COLUMBUS, Ind. — From a very young age, Susan Finke Scott knew she wanted to work in education.
“I can remember sitting in my classroom at St. Peter’s Lutheran School and thinking to myself, ‘I need to remember how this feels. I need to remember what the teacher did in this,’” she recalled.
Now, she is an assistant principal at Columbus North High School and the latest inductee into the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp.’s Education Hall of Fame. Scott began working in education in 1974.
Per award criteria, this honor is given to teachers, former teachers or administrators who have made “a noteworthy and extraordinary employment contribution to the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. which merits recognition for excellence.”
Scott said that it’s “humbling” to receive the Education Hall of Fame award because she knows so many people who deserve it.
“I feel like it’s a way to have a forum to represent all the hard work other people do, because no one gets to successful places without a lot of support,” she said. “And I’ve always had great support.”
She attributed her passion for education to both her own teachers and the broader community, both of which had an impact on her life.
“My mission with schools, in general, has been because I was raised in a community that was so caring and so supportive of me when I was growing up,” she said. “It made it really easy to come back to this community.”
Scott started her career in education by teaching English and Latin at Hauser Jr./Sr. High School. After five years there, she moved to North, where she taught English for five years, then worked in the dean’s office for five years and then moved into the role of assistant principal.
“Through all of that, my mission’s always been with kids who struggle, or kids that need a little extra help,” she said.
Scott said that one of the joys of working in education has been getting to connect both kids and adults with the resources they need.
“I always felt like the community has been so generous with us,” she said. “The community’s always been there for us. … Making all those connections for kids is always just a lot of fun for me, being raised here and knowing the people, watching students I’ve had be in charge of programming and being able to call them and say, ‘I need a little something.’ That’s always been fun for me.”
On the other hand, Scott said that one of the challenges of working in education is government oversight in regards to testing.
“It’s not a challenge in terms of the mechanics of it; it’s a challenge in terms of alignment with purpose,” she said. “It actually takes kids out of the classroom. It actually makes kids often feel like less than they are. And so you spend the rest of the year trying to build kids up and make sure they stay in the classroom. And so sometimes the compliance of testing is in conflict with the purpose of how we really want to educate kids.”
The last year has also brought difficulties of its own as schools adapted to the pandemic.
Scott, who enjoys attending athletic events and celebrating student achievements, said that it’s hard to watch students miss out on the certain parts of the high school experience that they’d been anticipating.
She said that the school is doing what it can to find ways to celebrate amid the pandemic, though it can be challenging to re-imagine events and celebrations.
However, Scott also noted that “education always embraces change.”
“There’s never been a time of more change,” she said. “We’ve changed instructional design. We’ve changed the tools we’re using. But every time you have a disruption like this, it’s an opportunity to improve.”
