Professional Experience 3

For this professional experience I chose to interview and Abraham de

Villiers, an Assistant Principal at the Alain Leroy Locke College Prep Academy, a
Green Dot Charter School in Watts, CA. This was not initially a planned to be a
professional experience, but merely a visit to a school that intrigued me. Abraham is
currently a Doctoral candidate at Pepperdine University and we met at a Pepperdine
career symposium. He invited me to visit his at his school and although I very much
wanted to do so, it was going to be logistically difficult since I live 325 miles away.
However, after researching the school and the Green Dot Charter School philosophy,
I felt it was an opportunity I could not pass up. Furthermore, the history of the
school and the fact that it was created after the Watts riots, made it all the more
appealing to visit.
I took a Friday off from my school and coordinated my visit with our
weekend class at Pepperdine. Abraham met me at the entrance to the school, and I
was let into what appeared to be a locked campus. Not an unfamiliar experience to
me based on my schools location! Abraham explained to me that the school was
divided into four separate grade level academies and that classes and students
remained within their own area of the school. This made a great deal of sense since
it essentially created smaller schools within a school. He added that it is a college
prep academy and the goal is to inspire and prepare all students to have the
opportunity to attend college.
As Abraham showed me the campus, and explained the operations, I was
pleasantly surprised to see an extremely orderly campus, polite and well-behaved
students, and staff that seemed to be very much a part of a team. Abraham was
exceptionally courteous and friendly to everyone he encountered, despite his full
plate. It was evident that his students and staff not only respected him, but also
sincerely liked him. I was surprised and quite fascinated when Abraham told me
that unlike other charter schools that receive students voluntarily attend, his school
takes in all the students that would attend based on where they reside just as if it
was the a public school.
This experience was valuable for me since Charter schools are not common
in my area and being able to see how a seriously failing public school can
legitimately transformed was inspiring. It was valuable for me to see how Green
Dots innovation can work, especially in a school that had previously been regarded
as unsafe and failing. I learned that effective leadership and the desire to meet the
needs of all students could change a school. Being able to see it firsthand was
incredible.