The student news publication of Libertyville High School

Dr. Scott in a new light

February 19, 2015

Dr.+Marina+Scott+%28laughing%29+brings+her+personality+to+her+job.

Photo taken by Maria Thames, edited by Korina Valenzuela

Dr. Marina Scott (laughing) brings her personality to her job.

 

When one imagines a principal, they tend to picture a strict, dull educator who’s all about discipline, or a friendly person who gets to attend athletic events with no real obligations.  Despite these common assumptions, principals have interests and personalities, as any person does, and their job can be quite difficult at times; they are not all fun and games.  With a school as big as LHS, many students are not exposed to the real Dr. Marina Scott, the one who enjoys sewing and is a certified yoga instructor, the one who is also a thoughtful and hard-working person.

 

Background

 

Dr. Scott, the oldest of three children, was born in Germany and emigrated to Chicago at age 5. She grew up in Franklin Park, Ill., near Linden High School.  In high school and college, she was actively involved in running track, along with participating in tennis and gymnastics. Apart from sports, Dr. Scott enjoyed sewing, which her mother (who was a seamstress) taught her.  This creative passion would eventually play a part in her career choice.

 

“I taught family and consumer sciences when I taught, so I taught mainly fashion and then child development so I started teaching that, but even before that, my mom was a seamstress. I can remember being a little kid and [being] under the sewing machine with all the dress fabric.  So she taught me to sew,” explained Dr. Scott.

 

In college, Dr. Scott started to develop her love for education.

“I went away to college and I was running too aside from going to school, I was running track.  And as part of that we worked with younger athletes to get them interested.  That coaching piece kinda got me interested with working with people.  Also when I started studying art and fashion, specifically fashion, I noticed in part-time jobs what I liked the best about creating fashion was the reaction people had to it, so I like the people connection with it so I think you can figure out pretty quickly if you need to be in a people profession or something where you’re more isolated and working on your own,” she said. “Although I liked both both aspects about that, I enjoyed the connection with people best and this offers a lot of connection with a lot of people.”

Dr. Scott received a Bachelor of Science degree in Family and Consumer Sciences Education from Illinois State University.  She attended Northern Illinois University and also has a Master of Science in Textiles and Fashion Design as well as a Master of Science in Administration.

She later attended Loyola University in Chicago and obtained her Doctor of Education in Curriculum and Instruction.

 

Dr. Scott has two kids, a son and a daughter, who both live in Chicago.  Education runs in the family, as both her son and husband are teachers; they teach English and Physical Education, respectively.

 

Currently, both exercising and fashion/design are a part of her life.

 

However, according to Dr. Scott, her connection with fashion is more of a secondary thing compared to what it used to be.  She’ll mainly just alter things that she buys or occasionally make

curtains or redesign things at home.

“I still sew things.  Not as much as I used to.  I used to make everything I wore.  Almost everything.  So I don’t do that much anymore, more for my when my daughter went to dances, like you guys go to dances, every single dress I made.  That’s my favorite thing to design,” shared Dr. Scott.

 

 

Career

 

Since 1982, Dr. Scott has been working in the field of education.  Prior to working in District 128, she worked within Township High School District 211, originally teaching family and consumer sciences at William Fremd High School.  Eventually, Dr. Scott became assistant principal at both Fremd and Palatine High School (within the same district).  In her last four years before joining District 128, she served as the principal at Fremd.

 

In 2008, Dr. Scott became a part of the LHS/VHHS family, as the district’s associate superintendent.  However, this role would be short-lived as she would only last one year, but for a good reason.  As it turned out, there would be an opening for principal for the following school year and the school would need to find the right person to fill such a prominent position.   Dr. Scott, as associate superintendent, was involved in this process of recruiting people for the position.

“When the principal job came open, actually it was my job to help find candidates for that job and in that process, I realized that I missed being principal,” stated Dr. Scott.

With permission from the superintendent, she applied for the job of principal.

 

In July of 2009, Dr. Scott officially became the principal of LHS.

 

Life at LHS

 

Regardless of the school, a principal’s job is demanding, as there are many obligations that come with it.  Each day, a principal must interact with a variety of people.

On average, teachers typically work about 53 hours per week, according to an article from The Washington Post.  Dr. Scott, on the other hand, works anywhere from 60 to 80 hours per week, in her estimation.

While students are more than likely snuggled up in their beds at 4:30 in the morning, Dr. Scott is wide awake.

“I wake up at 4:30, I know that’s early, isn’t it?  It’s because I work out before school.  So on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I run with Mr. Kelly, our athletic director, and Mr. Albin, the assistant principal.  We run six miles,” stated Dr. Scott.  “On Monday and Wednesday, I do a spin class.  I’m always doing something in the morning because I have so many evening things [that] otherwise I wouldn’t get to do,” provided Dr. Scott.

 

To relieve her body of all the stress she already puts on herself by doing various exercises, Dr. Scott found a solution in yoga.  Besides physical benefits of yoga, she found that yoga could was free the  mind as well. Dr. Scott decided it would be beneficial to offer this experience for the staff, so she provides a 6 a.m. class on Friday in the gymnastics gym.

“I just started offering it just because I thought…we do so much damage to our bodies, with the running and the lifting and stuff, that the stretching is a nice balance so I really offered it for balance for people.  But in the end more and more people come for different reasons,” provided Dr. Scott.

Dr. Scott’s secretary and dear friend Mrs. Sandra Kruckman believes that yoga is a great opportunity for staff members to come together.  “It brings us together and gives us a commonality amongst each other.  We love being together and it gives us a bond we might otherwise not have,” stated Mrs. Kruckman.yoga

Everyday after her morning workout, the first thing Dr. Scott does is check her schedule and her email.

Dr. Scott’s schedule is always jam packed and is always changing; it’s filled with everything from teacher evaluations to send-offs.

While no day or week is ever the same for Dr. Scott, she frequently observes classrooms, attends administrative meetings, and constantly works with teachers.

Evaluating teachers on their performance is a main aspect of her job.  Dr. Scott will observe a teacher carefully for a class period and take down thorough notes.  Within a few days, she meets with the teacher to provide feedback.

“When you hear the word evaluation it sounds like I’m going to say this was good or bad, and write some things, but really, hopefully, what you’ll hear in our conversation is I already know he’s an awesome teacher so I’m gonna go into that lesson, and watch it of course for signs to affirm to him ‘that was great’, but also places to ask him questions and ‘how do you think that worked?’ ‘What might work better?’ So, growth can happen, no matter how long you’ve been here, and how good you are.  So that’s really the purpose of evaluation, is to help people grow, more so than measure,” explained Dr. Scott.

In addition to working with teachers, Dr. Scott is constantly working with students.

She will often meet with individual students, whether it be to give general support and feedback, to address a disciplinary situation, to acknowledge an accomplishment, or to work with those apart of student council, as they are the leaders of the student body.

“One of the first conversations I’ve had with Dr. Scott was last year in applying to go on the Student Council Exec Board, she interviewed me…This year, one of my roles as Student Council President is to represent our student body, and address concerns of my classmates. As an executive board, we’ve had multiple conversations with Dr. Scott,” stated Student Council President Cam Chen. “Specifically, one important topic we met to speak about was how to address tragedies. This year, unfortunately has been very tough, so we’ve met multiple times on how to address these situations to our student body. Another topic we’ve met for has been for our ‘Wake-up Wildcats’ video process. We gave her our input on what we wanted, and in return she gave us her ideas and gave us advice on where we should get help…Overall, she really is a great person to contact for our Student Council endeavors, as she is always open to listening to our ideas and sharing her opinion.”

Dr. Scott also plays an important role in student achievements, including the likes of Student of the Month and athletic “send-offs.”

On Feb. 2, she gave a brief, but thoughtful speech to the varsity dance team before they left for state, showing her support and acting as a pep leader.

“First of all, I want to explain the great theme that nothing is impossible. I have to tell you guys from the very first time I saw your team, I haven’t seen you compete in a competitive environment, the first time I saw you hit the floor in my heart I thought there is something really special about that routine. The costume first of all is unbelievable, you all look beautiful in anything, but you look really beautiful in that and then when you start dancing, I don’t know how the judges can see anything but that,” exclaimed Dr. Scott.

Dr. Scott often attends student activities such as sports games, plays, and dance competitions, to support the school, not because she is required to.

“I don’t feel like I’m working when I’m coming to see a play or going to an athletic event.  I mean if there’s people there doing the work and they needed me, of course I’m there and I would [help], but I’m supporting really,” said Dr. Scott.

Aside from all of the activity based aspects of her job that she enjoys, Dr. Scott also must deal with more serious situations.

“There are some things that are kind of crazy that I have to do sometimes, like if it’s [a] weird situation that a parent has brought up or…sometimes it’s difficult when you’re working with someone who’s not performing well on their job, that part is hard.  Or if you have a discipline situation or you know you have a consequence for somebody that they don’t like, whether it be [an] adult or student,” explained Dr. Scott.

More notably, she has to deal with incidents that concern the entire community.

“It was really difficult when we had the deaths lately, so things like that when you work in a big community like this, there’s things like that too, where if the community feels heavy weight, it’s kinda your responsibility to help people through that, provide resources to help people through things like that,” expressed Dr. Scott.  “Or if there’s a big snow, we get to call snow day…no (laughing), I don’t get to do that!”

Despite some of the hard aspects that Dr. Scott handles, she genuinely enjoys what she does.

“I like dealing with people.  You can see I have to deal with a lot of people.  I like the energy in the building, I like [students], I like going to events, I like working with teachers, all those things,” stated Dr. Scott.  “I think that it’s really important that you find a job that fits you well.”

 

Born to Lead

Many students at LHS do not know the real Dr. Marina Scott, due to the fact that she is involved with so many different aspects of the school and community, requiring her to take different roles in different situations.

“A principal at a school, especially a school as big as LHS, has a lot of different roles and for most people, they see the principal in one defined role because that’s their lens, that’s their viewpoint.  But a principal has to be, they have to be in some cases the pep leader and school spirit leader for the school.  At times they have to be the curricular leader for the school.  At times they have to be the main point of contact  for parents  They have to help out with athletics, they help out with fine arts”, stated assistant principal Mr. Ray Albin. “There are so many ‘hats’ that a principal wears throughout a day, a week, a school year and all of those vary and people see a principal at different times and so they think of, ‘well, I always see the principal as the person that’s doing this with athletics,’ and that’s mainly what they (students) see or think that’s all that the principal does and that’s not.  It’s such a big role and Dr. Scott just seamlessly goes back and forth in those roles.”

Dr. Scott is the type of person who prepares her schedule the night before and plans ahead.  She is known by fellow staff workers for being supportive, caring, aware, personable, positive, and a true leader.

“She’s very genuine and thoughtful.  She’s probably one of the most incredible people I’ve ever known, aside from her being principal, just as a person. She has the most positive attitude you can ever imagine about everything. She is just so balanced, she seems so balanced in everything she does,” stated Mrs. Kruckman.

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    Dave KovyAug 28, 2019 at 9:18 pm

    Not really sure how experience and degrees in textiles and home economics makes this person a savant in evaluation or understanding complex subjects.

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