Stephanie Worthey
Greenbrier educator named 2018 National Distinguished Principal
Principal Stephanie Worthey wants people to know one thing about her and the Greenbrier Springhill Elementary School staff: “We do not settle.”
Worthey, 40, was named a 2018 National Distinguished Principal by the National Association of Elementary School Principals. She was honored in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, where she attended receptions and toured the White House.
“I’m just very honored to receive it, but I feel like I’m receiving it along with my staff, because really, without the amazing teachers and district I have here, I don’t think any of these things would have come to fruition,” she said.
Worthey was named Arkansas Principal of the Year in the spring as a precursor to the national award.
Her passion to help children comes from educators who encouraged and inspired her when she was growing up.
“Honestly , I had some great coaches who invested in me. I was [from a] low socioeconomic status at that point. I played all sports in high school — ran cross country, which was not my best — I was allstate volleyball, all-state basketball and got a scholarship at [the University of Central Arkansas] under coach [Ron] Marvel to play for the Sugar Bears. I played for four years.”
Worthey is one of four children and was the first in her family to graduate from college.
“My parents, they would have done anything for me, but they didn’t know how to help me,” she said. The basketball scholarship was her ticket to get an education.
“[The coaches] built relationships with me, and they cared about me and showed that by their actions and their words,” Worthey said. “It was just a great support system.”
Becoming an educator herself was about giving back, she said.
“I knew how much it meant to me and how it made me feel for [my coaches] to invest in me, for them to buy me shoes when we didn’t have money to buy shoes,” Worthey said. “I wanted kids to feel that way. I wanted them to feel love, and I wanted them to feel they could be somebody.”
That experience is what she hopes for all children, Worthey said.
“I tell my teachers, ‘You are leaving a heartprint on these kids,’” she said.
Worthey said her parents deserve credit, too.
“I had great parents, a very loving Christian home,” she said, but with four children, finances were often spread thin. Her father, Alex McNespey Sr., was a truck driver for 15 years, and her mother, Miriam, worked in a convenience store in Vilonia and moved up to manager.
When Worthey started at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, her parents bought a gas station north of Greenbrier, which they still own. She remembers feeling worried that they were taking on too much, but she and her siblings worked there alongside them, and the station was successful.
Worthey earned a bachelor’s degree in secondary education at UCA and has a master’s degree from Arkansas Tech University in Russellville and an educational specialist’s degree from Arkansas State University in Jonesboro.
She said coaching was her “first love.” Her first job in education was teaching physical education and coaching basketball at Carl Stuart Middle School in Conway. Then she left to become the assistant basketball coach for the women’s basketball team at Arkansas Tech. There was a lot of traveling involved in that job, of course.
“I got pregnant with my first child. I knew I needed to get a better job for me as a mother,” she said.
Worthey went to the Greenbrier School District, where her parents had moved from Vilonia.
Then Greenbrier Superintendent Mike Mertens said he only had a lesser-paid classified teaching position and a certified coaching position. She said Mertens told her, “Hang with me,” and said he would find her a position.
“So I took it. Sometimes they say, ‘Money’s not everything,’” Worthey said, laughing.
“I’d never been in elementary [school]. The first two weeks, I was thinking God was playing a trick on me,” she said.
Worthey wasn’t sure that was the right spot for her.
“I’d just come from college and had been at the middle and junior high schools. The more I was [at the elementary], I just fell in love with [the students]. You get onto them, and they still love you. They want to talk to you; they want to hug you,” she said.
The next year, true to his word, Mertens had a full-time position for her. Worthey had finished her master’s degree in administration, and she was hired as assistant principal at Westside Elementary School, even though she doubted that she was ready to take on an administrative role so soon.
Peggy O’Reilly, now assistant superintendent of the Greenbrier School District, was the Westside principal.
“I had done my internship under her. I knew she was a fabulous leader,” Worthey said. “I’m thankful for her because she’s been my mentor and second mother.”
Worthey called O’Reilly “kindhearted and a Christian woman. She taught me how to lead, how to do what’s right for kids and not to get distracted from what’s right for kids.”
When O’Reilly was promoted to a curriculum position in the district, Worthey was encouraged by O’Reilly to apply and was hired as the Westside Elementary School principal.
O’Reilly said Worthey is “a phenomenal leader” and has excelled on her own merits.
“She had outstanding qualities; she was a leader. She would do whatever needed to happen for children,” O’Reilly said. “Early on, I saw the leadership. People gravitated to her, and she did exceptional things for kids in PE, even in literacy.
“I’ll never forget when the position came open for assistant principal at the building, I told her, ‘I need you to apply for this job because you have the leadership skills that it takes, and I see that in you, and you’re going to do great.’”
Superintendent Scott Spainhour agreed that Worthey was the right choice.
“She’s a great principal. She’s just an exceptional leader; that’s her personality. She’s a go-getter, very competitive in her nature. Coming from the athletic side, she certainly wants to be the best, wants her kids to be the best and have the best,” Spainhour said.
“She takes her job seriously as instructional leader. She’s in it for kids, and just don’t get in her way,” he said, laughing.
During Worthey’s first year as elementary principal, she rocked the boat in a good way.
“My first year as principal is when we started our intervention program that the whole district uses,” she said. “They say, ‘Don’t do anything crazy your first year’” in administration, Worthey said, but she’s glad she didn’t listen to that advice.
She attended a responseintervention workshop, and the speaker “was kind of like a preacher,” Worthey said. “He stepped on your toes and made you think about what you weren’t doing for kids. Our system wasn’t what it could be.”
Worthey came back fired up and gathered her leadership team to pitch an idea, and they embraced it, she said.
“We flipped the script,” she said. They revamped the time they did intervention and how they did it.
“Research showed kids weren’t reading enough,” she said.
Today, Panthers Reading Outstanding Works of Literature time, or PROWL time, is used in all the schools.
Worthey also likes to talk about “growth mindset.” That means encouraging students to push through any challenges or obstacles they have to improve. That’s a two-way street, though, and adults have to have the mindset to work through difficulties, too.
When Springhill Elementary School opened three years ago this fall, Worthey was hired as its principal from Westside.
“Building a culture here at Springhill was exciting, but it was scary,” she said. Westside Elementary School had the highest test scores every year.
“We had teachers from all over the district. We meshed teachers from Westside, Eastside and Wooster. After the first year, [Springhill] had the highest scores in the district,” she said.
Worthey said she was afraid the staff and administrators would get complacent, but that hasn’t been the case.
“We are beside ourselves right now. The school card came
out — we were an A, which we were super excited about,” she said. “We’re back in the trenches; we’re worried about this year.”
Just this month, the state Department of Education released a report card for Schools on the Move Toward Excellence.
“We were No. 1 in the state [among elementary schools] for student growth,” Worthey said.
She said the success is not solely on her shoulders.
“I have a whole building of teachers who love kids and would do whatever it takes to help them,” Worthey said. “It’s our heart. Our theme is ‘Strong hearts, strong minds.’ We’re standing out with strong hearts and strong minds.”
Worthey said she wants to be a motivator.
“Here as an administrator, I try to walk beside my teachers and not in front of them. They need support; they need help,” she said.
If they come to her with a concern that a child isn’t learning, “I’ve got to be a resource for them; I’ve got to be a problem-solver,” she said.
“We have to continually push ourselves to be better; never, never settle. We do not settle. We had that [phrase] on a T-shirt last year. We’re still pushing to be better every year,” she said.
It is a Worthey goal, and it’s taken her to the top.