E.S.C.A.P.E. Q&A: Principal Emily Paul of The Good Shepherd School

Today was our first official day of service and students dispatched to three service sites: The Good Shepherd School, Lower Ninth Ward Health Clinic and City Park. We spoke with Principal Emily Paul about her contribution to Good Shepherd (which is a private school that doesn't charge tuition), post-Katrina educational challenges and social justice.

The E.S.C.A.P.E. Times: How long have you been at Good Shepherd?

Emily Paul: This is my first year at Good Shepherd. I was a principal before Hurricane Katrina and after the storm I relocated to Shrevport. After four years I returned home and this school became available; I interviewed and got the position.

TET: The school where you were principal before, does that still exist?

Emily Paul: No, actually it was Marion Central Middle School and that has since been torn down because they are combining parishes. So they combined Saint Raphael Parish, which is where my middle school was with Cabrini Parish and they're changing the name to The Church of the Transconfiguration.

TET: Was there anything in particular that drew you to Good Shepherd?

Emily Paul: Well, I knew of Good Shepherd back in 2001, when Father Harry wanted to put a school together in the CBD [Central Business District]. When I got the email saying that they were looking for a principal, I thought it would be a good fit for me.

TET: Could you go into the history of Good Shepherd? What was the motivation for founding it?

Emily Paul: When Father Harry had the idea of trying to build a school for children of poverty, he felt that if the children were exposed to the things that were possible with hard work, they could rise above poverty and break that cycle of poverty.

He pulled together a lot of people in the city from all walks of life, businessmen, other religious people, just people that could help him make his dream a reality.

Well, Father Harry got cancer and the school opened in August of 2001 and Father Harry died that same year on April 5, and he never got to see his dream come true. Because people loved him so much they still keep his dream alive and our school is basically funded through benefactors who want to see that this school continues because it's what Father Harry wanted.

TET: Did Father Harry work in schools before?

Emily Paul: He worked in schools before, he was the Pastor of Immaculate Conception.

TET: You mentioned that he wanted to have a school in the Central Business District, was there any signficance to this area?

Emily Paul: Because he considered it centrally located and there were a lot of businesses and middle class workers and the children could aspire to being a part of middle class and not a part of poverty.

TET: You came to work here post-Katrina and you have a history with the city, what are the biggest educational challenges that you see working in schools post-Katrina?

Emily Paul: The biggest challenge that I see is sometimes the home situation doesn't necessarily coincide with what the school wants, what the school is.

We try to get parents to see that we're educating children, not just for today but for tomorrow and that they have to learn not only academics but life skills. And if they learn to be life-long learners and problem-solvers, they can eventually break the cycle of poverty and then feel a sense of giving back, because somebody gave to them to help them become whatever they wanted to do. And that they should never forget where they came from and be there for somebody else.

So I guess the biggest challenge is getting parents to understand that that's what this school is all about. That the mission of this school is to provide the best education possible and we can't do it without them.

TET: Is there anything that Good Shepherd does to help bridge that gap?

Emily Paul: Good Shepherd works with parents to provide them with some of the resources that they may not have. The tuition is paid for by benefactors. the benefactors and the donors make donations to the school, they do fundraising for the school and the monies that come in operate the school. We help the parents because some are at a different level of poverty and are missing more resources than other families, so we help the children with uniforms and we buy them shoes and do basically whatever we can to ensure that when they come to school they have whatever they need. The parents pay an activity fee, which is $125, and with that money we buy the school supplies, we keep them here at school.

We have mandatory service hours because the parents have to feel the sense of somebody is doing something for my child and my family, I need to be involved to help insure that that institution of learning continues.

TET: So what kind of service do they do?

Emily Paul: They help with cleaning up around the school, they help with organizing different things, they help with service hours by chaperoning and just doig basically whatever they can to help.

We have a parent education program and we meet with parents the first Saturday and the third Saturday of the month. And when it's my Saturday which is the first Saturday, I do educational and academic kinds of things so that parents have strategies that they can use at home to help their children. My social worker and the Title I social worker do other things with them like teach them coping skills, teach them about finances, planning ahead for your child's education when they're no longer at Good Shepherd.

TET: I know you talked a little bit about the kids giving back and the parents giving back. Along those lines, how do you define social justice for yourself and for Good Shepherd?

Emily Paul: Social justice is a big part of what we do. We teach the children that they're always others that are less fortunate than they are and we should feel an obligation to reach out to those people. We do service projects through our religion teacher and coordinator. We bring people in so the children can hear them talk about what their life is like. For Christmas we had several different groups of children that went to different places: we went to homeless shelter and the children helped to serve food and different things like that.

It's a sense of service. It's a sense of trying to live the way Jesus lived and helping the least of the people. We never want the children to think that everything comes easy, because they have a home to go to everyday; some people in this city don't. So, social justice is an important part of what we do, because children need to know and be thankful for the blessings that they have and because they receive these blessings they should feel an obligation to bless somebody else.

For more information on the Good Shepherd School, visit their Website: thegoodshepherdschool.org.