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June 30, 2026
When leaders at Tradition Elementary sat down to interview students about their experience in the classroom, they expected to learn something useful.
They did not expect the answers to weigh so heavily.
At this campus in East Central ISD, a district of 12,000 students in the San Antonio area, some students who were doing well said they didn’t always feel seen. Because they were on track academically, they were often asked to help classmates instead of being challenged to keep growing.
Students who struggled said something equally surprising: They felt bad that teachers were spending so much time helping them.
For DeAndria Wilson, a fifth-grade lead teacher at Tradition, hearing those perspectives changed the way she saw her classroom.
“It’s eye opening,” Wilson said. “What could I have done differently? Is there something else that I can do to challenge those students rather than necessarily, okay, here, go help this group?”
She added: “As a teacher, that just weighs heavy on you to hear that you’re not really reaching all of the students in your class.”
Student interviews became a turning point for Tradition Elementary, a campus that moved from an F rating to a B after participating in The Holdsworth Center’s Campus Leadership Program.
The program is a 2-year learning journey for principals and their teams to become stronger leaders and drive positive change for students on their campus. It’s not about pushing a new curriculum or a specific strategy – it’s about listening more closely and designing solutions targeted at real issues students are voicing.
The vast majority of schools (96% percent in 2025) who go through the program make significant progress on a goal they set.
“What we’re trying to do at Holdsworth is interrupt that reactivity cycle that so many of our educators are in,” said Sharon Foley, Managing Director of Campus Programs. “We’re inviting them to slow down, to get up on the balcony and understand the problem and why is it happening before they begin making decisions about what might solve it.”
Before Holdsworth, Tradition Elementary was struggling. Teachers and leaders were working hard, but the results were not matching the effort.
“Everyone thought they were working on the right things, and we realized that they were working hard on the wrong things,” said Principal Karen Kopeck.
At the time, the campus was not meeting state standards. Leaders knew they needed to improve, especially in math.
As part of the Campus Leadership Program, Kopeck and Academic Facilitator Debra McMeans conducted interviews with students.
“We wanted to know what made students proud of themselves in the context of math. We wanted to know what were some ways that they felt supported by their teachers,” McMeans said.
The practice was new for the team.
Holdsworth’s Foley said student empathy interviews are a key part of the program because they provide rich data that goes beyond numbers on paper.
“Public schools have tons of quantitative data, but this conversation between the campus principal and a student who is not being served well by my campus almost never happens,” Foley said.
Leaders do the interviews “not with the goal of fixing, not with the goal of defending yourself or your choices or your school’s choices, just with the goal of listening and seeking to understand.”
The interviews helped the team see something they had been missing. In their urgency to support students who were struggling the most, they were not always giving attention to students who were close to meeting grade-level standards or ready to go further.
“Our district goal is to grow every child, but we weren’t doing that,” Kopeck said. “It felt like a kick in the stomach, but at the same time, what we gained from it was so powerful.”
After listening to students, educators began making small but meaningful shifts.
For Wilson, that meant finding new ways to challenge students who were ready for more. She began using an online program that allowed students to work beyond grade level.
“I had students working on middle school stuff, on calculus. They were excited to finally get that challenge,” she said.
The campus also created “Adopt-a-Class,” where members of the instructional leadership team worked with students who might otherwise have been missed.
“Those are kids that may not typically be in a small group, but we’re able to advance their learning and just make small little changes to help move them to the next level,” Kopeck said.
The interviews did more than change strategy. They changed beliefs.
“This work has changed what I believe about students. I don’t think beforehand I really valued student voice,” Wilson said. “Now I see how important it is because they can give insight on what small shifts may need to happen.”
Those small shifts began to show up across campus. Teachers collaborated more. Students became more aware of their own progress. Data folders became one tool teachers used to help students track growth, but the larger change was that students had more ownership of their learning.
One student, a fifth grader named Zakari, said he liked tracking his mastery of skills and knowing whether he was a ‘yes’ or a ‘not yet’ and seeing that change over time.
“In the beginning of the year I got mainly ‘not yet’ because I didn’t know how to do certain things,” he said. “Once I learned those skills, I started getting more checks. Sometimes I mess up and then I get ‘almost.’ From those mistakes I’ve learned, and I’ve grown as a mathematician and a reader.”
That mindset spread beyond one classroom.
“Before Holdsworth, the culture at our campus was not as collaborative,” Wilson said. “Teachers are now collaborating more within each grade level and amongst grade levels.”
Wilson described it as sharing ideas, testing changes and cheering each other on.
“It’s not about me, it’s about we,” Kopeck said. “What are we doing in our grade level? What are we doing for our campus? All our kids are all our kids.”
The changes paid off, and Tradition Elementary watched its state accountability rating move from an F to a B.
For Wilson, it was more than just a numbers game. She recalls one student who had lacked confidence in math but began to grow. When her results came back, she was approaching grade level for the first time.
“The parent reached out to me and the student was like, ‘Math is my favorite subject now,’” Wilson said. “So just the whole mindset changed.”
Gina Khieu, another teacher on the Holdsworth campus team, said she doesn’t think they would be where they are today without Holdsworth and without listening to students.
“I think both have really shaped me into the educator I am today in the sense of making student engagement and student accountability my number one priority in the classroom,” Khieu said.
For Kopeck, Holdsworth’s approach was different because it did not start with a packaged solution. It started with people. Through the program, she said, campus leaders built their own skills so they could turn around and build up teachers.
“They’re helping us gain the skills, but also polish skills that we already have,” Kopeck said.
That focus helped Tradition reconnect to its mission and make changes the campus could sustain.
Today, Tradition is not settling for a B. The campus is aiming higher. But now, leaders and teachers have a clearer understanding of how to improve: listen to students, identify who is being missed and test solutions to see if they help more students succeed.
“The teachers are now starting to come up with those ideas of what we can do that’s different,” Kopeck said. “We’re going to have to think outside the box because we’ve got to be able to make those moves. It’s what’s best for kids and the kids deserve it.”
The Holdsworth Center’s Campus Leadership Program is a two-year journey for principals and their teams — building the leadership capacity to identify the right problems, understand why they’re happening, and test solutions that actually work.