Meet Hamilton public school board’s first female education director

New school year, new education director at Hamilton's public board.

Sheryl Robinson Petrazzini, who comes to the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) with years of experience in the public school system and a passion" for education, started the new role on Aug. 17. She is the board's first-ever female director.

I'm excited for this opportunity," she said. I'm gathering lots of information ... and looking to the future about what a new vision might be."

The Spectator sat down with Robinson Petrazzini days into her tenure to discuss her 30-year career, pandemic recovery and her first encounter with snow as a newcomer to Canada decades ago.

Answers have been edited for clarity and length.

Q: Tell us about yourself.

A: I have been an educator for 32 years. I started my career in Winnipeg as a teacher and taught there for three years before moving to the Toronto area to teach at boards in York and Scarborough. I have teaching experience from kindergarten to Grade 12, and have taught French immersion and in English.

I then served as a school principal for 10 years, as well as a centrally assigned principal responsible for school improvement, equity and principal coaching. I've also had responsibilities for different curriculum areas, such as English literacy and early years. More recently, I was a superintendent in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), as well as an executive superintendent, where I was responsible for about 136 schools.

I was born in Jamaica and immigrated to Canada when I was eight years old. Another really important part of my identity, obviously, is that of being a wife and a mother. I have two adult daughters, one is in Ottawa and the other one, coincidentally, is actually in Hamilton. When we heard that there was a director position in Hamilton, we kind of joked between us, Wouldn't that be funny if ...'. It's no longer funny to her because I am now here.

Q: You speak English, French and Spanish. How did you become trilingual?

A: I'm someone who learned French through core French. I was not a French immersion student, but I had such incredible teachers and I really took to it. I ended up doing a specialization at university in French and English. When I had my own children, I actually decided to speak French to them at home, so they're also trilingual.

I learned Spanish through my husband and his family because my husband's from Argentina.

Q: What are three things you learned as a teacher that you've taken with you into leadership roles?

A: No. 1, whatever role you are in, we have to place students at the centre and remember that all that we do is to support student learning, achievement, well-being.

The second thing is the importance and the power of relationships. Building relationships with students, with staff, with community is what gets us through the good times, it's what gets us through difficult times. We want our schools to be places where everyone, students and staff, can bring their authentic selves.

The third thing is the power of public education. Throughout my career, I've worked with such diverse learners. Students come with such varying strengths and needs, and really taking the time to learn who the people are that are in front of you so that you can best support their needs. We also have to think about what are the strengths of our staff, what are the needs and how can we best support.

Q: What is a memorable moment in your career and why does it stand out?

A: I'm going to go really, really far back to 1993 when I was leaving Winnipeg. All of the students in the Grade 7 to 9 school made a circle around me and sang Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson." I went to the ugly cry. I will always remember that.

Q: What is an accomplishment you're proud of from your most recent job as TDSB executive superintendent?

A: I do have a memory of a very tragic incident involving the passing of a student, and being able to support the superintendent, doing more than one personal visit with the family and being beside the mother who had lost their child and holding her hand, not needing to say anything but just expressing that the school board was behind the family. I take pride in the fact that I really do my best to support others.

Q: What lessons have you learned as an educator during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how will you use them going forward?

A: We've learned a lesson about our strength, about our endurance, our flexibility, our adaptability. We've learned the importance of teaching and learning with technology, but we've also learned the importance of those human relationships and that those tools of teaching with technology are really important for advancing the curriculum and curriculum expectations, but at the heart of education is relationships.

Also, the importance of focusing on mental health and well-being while we continue to support students in achieving the outcomes laid out in the curriculum. It's not one or the other. We've always known that as educators, but the pandemic obviously forced us to be more intentional and explicit around the supports that we offer to students and families.

Q: What are some of the first tasks on your list when it comes to supporting students this fall?

A: We're focused on mental health and well-being, we're focused on using the strengths and the capacity of our staff to support mental health and well-being, but also the recovery. In our recovery, we are focused on and thinking about students' learning, but we're also thinking about leadership. We've been in a place of having to lead in a very different way. It's been reactive, it's been very health-and-safety focused. But we are really trying to move to a place where we're really focused on learning.

Q: You bio emphasizes a commitment to Indigenous rights, equity and inclusion." Tell us about how you plan to elevate marginalized groups at the public board?

A: This is one of my passions as an educator. As a racialized person, I have experienced exclusion and racism and so I have that lived experience. I have a personal recognition that Indigenous Peoples are the first peoples of this land.

We know that Sept. 30 is National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. It's wonderful that we talk about it and we have posters and we have pins and all of these things, but we also have to find ways to ensure that the spaces we create demonstrate that commitment and that we move from performative to actually embedding Indigenous education into the curriculum and into the culture of the schools.

Q: Tell us about starting school as a newcomer to Canada.

A: I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Cool Runnings," but I literally had that experience. I came from Jamaica to Winnipeg in December. I was so excited because there was so much snow and I wanted to touch it. It was the first time I'd ever seen snow. I ran through the airport doors and I ran back in. It was so cold. That was my first experience in Canada.

Being in school was different because of the language. English is the official language in Jamaica, but I was also raised in the country and we spoke Patois. It was a different experience than someone who's raised in the city. I remember that feeling of not being quite in place. I remember what that felt like. And that's also something that drove me as an educator is really finding out your students' experiences. What did they come with, and what were their experiences before they came to us?

Kate McCullough is an education reporter at The Spectator. kmccullough@thespec.com