Robert Lindley, the new principal of Siloam Springs High School, is working to help students find success after high school -- a goal that looks different for each individual.
"Students haven't changed, but the way our world operates has changed," he said. "Social skills, technology -- that requires us to take a look to see what is in the best interest of our students in order to create avenues for success in life after high school."
Lindley is one of several new administrators in the Siloam Springs School District. He was hired to replace former principal Anne Martfeld in July.
He has 31 years of experience in education, including 16 years as an administrator. The first two-thirds of Lindley's career was spent in northeast Arkansas, where he began as a health, social studies and physical education teacher, and coached football, girls basketball, baseball, volleyball and track before becoming a principal.
Most recently, he has served as the assistant principal at Rogers High School and assistant principal at Springdale Har-Ber High School.
Lindley is part of a family of educators. His wife, Audra "Cissy" Lindley, is principal of Springdale Southwest Junior High, and his two daughters-in-law are elementary school teachers in the Bentonville and Springdale school districts. His two sons work as computer engineers.
Lindley said he had already heard that Siloam Springs is a progressive school district with a dedicated and committed staff when the high school principal position became available. Even though the search process for a new principal was just a week long, a total of 16 people applied for the position and five were interviewed.
"I just happened to be at the right place at the right time and I'm just fortunate to be here," Lindley said. "I appreciate the district had faith in me."
In the past three weeks, Lindley said he has learned the reports he heard about the district are true.
"The teachers are committed and dedicated to student achievement unlike any other place I have been. ... The questions they ask, the comments they make, tell me this is truly a place for kids to come and we have student's best interest at heart," he said.
As a leader, Lindley said he sees himself as someone who walks alongside staff members as they all work together to educate young minds.
"I am a servant leader," he said. "I don't believe in top down mandates. I would rather have collaborative discussions versus telling people what to do. I want to be alongside them, I want to be able to listen. This is a tough profession -- anyone who says teaching is easy has never been in the education or teaching field."
Lindley's philosophy of education is to take students where they are and move them to the point they can be successful, whether that means increasing their knowledge of course content or their soft skills so they are better at working with others. Setting students up for success after high school looks different for every student, he said.
Siloam Springs has a strong career and technical education program. In the past, career and technical fields sometimes had a black eye because students were not going to college, Lindley said.
"That is no longer the case. ... Those kids have opportunities to go work for some major companies in our community and in our region that will pay for their college, that will train them," he said. "It's a wonderful opportunity as well as going the other direction to students who are strictly going to a four year college."
Lindley said he doesn't plan to make many changes in high school in the coming year other than implementing professional learning communities for teachers.
"You won't see a lot of changes in our daily operation with the exception of collaborative time with our teachers," he said. "We have set up a system for them to get together and meet where they can identify strengths and weaknesses and what students need on an individual basis."
Professional learning communities will allow teachers to dive into best practices and strategies, and will involve conversations about how to help each individual student be the best they can be, he said. The communities will focus on four guiding questions -- what they want students to learn; how are they going to know if students learned it; what they are going to do for students who didn't learn it; and what they are going to do for students who did and need to go deeper.
"My belief is all students can learn at high levels," he said. "What I also believe in is that they don't necessarily all learn the same way and they don't always learn at the same pace."
Outside of school, Lindley enjoys playing golf, spending time with his wife hiking or walking, and watching the Razorbacks.
"I appreciate this whole community being so welcoming, just the people you meet on the streets, starting to get to know a few here and there, and definitely the teachers here, they have been very, very welcoming," he said.
General News on 08/14/2019