The Honor Role
Meet the people who make Fayette County Public Schools great. Join us as we dive in and learn about their journeys, their inspirations, and their whys on The Honor Role.
The Honor Role
Missy Bain
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Teaching and learning specialist Missy Bain sets up classrooms to mold great readers.
Congratulations You made it to the Honor Role. I'm Chris Dunn and I'll be introducing you to the people who make Fayette County Public Schools excellent. Our district annually ranks among the best in both the state of Georgia and Nation academically. And we want to shine the spotlight on everyone who helps our students arrive. Behind every successful school day is a team of people worthy of recognition, and they each have their own story to tell. Join us as we dive in and learn about their journeys, their inspirations, and their whys on the Honor Role. Welcome to the Honor Role. Please introduce yourself.
Missy BainMy name is Missy Bain, and I'm a teaching and learning specialist.
Speaker 1Awesome. Thank you so much for being here. Let's jump in. Tell us a bit about your early life, where you grew up, and went to school, and all that.
Missy BainAlright. Well, though I only moved to Fayetteville in the last year, I've lived my entire life in the Greater Atlanta area. I was born and raised in Marietta, Georgia. I'm a proud graduate of Agnes Scott College in Decatur. And then I completed my master's at Oglethorpe University. And most recently I spent the last three years becoming an associate with the Orton Gillingham Academy through the Schenck School, which is also in Atlanta.
Speaker 1Okay. Tell us a bit about what do you do in your role here for the school system?
Missy BainAll right. Well, this is my first year as a TLS, and I always like to think of all the previous years and what I put into it that got me ready for this role. Prior to this, I've served as a classroom teacher, EIP teacher, a literacy facilitator, literacy instructional specialist, and a consultant, and all of those roles have prepared me really well to work with educators and administrators to build better outcomes for students. So in my role as a teaching and learning specialist, I feel like I have the privilege of being in service to teachers. I get to partner with teachers to support them. I get to collaborate with teachers, and I feel like I get to empower them. One of the fun things, I love working with grade-level teams and individuals. Either way, my goal is to help them thrive.
Speaker 1So your job is you bring the tools and best practices to the teachers and leaders, and then they spread it out to the individual classrooms.
Missy BainYes, absolutely. And one of my favorite things to do with teachers and teams is helping teachers look at data to be diagnostic and prescriptive. So in other words, like taking a look at some student errors to make sure we have a deep understanding of that error, and then using research to be prescriptive to figure out what to do next. That's probably my favorite thing to do in my job.
Speaker 1And do you say literacy and reading is kind of one of your focuses?
SpeakerOh yes. I love all things literacy.
Speaker 1Okay. And then we have a new, do we have a new literacy program this year?
Missy BainWe do.
Speaker 1So your role is probably extra important now.
Missy BainYeah. Oh my goodness. I've been so honored and privileged to be able to work with our new literacy coaches that were hired from Georgia passed a house bill 1193 in May, which places a literacy coach for grades K to 3 in every school building. And some of those coaches will be coming this year, and everyone will have one by next year. But it's been my honor to get to support those new folks.
Speaker 1Because literacy at the elementary school level is such a foundational skill because if you don't have that piece, you can't comprehend the science and the math as well because you just don't have that basic skill.
Missy BainAbsolutely. And I feel like it's so much fun for me as a teaching and learning specialist because when I support something like literacy, the impact is amplified out of compared to what it would have been if I'd just been in my own classroom, right? It can positively impact that teacher for not just that class, but you know, kids for years to come.
Speaker 1And so let's jump back a bit. Tell us when did you know you wanted to work in education?
Missy BainAh, well, I think like a lot of us, I remember being at Girl Scout camp in the third grade and being asked, what do you think you want to do? And I think at that point I had it narrowed down to maybe a nurse or a teacher. So always a helper. But when I really knew in my heart was when I was in college and I took a job at a summer camp, and I had my own group of first graders. I thought that was the bees' knees, the experience totally stole my heart. I changed my major and the rest is history.
Speaker 1Gotcha. And so was it always English was your favorite kind of thing to teach, or did you like a little bit of everything?
Missy BainI think it's always been reading. No matter what grade I've taught, it is that has always been my favorite subject. I always like the littles, but part of what I love about the littles is watching someone learn to read. It is the most fascinating experience that you can have, and I just love it.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's gotta be really cool when you can kind of see a kid convert from maybe struggling to read to enjoying it and not just reading for assignments and things like that.
Missy BainAbsolutely. It really is a gift that we can give our students for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 1And so tell us who were some of the people that inspired you, maybe you kind of nudged you along the journey.
Missy BainOh my goodness. Well, I can think of four people who have inspired me. The first one was, of course, my second grade teacher, Mrs. Ginn. I didn't have a lot of very friendly teachers, I would say, in my experience growing up. I tended to have a lot of very strict teachers, and she was my first experience of having someone who, when you struggle to learn something, she showed genuine compassion. She believed in all of her students and she made learning fun. And so learning to be a teacher, I always think of her and feel like this is somebody I want to be like. somebody else who really inspired me was my student teaching lead teacher. Her name was Mrs. McGlennon, and I just happened to be assigned to her, and she was also a reading specialist. First time I'd ever even thought or knew that homeroom teachers could also be a reading specialist, and I think that's really where my obsession with literacy in particular began. I just saw the power of strong instruction, and it changed me as an educator. So my third was one of my college professors, Dr. Beth Roberts from Oglethorpe University. She really helped me believe in myself as an educator. She always seemed to have the right piece of knowledge to give you or encouragement at just the right time. I know the last one's going to seem a little silly, but my other favorite person that inspires me is fictional and is Mary Poppins. So though she is a fictional character, you can learn a lot from her. I would say she has high expectations. She provides multi-sensory learning experiences, she fosters autonomy and curiosity, she has explicit systems and routines, and she does provide support, but she also fosters independence. So, in my experience, I want to try to be like all four of these people who inspire me. Absolutely. I want to give students that positive experience that maybe I didn't have growing up. And I want to use my knowledge about literacy to help make sure I bring stronger outcomes for them.
Speaker 1And then you get to spread that out into all of our, are you going to all of our elementary schools?
Missy BainI am all over. Like you would not believe that yes, I'm probably right now serving about half. Maybe in some capacity, some individual teachers, maybe that switch grade levels, sometimes teams and PLCs, and it's all been a joy.
Speaker 1So every day are you kind of just briefly in your office, and most of the day you're out at the schools ?
Missy BainI am mostly out and about. I think yesterday I was in five different schools. but it's great, and it's helped me really learn Fayette and the the teachers here. And I think what when I'm meeting people and I go in and out of these buildings, something that always strikes me. Fayette is just such a neat district, and it's been such a pleasure to work here. But the amount of teachers that I've talked to that grew up and went to schools here, unbelievable. And I think that really says something about a district when you had an experience as a child, and you think enough of your community to want to come back and serve there too.
Speaker 1And then you probably get the added benefit of you could learn something from meeting a teacher in this one school that, like, oh well, they haven't thought of this at this other school, and you can kind of like probably encourage some uh absolutely, yes.
Missy BainI bring ideas from one school to the next quite frequently, and I do think that's something we can all do as educators is there's a scarcity of time, but sometimes when we do share, it can help other people save on their time.
Speaker 1Right. So it's it's just a different perspective, sees it in a different way, like, oh well, that works for me too, kind of thing. You can't be afraid to always be learning.
Missy BainNo, I am always learning.
Speaker 1And so out away from schools and all, do you have any interesting hobbies? Oh I'm guessing reading.
Missy BainI do love to read, and I do think hobbies are really important. If you think about teaching, it requires so much from you. It takes up a lot of your physical and mental energy, and I do think it's really important that teachers have interests and hobbies outside of work because they help you recharge. So when I need a little alone time, I love to needlepoint. I find that the act of like moving that needle across a canvas is very meditative. love it, keeps you off your phone too, which is really fantastic.
Speaker 1It's very fun like when you see the picture like slowly coming together.
Missy BainYes, and it comes, you've got something tangible at the end with all of your time, unlike scrolling and all of your time is gone, right? I do love to read books, but you know, every time I start one before I go to bed, I just fall asleep when I read. So I can't say I get very far in them, but I do love to read. hobbies when I want some social time. I love to play games. So right now I'm playing mahjong and katan, and I love to play those with friends and neighbors. Need to, you know, get together with people.
Speaker 1A little friendly competition.
Missy BainA little friendly competition. it is really fun. and you know, finally, I think my last hobby when I think about that I love to do is cooking. I want to love on my family and my kids, and the older they get, maybe the less they need from you. So the way I love to show care to my kids as they get older is to cook, try to cook from scratch. And our family loves to send recipes, notes, photos of anything that anyone's cooking. but really truly, our best cooking ideas do come from TikTok.
Speaker 1Okay. Yes.
Missy BainSurprise place to find. Oh, yes. Oh, they're absolutely amazing. Our family favorites in rotation right now. Most of them came from TikTok.
Speaker 1Okay, awesome. And so I would like to close every episode with yes, what is your why?
Missy BainOkay. Well, for me it boils down to my one fundamental belief that literacy is a civil right. It is the single variable that determines whether a child gains lifelong independence or gets left behind. So, for example, when a child struggles to read at the end of first grade, there's probably about a 90% chance they're still reading below grade level by fourth grade. And if they aren't proficient by fourth grade, they're four times more likely to drop out of high school. Six times more likely if you're low income. So those ripple effects could be really heartbreaking. non-readers face drastically high unemployment rates, they earn less than half of what a proficient reader may make. And 60% of incarcerated adults are functionally illiterate or low-functioning, low-functioning readers. And those really aren't statistics, it's systemic failures. So that's my why. I feel like if we can eradicate these inequities with literacy in particular, we equip our teachers with research-based practices, you build that solid tier one instruction. I really do believe that strong systems build strong readers. And in my role as a TLS, I am excited that I get to strengthen those exact systems so that every child in our district gets the future that they deserve.
Speaker 1You're really giving all of our teachers the tools they can use to lift up all the kids.
Missy BainI am here to support, collaborate, and empower.
Speaker 1Well, thank you so much for talking with us.
Missy BainThank you.
Speaker 1This has been an official podcast of Fayette County Public Schools. For more stories from our district, visit us online at fcboe.org, where you can also find links to our social media channels. If you know someone you would like to see featured on a future episode, email us at dunn.chris at fcboe.org. And don't forget to like and subscribe. Thank you for joining us on Honor Role, class dismissed.