Elementary school principal Aubrey Flowers blows kisses after being surprised by a $25,000 Milken Educator Award. She is a 2003 alumna of PSU and the College of Education’s elementary education program.
Aubrey Flowers’ tenure as a school principal in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has been anything but typical.
Since making the jump from classroom teacher to principal in 2017, Flowers ’03 has had to navigate the challenge of renaming the school—then Robert E. Lee Elementary—in the aftermath of violent white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, a process that took three tries to get right. What else? A statewide teacher walkout, a 100-year flooding event, and a global pandemic.
She embraced each change, uncertainty, and challenge that came with the new role.
The leadership she displayed through it all earned her the Milken Educator Award earlier this year. The program, considered the Oscars of teaching, recognizes top educators across the country and comes with a $25,000 cash prize.
“Aubrey demonstrates unwavering respect for every child in her care,” Oklahoma’s public schools superintendent Joy Hofmeister said. “As an innovative leader who inspires and empowers her teachers to meet the individual learning needs of each student, she nurtures a school culture centered on creativity, patience, and growth.”
Flowers, who graduated from Portland State with a bachelor’s degree in social science and minor in elementary education, says she proudly wears two hats: school principal and mom. By day, she leads a building of 500 families. At night, she’s a mom to five kids from toddler to tween. But in March 2020, when schools suddenly transitioned to distance learning in response to COVID-19, the line between her work and home life became more blurred than ever.
“I got to sit in the seat of what our parents were trying to go through, and it was a mess,” she said, recalling constant interruptions, WiFi crashes, and teachers’ best intentions for their classes not going to plan. “At that point, our focus was just on staying connected … and making sure that, in the unknown, all of our families were safe and had what they needed.”
When she was tasked with coming up with three plans for the start of the 2020-21 school year—a continuation of remote learning, a return to in-person classes, or a hybrid of the two—Flowers knew that small learning groups would be key.
“It took some real creativity and flexibility on the part of my team, in addition to some major trust,” she said.
With input from teachers and parents, a plan took shape. Teachers were reassigned to grade-level teams, each teaching one subject across two grades. At the start of each week, families received recorded daily lessons for each subject. For 45 minutes each Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, grade-level groups of no more than five kids met with their teacher for personalized practice during a scheduled time—the only time-specific commitment they had.
“The first few minutes and the last few minutes of each Zoom was completely focused on their emotional and social well-being,” Flowers said. “It was not going to be a skill-and-drill for 45 minutes. It was ‘How are you? How are your friends? Let’s check in,’ and then they rolled into practicing the skills that we knew they needed foundationally. … Teachers would use that small group meeting to do some informal assessment to see how a lesson was going and whether they needed to slow down or try a different approach.”
Teachers also hosted daily drop-in hours for kids to ask any questions, get additional help, or simply pop in and chat if they were home alone. Students had access to the daily lessons and activities 24 hours a day and could complete their independent work at their own pace with the expectation that the week’s work was due by 11:59 p.m. on Sunday. The school helped by mapping out a recommended daily schedule for each grade that included lunchtime and “brain breaks.”
By all accounts, it was successful. Parents praised the flexible schedule and teachers completed their hardest but most beneficial year. The data shows their students are academically in a much stronger place than their peers.
“Because teachers were navigating both grade levels, they were shifting in the moment,” she said. “They knew where the kiddos needed to be, but they also knew where the kiddos were, and they were making those moves really intentionally.”
Flowers credits her teachers for jumping all-in on her crazy idea.
“The work that we magically made happen during COVID, it might have started in my kitchen, but it grew and became what it was because of the team that I work with,” she said. “We’ve been seeing the benefits of it every day since.”
Winning the Milken Educator Award came as a complete surprise to her—there is no formal nomination or application process—but she says it’s pushed her to think even more boldly.
“I feel so grateful for the award and my experiences thus far, yet I’m not done and I’m hungry,” she said. “What’s next? That’s what inspires me, what drives me. The award helped me to pause for a moment and realize that that just happened. But now it’s game on and that makes me really excited—nervous, but really excited.”