We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sheka Houston, Ed.d.. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sheka below.
Sheka, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
I’ve served in education for 22 years as a teacher, assistant principal, principal, and Director of Secondary Interventions at the district level. The most meaningful work I’ve ever done in this field has been advocating for students “sentenced” to Tier 3 education services and special services. Mahatma Gandhi once stated, “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” I believe this to be true for schools and school systems as well. The true measure of their service can be seen in how they treat their most vulnerable members, including students in need of Tier 3 education services and what is called special education services, better coined extended services. Extended services would entail gifted students, our regular education students who may need more information or a different route to grasp the concept, and those who may need accommodations. The service is labeled and not the student. As a colleague so eloquently stated recently, Beulah McLoyd, “messaging matters”. This is what my colleague, Dr. Tammy Taylor and I state frequently in our weekly live stream of The REALL Academy where we discuss topics to improve education every Saturday at 10:30 am EST as edu-creators. The most vulnerable students would also include those who are frequently late, absent, and in need of behavior interventions as well.
Having a personal experience at every end of this spectrum helps me better advocate. One of my daughters qualified for the gifted program in reading. When her teacher told the students in the class, she said, “Let’s just keep this to ourselves, so the other students don’t feel bad.” I completely understood and knew exactly what the teacher meant by this decision and fully supported it. I was happy when my daughter also understood and didn’t want there to be feelings of inadequacy passed on as well. It wasn’t until she received an assignment from another teacher from her gifted program requiring her to memorize numbers beyond 3.14 in math that I became concerned with such a meaningless assignment. Gifted students are among some of the most underserved students in the school system. Many assume they have it all together and only need more work instead of higher rigor.
Another of my daughters suffered from unfinished learning during the COVID-19 shutdown and needed additional help in reading. During this process, she received a note requiring us to attend a meeting about potentially being held back in third grade because her then reading level placed her at risk of failing the assessment on which the decision would be based. I’ll never forget her standing in front of me in tears, asking, “Mommy, what’s wrong? Does this mean I’m dumb?” Although everything inside of me broke at that moment, I knew tears from me would only confirm what she was thinking. I had to hold it together and tell her, “Absolutely not! You are not dumb. You are very intelligent and talented. It just means you need extra help, which you will get and you will be fine”. I hated that this entire process shattered her confidence, as it does for most students. That’s why much of the work of interventionists starts with building the confidence of students. After the meeting, she was pulled out of her regular class for reading intervention, but her reading wasn’t improving because she wasn’t receiving interventions in the correct area of reading that she needed. I found a class she could attend after school that I paid $300 for each semester until she was caught up and she and I worked together at home. When I asked her what she wanted to celebrate her success of getting on grade level, she said a puppy. She was dismissed from intervention at the end of that year, was on grade level in reading and math and she got that puppy.
Lastly, a student from a district that I have worked with contacted me one day because he couldn’t get into a class he wanted. When I contacted school officials, they let me know that the class was designated for students with specific classifications and the student I was trying to help, didn’t have the classification needed. When I told them how this practice wasn’t in alignment with state requirements, he was allowed into the class. He is now the top student in that class, but what if he didn’t have an advocate? What if my daughters didn’t have advocates? There are so many students being underserved in schools because the advocacy isn’t what it needs to be or falls on deaf ears. Labels in education create bias, that causes children to be sentenced to what people believe they should achieve, accomplish and be. We must be and do better at every end of the spectrum. Children deserve our best. Not just some children. Every child, every day deserves a mirror placed in front of them to see the greatness within, so that greatness can permeate throughout the world.
Sheka, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My co-founder and I, Dr. Tammy Taylor, are edu-creators. We create educational content starting with The REALL Academy livestream platform. We are known as the Systems DoctHers and became what we needed in education as school leaders after starting our platform. Our schools were in an unsatisfactory status during our first years as principals and being unable to find help within our district at that time, it was another edu-creator that we reached out to for help, Principal Shawn Hurt, who is now a colleague and a part of an educational livestream network that we are part of called the Fantastic 4 with Principal Baruti Kafele, Josh Tovar, and Dr. Mari Mareno. Each Saturday and Sunday we produce free content that helps educators by providing practical solutions, resources, tools, and collaboration that solves problems in education. People tune in from all over at 10:30 am EST on the Create and Educate page on Facebook and YouTube channel.
After Tammy and I improved our school report cards, two report card grade levels in one year at my middle school and three report card grade levels at her elementary school in one year with our dynamic staff members, it has become a passion of ours to help other educators experience similar results especially since this type of growth typically takes years to accomplish. The formula for success that we used has been placed into a framework that makes the work easily duplicated and this is where the acronym REALL derived from. Schools focusing on respect, excellence, accountability, literacy, and leadership have the potential to perform at high levels just as our schools did and our coaching helps leaders along the way.
So many great things blossomed from this one story of triumph. We became best-selling authors of Women Who Lead Featuring School Principals, Volume 3, Second Edition as contributing authors. We are also contributing authors to Breonna Taylor and Me. We are releasing our first children’s book, Amir’s Awakening, which takes students on an amazing journey, giving them a new appreciation and love for learning available at http://www.CreateandEducate.Solutions. This book is part of a five-book series, The Resilience Series. Each book has an accompanying activity guide and is the creation that I am most proud of to date. We have been guests on a number of podcasts and livestream shows and I was afforded the opportunity to grace my largest stage to date at the AVID Summer Institute Conference as the Emcee in Baltimore and San Antonio. Most recently, we have moved into the corporate space providing corporations with generational connectivity professional development where teams become more self-aware and team-aware to become more productive. We also help small businesses and entrepreneurs conduct business with schools and finally, our REALL Me For Girls program, helps young ladies discover their authentic identities allowing them to thrive while Build My Sister helps Black women find support and build genuine sisterhoods.
Being an edu-creator has been very rewarding. Our greatest gifts have come from seeing the people we are purposed to help succeed, thrive, and gain confidence. Our gifts are greatest when we give them away. When gifts keep giving, we go from making an impact to igniting a movement. The thing that sets Create and Educate, LLC apart from others is our ability to customize our creativity as edu-creators. We customize what clients need in a meaningful way to ensure relevance and engagement while still making a great impact. We are mostly known for our systems work that makes success achievable while avoiding pitfalls. Thank you for allowing me this space to further my creativity as an educator.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
My co-founder, Dr. Tammy Taylor, and I have been friends for a long time. As principals, we tag-teamed one another as trustmates to get through the school improvement process together. We successfully improved our school’s two and three report card grade levels in one year with the help of our dynamic staff members. We have continued the work by becoming the help we needed, so we host a free weekly livestream every Saturday at 10:30 am in The REALL Academy as a part of a livestream network we call The Fantastic 4. Our superintendent, Dr. Antwon Sutton, has even graced our platform and has been very supportive of our work.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
Our goal is to help as many children as possible understand themselves while helping educators understand students and how to best serve them so that they can be served at a very high level every day.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.createandeducate.solutions
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shue2016/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/createandeducatesolutions
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheka-houston-ed-d-257a465a/
- Twitter: https://x.com/ShekaHouston
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@createandeducate
