While she says she hasn’t made gender an issue in her 23-year career, Cheryl Champ has forged some new paths as a woman in education.
Before she started as the Sewanhaka school district’s assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction in 2012, Champ was the first female principal in the history of Westchester County’s Lakeland High School.
“I guess I feel like I’ve been able to bridge whatever gender gap, or glass ceiling, whatever you want to call it — whatever gap may have existed,” Champ said.
The Town of Hempstead last week recognized Champ’s work to create new paths for Sewanhaka students by giving her a Pathfinder Award, an annual honor for outstanding women in nine different fields after Sewanhaka Superintendent Ralph Ferrie nominated her.
Champ hopes the distinction shows girls they can “rise to any level of success that they want,” she said.
At the same time, she said, her broader mission as an educator is to expand access to “a rich and rigorous curriculum” for all students — regardless of ability, language, gender or any other category — in pursuit of social justice.
“If we can change barriers, remove barriers in the structure of schooling, that’ll hopefully make a more just society as students leave our high schools with more opportunities than they would have had before,” Champ said.
Champ came to Sewanhaka in 2012 after several years as a high school principal and middle school assistant principal. She taught music classes in North Carolina, South Carolina and upstate New York before that, she said.
She was looking to move into a central administrative position, she said, and Sewanhaka looked like a perfect match for her background in secondary education and administration. The diversity of the student body also attracted her, she said.
“I got to work alongside some really good administrators (as a teacher), and I saw how good leaders could have a broader impact than just on the classroom full of students that I impact,” Champ said. “The ability to do that — to make schools better for more kids — really is what motivated me to want to get the degrees and the certifications so that I’d be able to move up into the positions.”
Sewanhaka’s elimination of “ability grouping” for seventh-grade students is one way Champ has tried to expand opportunities for students, she said.
Starting this year, all seventh-graders entered advanced classes rather than separate classes based on apparent academic ability in sixth grade, Champ said, giving them more exposure to rigorous work before deciding how to proceed through high school.
As a result, the district will have about 300 more students in advanced eighth-grade classes next year, Champ said, with more expected over time.
“What we find now is that students are rising to the occasion,” she said.
The district has supported this and other shifts, and teachers have “taken up the challenge,” Champ said.
Giving Sewanhaka teachers and students iPads in the coming months will also provide tools to meet that challenge, she said.
Champ came to Sewanhaka soon after the introduction of Common Core standards, which remain a subject of national debate.
The district has taken an “organic approach” to implementing the standards, Champ said, letting teachers create their own curriculum around them. That’s helped the district strike a balance between following state guidelines and maintaining local control to do what’s best for students, she said.
“We really wanted to put our trust in them as professionals to design the curriculum and the resources, and to move us forward,” Champ said.
Sewanhaka has never considered Common Core test scores when selecting students for advanced classes, Champ said, and has respected the wishes of parents who opt out of the tests.
The district, like others, will continue to grapple with Common Core implementation and the state-mandated tax levy cap, Champ said; but she’s still glad to be in a district working with students who are learning about themselves.
“There’s always something happening here,” she said.
