I got an offer for a job as a school counselor in Bedford. I took that, got my master’s in school counseling, and did that for another five years, then decided that administration was the route that I wanted to get into,” stated Strong. “After working alongside principal Dana Nally in Bedford, I felt that it really showed that I have a passion for helping kids and helping families. I feel like my school counseling degree goes hand-in-hand with an administrative role. As a principal, you need that background in social, emotional well-being and mental health to work with a lot of the families that we see on a day-to-day basis within the school systems.”
Strong said issues with mental health are on the rise, and to have a little background in mental health helps break that ice with kids who are having a hard time in school. Later,  Strong achieved her master’s in administration and applied for the job here.
“I decided to take a risk and go for it. I heard about it on Teach Iowa. I asked my principal if she thought that that this was doable, as K-12 is a big role to take on, and she said yes. Although I applied, I was not actually expecting to even get an interview just because I have little experience. However, I also knew that working with kids and helping families and being a part of a small town was something that I wanted to be a part of and build a culture and work with families and work with colleagues that really had a passion for helping kids learn,” commented Strong. “When I interviewed here at Stanton, I felt like I was right at home when I walked in the door. I feel that family atmosphere. Everybody was really friendly.”
With Stanton having a four day school-week, Strong said that gives her time to catch up on paperwork and other things. Also, taking the job didn’t require her to uproot the family home.
“It’s only about a 30-minute drive from New Market. My husband and I talked about that. That’s a big change for us. Before, I was working right with my children and I was teaching my own child in the same building with me. We decided that was probably a good move to give our children some independence and letting them become their own individuals,” Strong said. “After I got the offer, that was the reason why I came here. As I said before, I felt right at home when I walked in the door.”
While she’s thrilled that things worked out the way they did, Strong said she was not expecting to get the job offer.
“I was utterly shocked when superintendent David Gute called one evening and offered the job. I was caught off guard. I’m one of the youngest here. When I walk into the room with the other members of the administration, I’m almost the youngest one in the room every time.”
Strong said pursing a career in education proved interesting, as she did not like school growing up.
“School was very hard for me. I was in Title services, on the border of special education services. I was the youngest in my class. When I got into high school, I started working at a daycare and realized that my passion was taking care of children. I actually started going to school for criminal justice thinking that I wanted to help troubled youth and do probation and parole with troubled youth getting out of college, but then I quickly realized that I wanted my own classroom and I wanted my own family, and I wanted to make those connections that you don’t really see on a day-to-day basis,” Strong said.
In fact, when she earlier took the school counseling job in Bedford, Strong said losing the classroom was the biggest struggle, but also became a great achievement.
“When you’re a teacher, you have 20 kids or a small class, and you spend the entire year with them, and you build those relationships. As a school counselor, I had 290 students that I had to build those relationships for, and so that was a really cool program for me to build from the bottom up,” Strong stated. “We did not have an elementary counseling program in Bedford when I started. I was able to add in some really great programs over there. We started a food pantry over there for families to come in and get free food, so that was big on my bucket list. We started planning family food nights where families would come in and do a bite at Bedford, and they’d come in and sample different meals that they can eat together as a family. I really hit the ground running with helping get more resources in the building for our elementary students. We pack our own backpack buddies now in-house. That was a big accomplishment for me when I left,”
While pleased to pursue the new role in Stanton, Strong admitted there were things she’d miss about her prior role in Bedford.
“After you build up all the great programs like we did in Bedford, you’re left asking the question of who’s going to take them on and make sure that they’re run like they’re supposed to? It was sad to leave Bedford. I have very close friends and family there, but I’m excited to take over here and make some new beginnings for our family,” commented Strong.
Since Katie Elwood left the district towards the end of June, Strong said she was able to have some overlap with her.
“In June and July, I was contracted for five days to come in and kind of make sure that that transition was going well. Before I started in August, I met with her. We met with the AEA to make sure all those services were still in place for our students, and she left the documents that she used from day to day to help make that transition easier. I also really relied a lot on staff this year to help guide this new chapter for our school district. It’s amazing how fast I have staff jump in and help when I don’t know what to do or when maybe I don’t do things quite like Katie did them. They share how it’s been done in the past, but then they also are open to new ideas,” Strong said. “When I came in the building as a new administrator, there are changes, and change can be very hard. But one thing about this staff is that they are very open-minded, and they’ve been great with new ideas, and they’ve given me new ideas. It’s really been a great connection for everybody. The transition has been very pleasant so far.”
As she continues in the school year, Strong said her main goal is to get the district’s data out there to families and students.
“One of the decisions we came up with for our goal this year was that our students don’t know what their test scores are compared to other districts. Our students don’t know what their growth is from the fall to the winter screener or the winter to the spring screener, or even just their growth throughout the whole year. We want to get that data out to districts and get it to the district as a whole. We want to be showing families and other people how great our district is and what our test scores look like so that other people can come to our district and see how amazing we are.”
Another goal this year will be that after the data is presented, the district and students will be able to then celebrate those successes.
“We’ve got a lot of celebrations in mind for our elementary students, such as tattooing the principal with fake tattoos and popcorn parties and things like that.  For our older kids, we are working on different incentives for them, maybe that means not having to come to school until a certain time depending on how well they’re doing. It’s really been eye-opening that our data is really good, but others don’t know our data,” Strong said. “We are also working alongside the AEA to help advertise how amazing our school is. They help post on Facebook for us. They make a lot of the flyers for Facebook for us. They’re revamping our website online, making sure that all of our staff is up there, and just really letting others know why Stanton is amazing and why you should come to school here.”
After spending so much time in the elementary field, Strong said it was a surreal experience to attend the day one pep rally and be introduced to all of the students for the first time.
“I’ve accomplished this amazing thing and these kids are looking up to me. Not only kids but adults too, they’re looking for me for that leadership goal. The pep rally was able to get the kids excited to be here. We introduced new staff and then our old staff. Some of our new students don’t know our old staff. One thing that we did that I thought was really unique is we had kids stand up that lived in Red Oak and a few from Villisca. That’s another amazing thing about the Stanton School is that there’s so many different areas that come to our school,” Strong commented.
For Strong, the most rewarding part of what she does is that she can help students see their potential and help them reach their goals.
“I have a lot of students that don’t come from the best home lives. When they don’t realize that potential in themselves but you help them realize their potential, big doors can open for them. It’s the the most amazing thing to see kids go from nothing to the most amazing individual because they realize their potential. It’s a big moment when that happens for them,” stated Strong. “Our theme this year is ‘You Matter’ and we’ll be making sure that everybody feels like they matter. We are going to be the best and we are going to be strong individuals and we’re going to show others why we matter.”