The power of the people
Editor’s note: This is one in a series of articles marking the 50th Anniversary of Hartselle City Schools.
No organization, no matter the power of its leadership, its charter documents, or its strategic plans achieves success without its people. Hartselle City Schools most certainly counts its teachers among its people, but 50 years of students are also to be counted.
HCS has had its share of high achievers such as Jodi Sandlin Singer who serves as deputy director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, and its share of talent such as the gospel group CAIN which won the K-Love 2021 Fan Award for Breakout Single, and its share of athletes such as Quanesha Burks who represented the U.S. at the 2015 Pan American Games and the 2017 World Championships in Athletics.
But the true standouts of Hartselle’s 50 years have been those who have stood out, or blended in, or shied away, or occasionally bowed-up in their own ways. Students whose academic performance far exceeds that of their peers challenge teachers to grow their own skills in order to outpace their learners. Students whose academic interferences are not sufficiently addressed by the strategies teachers already employ challenge those teachers to find alternatives. Both extraordinary athletes and those with less talent but an extraordinary love for the game challenge their coaches to channel those strengths into winning seasons. And in the mix of it all are those students who are just playing sports because they enjoy being part of a team or those achieving just enough academically to keep their parents reasonably happy or those attending school mostly for the time it gives them with their friends or the time it gives them in the one class they really look forward to each day. In short, it takes everything from everyone to grow anything intended to serve all. HCS is what it is because each and every student who sat at a desk contributed to that.
And here’s another thing. There are students who will graduate Hartselle High School after having attended Hartselle’s schools for 13 or even 14 years. There are faces those students have seen most every day for each of those years. And whether they real-ize it or not, their lives have been imprinted by the interactions they have had with those fellow students.
On the evening of Commencement, they will all throw their caps into the air to mark their accomplishment. They will look around at one another and smile. And though some of those students will go on to be friends for several more years, most of the students in the crowd will seldom or perhaps never see each other again.
But each of those school days marked by the tossing of that cap grew the student, and grew the teachers, and grew the school. Fifty years of Hartselle City Schools identity-building is better described as approximately 9,000 days of imprints. 9,000 days of interactions and experiences. And embedded within all of this is the very real power of the people.
