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By Erika Anderson, Staff Writer
ATLANTA—As a student, parent and teacher in archdiocesan
schools, Patty Childs has played many roles.
Now she is ready for a new one, as principal of St. Jude the
Apostle School.
Childs will succeed Barbara Poole, who will retire as principal at
the end of the school year. Poole has been principal of the kindergarten
through eighth-grade school for eight years.
Currently a resource teacher at St. Thomas More School in Decatur,
where she also attended kindergarten through eighth grade, Childs graduated
from St. Pius X High School in Atlanta in 1977. She earned a bachelor’s
degree in education from Mercer University in Atlanta and spent her first eight
years as a teacher at Columbia Elementary School in DeKalb County. During this
time she earned her master’s degree in elementary education from Mercer.
In 1989, Childs returned to her alma mater, St. Thomas More, as a
kindergarten teacher. She said that she felt blessed to return to the school.
“It’s just an experience not many people have, to come
back full circle, to come back to the place that was so nurturing and so
important to me when I was young,” she said. “It’s closure of a
full circle.”
Because STM does not have an assistant principal, Childs slowly
began acquiring administrative tasks. With the encouragement of Gail Msezane,
STM principal, Childs enrolled in the University of Georgia Educational
Leadership Program.
During her 1998-99 year at STM, Childs and school counselor Nancy
Fleming created a teacher-mentor program, a year-long program which pairs a
veteran teacher with teachers who are new to the school or new to the
profession. The concept earned Childs the opportunity to speak about it around
the country, including at this year’s National Catholic Educational
Association convention in Milwaukee. While promoting the program for other
schools, Childs also met the outgoing veteran principal of St. Jude School.
After an exhaustive interview process by a St. Jude search
committee, Childs was chosen to succeed Poole in the position. She said that
she has mixed feelings.
“I am so excited and I am so scared,” she said.
“Leaving St. Thomas More is one of the most impossible things I could
think of, but I feel so good about how this came to be. I told myself that if I
could find a good strong community like the one I had at St. Thomas More, then
I would do it. I really think St. Jude’s has that same spirit, that same
strong community. There is something so unique and special about a parish
school.”
Childs has been married to her husband, Doug, a Marist School
graduate, for 22 years, and their son, Geoff, is a junior at St. Pius X High
School. She said that she feels privileged to have learned from Msezane and
Poole.
“Those two are the role models of what a principal should
be,” she said.
Childs, who will start officially at St. Jude’s July 1, said
she is most looking forward to expanding her skills as a leader.
“I’m excited about the opportunity to take everything
I’ve learned and to take everything I’ve practiced . . . and to bring
that to the community and to become a part of that community,” she said.
The enthusiastic St. Oliver Plunkett Church, Snellville,
parishioner has been working at St. Jude a couple of days a week so that she
can become acclimated to her new position. While there, she said, she has
received a great welcome from the staff and has witnessed what is already a
solid school foundation.
“I don’t plan to change anything,” she said.
“I want to learn about their community and learn about all those people.
All I want to do is make it bigger and better.”
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