Hyde wove career from art teacher to principal

Thirty-five years ago, Cloquet Area Alternative Education Program principal Connie Hyde would not have dreamed she would be retiring from one of the state's leading alternative learning centers, a school that sends staff and students to train their peers at other schools and which graduated its highest number of students (57) on Thursday.

The surprise is not that Hyde remained an educator. "I think I was born for it," she said. "You know how you play school with the neighbor kids? Nine out of 10 times, I was the teacher."

Rather, it would have been difficult to predict the path she followed: from elementary and junior high art teacher to assistant principal, then principal at three very different schools.

Hyde said it was natural to go from teacher to administrator.

"I was involved in a lot of different committees. I wanted to know how things worked, what was going on. And then it just kind of happened," she said, also crediting a female administrator who mentored her.

Along the way she worked several years on two million-dollar grants with teachers from Cloquet and Fond du Lac schools, integrating Ojibwe culture into core math and reading curriculum.

"We'd have elders and specialists educating us about Ojibwe culture and crafts," she said.

It wasn't so difficult with English, but math was more challenging. So they worked with a man named Running Horse, who taught them "wigwametry" for a week. "He taught us how to take the geometry standards into building our own wigwam," she said. "That was a lot of fun and hands-on."

And the experiences and education just built on one another.

Like the time when she was vice principal at Cloquet High School, and started crocheting with the boys at the detention table she was supervising.

Hyde had "terrible social anxiety" when she was younger, and always had a bag of crocheting supplies with her after finding that keeping her hands busy also quietened her mind. As an art teacher in Arizona early in her career, she learned giving kids something repetitive to do with their hands - "moving, touching, doing," she said - helped calm students with ADHD or behavioral issues.

"One side of the brain can focus on that, while the other side focuses on whatever they're doing in school," she said.

Years later, she found herself crocheting with a group of boys one might not expect to embrace the fabric arts. At least one boy had learned how to crochet from his grandmother. Soon all of them were crocheting.

"That was pretty cool," she said with a chuckle.

After eight years as assistant principal at Cloquet High School, Hyde got the job as principal at Washington Elementary, where she worked for three years before becoming full-time principal at CAAEP nine years ago.

"This is a very good district. The level of educators is fantastic," she said. "The alternative learning center is just an integral part of that for students who need a smaller environment, smaller setting."

'Small but mighty'

With classrooms located in the upper floor at Cloquet's Garfield School, CAAEP is a credit-recovery program created to serve students from 12 school districts. The school can take 80 high school students and up to 10 junior high students.

"We're a very small staff," she said. "But like we say, 'we're small but mighty.'"

State statute lists why kids can transfer to an alternative learning center. Reasons range from being a parent or pregnant, homeless, if a parent passed away in the last a year, or if they've had significant medical or mental health issues leading to lost time in the regular school, among others.

"So a child just couldn't call up and say, 'You know what, I heard it's fun over there, I want to go there,'" she said.

Since the school started in the 1980s, they've fought against the perception that it was undesirable.

Adopting a restorative practices philosophy throughout the entire school has been a game changer, Hyde said.

Restorative practices involve collective responsibility for helping each other get along, helping each other repair harm and for supporting each other when someone is hurt. It is the opposite of "zero tolerance" and more punitive discipline.

In her first year at the CAAEP, Hyde said they had 65 out-of-school suspensions.

Then the school adopted restorative practices in 2016-17 and the next year they were down to 11 suspensions. Now they don't even do five a year.

"Restorative practices is the foundation of what we do here," Hyde said. "So kids are trained, staff are trained, and if parents want training, we can do that."

She points out how quiet it was that afternoon, with students in the classrooms.

"The kids want it to be a calm place," she said. "And they help keep it that way."

Hyde is proud of the school, its staff and its students.

"We're a big deal outside of Cloquet," she said. "The State Department [of Education], the people and the restorative practices and stuff always send people to us. Because of the good things that we're doing."

Last year, four-year graduation rates at CAAEP hit 82.8 percent, up from 33 percent when Hyde started there in 2015-16. Hyde said they also have a larger number of students in postsecondary education options in school, no small feat for a credit-recovery program for students who are already struggling in school.

And for that reason, she feels fine about retirement.

That, and she's looking forward to spending more time with her husband, kids and grandkids, along with more opportunities for art and travel ... and crocheting.