Echoes of the Pandemic: Former Principal Paula Wilkins talks leadership, resilience through crisis

Five years ago, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Chief Academic Officer Paula Wilkins was faced with one of the biggest questions of her career: How do you keep a school afloat through a pandemic? 

Back then, she was the principal of Cook Literacy Model School, which predominantly serves a socioeconomically disadvantaged population. Wilkins says in the years before COVID, her staff had been working hard to improve performance metrics but faced an entirely new set of challenges when school closures began. 

In this installment of our series Echoes of the Pandemic, she explains how teachers stayed connected to their students, the hurdles they were forced to overcome, and the lessons she still carries with her. 

Interview Highlights:

On fostering community in isolation:

“It was this whole piece of the world as we know it had shifted. I think what was really big for me was, how do we create an environment of connection when we can't be connected? We had exceeded growth. We had come off of every state low-performing list. But it was no longer about that. It was really about, how do we connect as a community. How do we let families know we care?”

On students returning to classrooms: 

“Many of them were still very disconnected. They had no stamina to go back to school as they had known it to be before, and some of the behavioral pieces were heightened even higher because many of the children had no parental supervision. They were literally adults at home. And so you're going to tell someone who's been an adult taking care of things at home ‘Now you have to follow rules, here's the expectation’? It was tough.”

On how the pandemic shaped her perspective on leadership:

“I think I experienced my own trauma, but I don't think I processed it until I left. It was that whole like, keep going, keep going, keep going. And when I shifted to a new role, I think I felt that weight that I had been carrying and I didn't have it in the same way, but I felt like I still have a responsibility. And so where I sit now in my position, I'm always thinking about the schools that have such high needs, and how do I make better decisions that support those schools, and really think about the needs of those schools. That's a lens that I carry, and I think it's really important.”

*Editor's note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Music featured in this story was composed and performed by Adam Bennett.