Dr. McGlamery retires after serving 47 years in education

Dr. Jim McGlamery

The driving motivation behind Dr. Jim McGlamery’s work in education remains the same today as when he left the U.S. Air Force as a young man to enter the field of teaching in 1965.

“I want to make a difference in the lives of children,” he says. “It’s like a calling. Teaching is one of those things where you deal in the nature of all things human, the good and the bad. Children live through all those problems and opportunities, and if you provide them with a strong foundation, they can address it all and move forward with a positive, constructive approach to life.”

McGlamery began his education career teaching middle school-aged children in the small, rural Ohio districts of Swanton, and then Bettsville. He met his wife, Gloria, a fellow teacher at Bettsville, and they married on Valentine’s Day in 1970. That year, they decided to accept an offer from the Lorain City Schools where Jim McGlamery interned as an elementary school administrator and then moved up to a district administrator position supervising state and federal grant programs. In 1979, McGlamery took on the challenging position of Director of Personnel and Labor Relations for the Lorain district. It was a tough time as McGlamery faced being lead negotiator during a difficult teacher strike while he and his wife raised three young children. In 1983, McGlamery became Superintendent of Schools in the Wellington City School District. He accepted the superintendent’s position in Upper Sandusky Schools in 1992 and retired from that position in 1995.

He decided to look for something slightly different and thought he’d enjoy being a school treasurer. He obtained his school treasurer’s license and filled an interim treasurer positions temporarily in Huron. McGlamery and his wife were contemplating an extended trip through Europe when the classroom beckoned once again and they learned of an interim principal’s position at Normandy Elementary in Bay Village in 1996. McGlamery applied and won the spot, not realizing at the time that he would remain in the position for 17 years.

Dr. McGlamery has been known to say, “Nothing great is ever accomplished in 40 hours a week,” and he has personally demonstrated the wisdom of that axiom through his many years in education. From the beginning of his teaching career, he continued his own education through years of evening and weekend classes, earning a Bachelor’s Degree in Elementary Education from Bowling Green State University, then a Master’s Degree in School Curriculum and Administration and later a Doctorate Degree in School Management and Curriculum from the University of Toledo. He continued his own quest for learning when he studied under W. Edwards Deming, the famous statistician and creator of a continuous improvement concept which McGlamery has applied in his professional work.

Still, the funding of education continues to be an interest of McGlamery’s, and he has taken a creative approach to securing funding for programs of importance to him by writing many successful grants and leading a number of initiatives to establish endowments for programs benefiting students and teachers. The most recent of these is the S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Academy set up to serve high-achieving middle school students with records of exemplary conduct at Bay Middle School. The program has expanded from serving one grade level to serving three grades in the past several years.

“What S.T.E.M. Academy does is take traditional classroom instruction into the real world so students see how that knowledge is applied,” he said. “Rather than just read about, for example, invasive species, students work with environmentalists and biologists in the field. Or they look at prosthetics with the scientist designers, but they take that further and talk with the patients who are actually using the devices. Traditionally, this applied kind of learning has taken place in university graduate level classes. It grips the minds of students in a positive way that cannot be achieved in the classroom. If these experiences are to be sustained, the program needs a stable funding source – endowments.”

As McGlamery considers the changes that have occurred in education over the course of his career, he sees much toward the positive. “Our culture has evolved in a direction of having more compassion for others, and I believe children are kinder and more respectful than they used to be. The change has been gradual, but because of a rising set of expectations and more transparency, I think we’ll continue to see more consideration and compassion for others.” He also said teachers are much better prepared and are entering the profession with more education and much better skills than 50 years ago.

Yet the continuing politicization of education is of great concern to him. “Every time the legislature is in session, public schools don’t know if they’ll be bankrupt, or what new set of rules will be applied to the detriment of children,” he said. He believes the continued loss of local control, centralizing more power into the state bureaucracy, leaves fewer options for local school boards who are closer to their own set of needs and possibilities. “There is an exorbitant cost to the unfunded mandates continually placed upon us.”

McGlamery plans to continue living in the area and to stay involved in education through the S.T.E.M. Academy, as well as through other enrichment programs he helped put into place in the Bay Village Schools. But there will be more time for hiking (he has hiked extensively on the Appalachian Trail, the Smokey Mountains and in the Rockies), for his three grandchildren, and perhaps for that long trip to Europe put off so many years ago.

What won’t change is that generations of Bay Village Schools children will always have fond memories of their early school days thanks to their principal, Dr. McGlamery, the kindhearted man who wore a special tie each day just for them, who often joined them for lunch (along with his little bottle of hot sauce), and who invented the school mascot, Norman Bee, so children would be less afraid of the bees that sometimes flew in to join them.

Karen Derby

Public Information Officer for the Bay Village City School District

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Volume 5, Issue 13, Posted 10:32 AM, 06.25.2013