[EdTalks] Love and Leadership: The Inside Story of Married School Administrators

With Valentine's Day coming up this weekend, Simple Civics: EdTalks is getting personal with some of our favorite Greenville County Schools administrators who just happen to be married to each other.

In this week’s podcast, Catherine Schumacher talks with two couples who aren't just in love with each other, but with public education and the special place it has in our community. Get to know Dylan Hudson and Dr. Jordan Hudson, principals of Greenville High and East North Street Academy, along with Dr. Wallace Cobbs, principal of Welcome Elementary, and Kristan Cobbs, assistant principal at Fisher Middle School.

Transcript

Catherine Schumacher: With Valentine's Day just around the corner, Simple Civics: EdTalks is getting personal with some of our favorite Greenville County Schools administrators who just happen to be married to each other. I'm Catherine Schumacher with Public Education Partners, and on this special episode of Simple Civics: EdTalks, I'm speaking with two couples who aren't just in love with each other, but with public education and the power it has in our community.

Catherine Schumacher: I'm joined by Dylan Hudson, principal of Greenville Senior High Academy, and Dr. Jordan Hudson, principal of East North Street Academy, along with Dr. Wallace Cobbs, principal of Welcome Elementary School, and Kristan Cobbs, assistant principal at Dr. Phinnize J. Fisher Middle School.

Catherine Schumacher: I'm super excited to be with friends and colleagues around the table for what we're calling our special Valentine's episode of Simple Civics: EdTalks. We thought it would be really fun to do a conversation with some married couples who are in leadership positions at Greenville County Schools.

Introductions

Catherine Schumacher: This is unusual for us because we have four folks in addition to me around the table. I'm going to have everybody introduce themselves and where they are an administrator so you can put a name to a voice. Kristan, we're going to start with you.

Kristan Cobbs: I am Kristan Cobbs. I'm the eighth grade AP at Dr. Phinnize J. Fisher Middle School.

Wallace Cobbs: My name is Wallace Cobbs. I'm the principal at Welcome Elementary School and the husband to Kristan.

Dylan Hudson: I'm Dylan Hudson. I'm the principal of Greenville Senior High Academy.

Jordan Hudson: I am Jordan Hudson, Dylan's wife. I'm the principal at East North Street Academy.

Relationship Origin Stories

Catherine Schumacher: You all, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. It is Valentine's week when this posts, and I love relationship origin stories.

Catherine Schumacher: I'm going to ask you to share yours, mainly because I would really love to know if this is a Netflix rom-com situation where you met in a school building and the kids were all like, "Ooh, what's going on?" Dylan and Jordan, I'm going to start with you guys. What's the story?

Dylan Hudson: I guess we would be considered college sweethearts. We met at the University of South Carolina at a new student mentor orientation or something along those lines.

Dylan Hudson: My best friend, Daniel, and I grew up in the same church together. He was my best friend and we were sitting together, just behind her. She turned around and started talking to Daniel, then she started talking to me.

Dylan Hudson: In college, you create friend groups and we all started hanging out. Then she and I started hanging out a little more and realized that she didn't kick me to the curb.

Catherine Schumacher: And how long ago was this?

Dylan Hudson: This was...

Jordan Hudson: 2007. So 17 years ago.

Dylan Hudson: Yeah, 17 years ago.

Catherine Schumacher: Were you both studying to be educators?

Jordan Hudson: No. In fact, Dylan, it was my freshman year, so he was not my mentor. I think that that's an important piece to note there.

Jordan Hudson: My roommate and I attended that meeting together. I was a freshman and Dylan was a sophomore. When we met, I always tell people he knew and was certain. He was like, "I'm going to be an educator. I'm going to be a principal. My dad's a principal."

Jordan Hudson: I was like, "Oh, that's great. Okay." My major was actually broadcast journalism. Long story short, I changed my major, and here we are.

Catherine Schumacher: How long have you been married?

Jordan Hudson: This year will be ten years.

Dylan Hudson: Ten years in May.

Catherine Schumacher: Okay. Ten years and two kiddos. Kristan and Wallace, I know you guys pretty well. I love your story too, which is not really a "meeting in the school" story, but it's a "meeting adjacent to the school" story.

Wallace Cobbs: Yeah, so a little bit of background. Way before I even met Kristan, just to give a shout out, her dad was actually my high school assistant principal.

Wallace Cobbs: Yeah, shout out Don. And then also, I taught with her sister-in-law at the same school in Anderson 4. I met her brother through her sister-in-law, so Kristan was probably the last person in her family that I met.

Dylan Hudson: Oh, wow.

Wallace Cobbs: We both went to Clemson together but didn't know each other. Then I met Kristan by being some place I wasn't supposed to be.

Kristan Cobbs: Elaborate on that.

Wallace Cobbs: We had an event. I'm part of BOLD. We had a speaker come in.

Catherine Schumacher: As in BOLD Leadership Network? A group of Black male educators specifically.

Wallace Cobbs: Yes. Kristan attended, and from there, we had a mutual friend. She invited us to a birthday party. We weren't invited prior to her invite, so we showed up and we had a great time.

Catherine Schumacher: So you crashed the birthday party.

Wallace Cobbs: Yes, pretty much. Then Kristan and I started talking and we've been together ever since.

Catherine Schumacher: You've been married a year and a half?

Kristan Cobbs: Two years. Three in July.

Catherine Schumacher: Time flies. That is really interesting. Were any of you ever working in the same building at the same time?

Jordan Hudson: No.

Catherine Schumacher: Which is probably a good thing.

Kristan Cobbs: But I will say a neat thing about us is until I went to Dr. Phinnize J. Fisher Middle School, his students all fed to me. Being at Welcome Elementary School and being at Tanglewood, we served the same population for six years, which was a really neat experience.

Catherine Schumacher: Jordan, you were an AP in Greenville County Schools, and Dylan, you were in Seneca?

Dylan Hudson: Yes, I was at Seneca High School.

Catherine Schumacher: So you've been in Greenville for two years?

Dylan Hudson: Two years.

Admiration and Professional Partnership

Catherine Schumacher: Jordan, I'll start with you. What is one thing that Dylan does that makes him a great educator and a great partner?

Jordan Hudson: Dylan is always 100% committed to the classroom and whatever school he's serving at the time. That carries over to our family and our relationship also.

Jordan Hudson: Dylan started his education career as a middle school English teacher. It's a special type of person. When his kids would write, Dylan wrote. At night he would be focused on writing and thinking about how he's going to change what he's written or how he's going to take his personal writing into his classroom because he had that level of commitment.

Jordan Hudson: He is a lover of YA novels, and that connects to what he was doing with his kids. It's the same thing for our relationship and for our family. He is fully committed to being the best version of himself for us, our family, and our kids.

Catherine Schumacher: Dylan, same question.

Dylan Hudson: Similar sentiment with the commitment. Jordan is probably the hardest working person I know. She wakes up working and goes to sleep working, but still finds a way to be an extremely supportive wife, phenomenal mother, and a great leader at East North Street Academy.

Dylan Hudson: One thing I enjoy is that elementary schools will have evening events, magnet nights, or STEAM nights. It's so cool to see her in action. When she's walking around talking to the families and the students, I'm just watching in awe because I get to see her do her thing.

Dylan Hudson: It's extremely special. Our daughter attends East North Street Academy now.

Kristan Cobbs: I didn't know that.

Dylan Hudson: Yeah, she's a student there at the Tiger school. I've gotten to see it now as a parent because I get the phone blasts and the newsletters just like any other parent.

Dylan Hudson: I see her working on a newsletter and I think, "Okay, she was working on a newsletter, not on Amazon, because I got the newsletter." I love it. I guess that's why we're so compatible. We are definitely all in.

Catherine Schumacher: Being a school leader, I know how many events you all have to do. My boys have gone through Greenville Senior High Academy, and Dylan, I know the sports events and all of that. It's a lot. Wallace, what do you admire about how Kristan shows up for her students?

Wallace Cobbs: That's the main thing. You never underestimate the power of showing up. Kristan really goes hard for her students. When we wind down and talk about things, much of what she talks about is student-centered, not the adults.

Wallace Cobbs: She'll talk about her day, and I listen to the depth of which she goes into conversations she's had with a student. I'm like, "Man, if I was that administrator, I would have cut that conversation off a long time ago and made my decision."

Wallace Cobbs: But she tries to find a way, whether she needs to restore something, connect the student, reach out to the family, or have a more collaborative approach. She really has a heart for students, and I wish for all educators to have that same heart.

Catherine Schumacher: Love first. Kristan, same question about Wallace.

Kristan Cobbs: Like I shared earlier, we got to serve the same community for six years. It was really neat to see our sixth grade students come in. At first, when I was at Tanglewood, we were just dating. Kids would come in my office and be like, "What? Is that Mr. Cobbs? How do you know him?"

Catherine Schumacher: Oh my gosh, in middle school.

Kristan Cobbs: Especially sixth graders. They were like, "But that was my principal." I said, "Well, what do you think about him?" Kids are more honest.

Kristan Cobbs: They would say, "Mr. Cobbs is hilarious. We love his bow tie. We love that he comes in our room to see us every morning." To hear that, and then to see him at each other's events... we still joke about it.

Kristan Cobbs: At Hispanic Heritage Night, he's up there saying, "Buenos noches," and they're all just laughing. It's a very high Hispanic population. One cool thing they do for Hispanic Heritage Night is it's all in Spanish, so you have to wear headphones to listen in English. It's the inverse of what the experience usually is.

Kristan Cobbs: It's a really cool thing. He knows all of his kids. The most special thing is he just got his doctorate in December. We surprised him with a clap out. His whole instructional leadership team did it. All the kids were out there and they were so excited to see him in his regalia. They were saying, "We want to be a doctor, we want to do that."

Catherine Schumacher: See it, dream it.

Kristan Cobbs: There are some schools where you don't really know who the principal is, but he knows all of his kids and he's encouraging them. I think we're both very student-centered.

Navigating the Loneliness of Leadership

Catherine Schumacher: I love that. To the point of celebrating wins—and I hate that I couldn't be there for your clap out—Dylan, talk about how you all celebrate wins in the education space? Obviously, you are whole people with other lives, too.

Dylan Hudson: We are each other's sounding board, good, bad, or indifferent. We talk about everything. When we talk about a challenging situation—trying to support a student, a family, or a teacher—we've heard the journey.

Dylan Hudson: We know the process it has taken to get to a certain point. Once we reach a certain threshold and there's a breakthrough, we're able to celebrate and talk about it. I almost feel as happy as if it was my own staff or student because we're doing it together.

Dylan Hudson: That is celebratory in itself because leadership can be a lonely job. We have the benefit that she gets it. She totally understands where I'm coming from. I feel validated. She'll tell me, "Babe, you're not crazy. You just need to maybe go get some fresh air or take a beat."

Kristan Cobbs: Having a partner that truly knows the trenches we can be in is the biggest thing. It gets lonely. You can be cordial with staff, but your friends can't always be the teachers. You can't share everything with them.

Kristan Cobbs: To have a safe space to come and say, "I just need to talk this out. What would you do?" One thing Wallace will ask is, "Do you want me to put on my principal hat or my husband hat?" Which one do you want me to be? Which I think is important.

Jordan Hudson: It's like, do you want me to listen or do you want me to solve it?

Wallace Cobbs: A lot of the work we do as administrators happens in the background or is confidential. You don't get a lot of public victory. Being able to take that home and have that private victory with your loved one, somebody that understands, is very special.

Jordan Hudson: Sometimes the win is just showing up the next day. You have this really terrible day yesterday, but today you're in a totally different headspace. This thing that would be seemingly small to somebody else, we know how big of a deal it is.

Advice for Work-Life Balance

Catherine Schumacher: The idea of leadership is that you're setting up other people to shine and succeed. Ultimately, it's the students through the teacher. It sounds like a cliché, but it really is lonely at the top. I'd love to hear advice for younger educators in this space who are trying to carve out a life path that includes great partnerships and love.

Kristan Cobbs: I think a support system is the biggest thing. I actually started my career at East North Street Academy. I taught there for eight years. When I first started, I was the first car there and the last car to leave.

Kristan Cobbs: I only lived five minutes away, so I thought it was fine. I eventually realized that isn't sustainable. You're always going to have a to-do list. Now I look at my "to-done" list. What do I need to have done before I leave today?

Kristan Cobbs: Even as an AP, there are still some nights that I'm still there and Wallace says, "You’ve got to come home. It'll be there." Both my parents are retired educators, so they're also a great sounding board because they get it too. They remind us that you have to have balance.

Wallace Cobbs: Going along with that, when we talk about work-life balance, people think it has to be a perfect 50-50 balance. Sometimes that looks more like 70-30 or 80-20, but then you have to make sure you balance it back the other way.

Wallace Cobbs: There are some nights where we're sitting there and we're both answering emails. One of us has our computer up and you think we're just browsing, then we hear that district email ding. I'm like, "Oh, get off that. It's 8:30. Turn it off." Some days that's what the call is, but make sure you go the other way as well and take care of yourself.

Jordan Hudson: There are seasons to it. There are seasons where you can step away a little quicker in the afternoon or you really can go home and say, "I can afford to not do this for a couple of hours before we put the kids down," and then jump back into it.

Jordan Hudson: There are seasons like September and October that are extremely busy. You have football, open house nights, and the end of the first quarter. With us being at both ends of the spectrum, elementary and high school, it can get really hectic.

Jordan Hudson: You have to have those boundaries and choose your hard. It's going to be hard regardless. Adulting is hard and life is hard for everybody, but in particular for education. We just hold each other accountable.

Jordan Hudson: Wallace, we have a four-year-old and an almost two-year-old. Both of our children were born right when we started our first principalships—our daughter when he started at Seneca and our son when I started at East North Street Academy.

Jordan Hudson: We had to learn that balance quickly because there's the incredible responsibility and pressure of the job, but also the family that we've worked really hard to build.

Dylan Hudson: Kids are good accountability partners. They don't care about that laptop. They seriously will come and take the phone. They're organic accountability partners.

Dylan Hudson: I would just say to find balance and be graceful with yourself. You're going to make mistakes. You're not going to get it all right. You're not going to be perfect, and that's okay.

The Most Rewarding Aspects of Education

Catherine Schumacher: Kind of the same advice you'd give students. Real quick, we're going to do a lightning round. What do you love most about being an educator?

Kristan Cobbs: The kids. That's why I went into it. I work with eighth graders, and when they were coming back yesterday saying, "Miss Cobbs!" it was exciting to have that relationship with them.

Wallace Cobbs: I think it's the strong sense of purpose working with the children, knowing that every moment matters and that this job is important. What we do has repercussions, and we can really change the trajectory of people's lives.

Dylan Hudson: I would say the students for sure, but also the school community. It's like a family. I love being a part of a school community with teachers, stakeholders, and parents.

Jordan Hudson: I love our students and our school community. One of my favorite things from the principal seat is seeing our kids during the school day when they're serious and doing their work, but then seeing them running around at an event, showing their friend off to their parent.

Jordan Hudson: Those are the moments you're like, "Okay, this is why we do this every day." We're planting seeds academically, but also for a community that's going to continue to be connected and grow together.

Catherine Schumacher: I love that. What a great note to end on. Our schools are like beating hearts in the center of our neighborhoods and our communities. Everything that we do to pour into those schools is so important because those kiddos are the future we're trying to build. Thank you for everything that you do and for taking the time at the end of a long day to be here with us. Happy Valentine's Day.

Jordan Hudson: Happy Valentine's Day.

Catherine Schumacher: Simple Civics: EdTalks is a joint project of Greater Good Greenville, Greenville County First Steps, and Public Education Partners Greenville County.