Ames Middle School's Anthony Jones Feels a Calling to Help Isolated Students

On Anthony Jones' sixth day as an associate principal at , he's a bit late for an appointment. He'd been busy helping a student sort out some issues.

Helping troubled students is exactly where he wanted to be in 1997 when Jones, an electrical engineering major, made the switch to exercise and sports science.

Jones had read about school shootings in Jonesboro, AR, and Paducah, KY, and the incidents touched him. The attacks were believed to be brought on by bullying. That's when Jones knew he wanted to do something to prevent school attacks and the troubled students behind them.

The Montgomery, AL, native came to Iowa State University as a George Washington Carver scholarship student in the fall of 1992. It was his first time outside of Alabama.

Jones, who recently replaced retiring principal Renee Rockow, took some time out of his day to answer a few questions from Ames Patch. The questions and answers follow below. They have been edited for brevity.

Ames Patch: What did you know about Iowa before coming here?

Anthony Jones: I didn't know anything about Iowa. I just knew they were offering a scholarship to come and decided to give it a try. My mom put me on a Greyhound and I came up. I had no idea Iowa even existed. It was the first time I had traveled outside of Alabama. I was excited to come up. I was excited about snow and seeing snow.

Ames Patch: How did you end up going into the education field?

Anthony Jones: The final year before I graduated I had a strong desire to work with middle school/high school students. I felt a strong calling to go into the education field and one of the things that sparked it was at that time there were a lot of school shootings. When I read the articles I noticed that a lot of the students that did the shootings felt as though they were being bullied and no one cared about them. I felt maybe there needed to be someone there that you know was going to look out for the students and at least those who were isolated or outcasted. That was something that tugged at my heart.

Ames Patch: How did you find yourself coming back to Ames?

Anthony Jones: I graduated from Iowa State and then I went to East Tennessee State and Milligan College to get my teaching certification and I got my master's in teaching and my teaching certification in physical education and health. I chose physical education because most of my credits were in the physical fitness field. I thought, "I will do PE and health and I will coach." My first job I ended up getting was in an alternative school. It wasn't intentional, it just happened that was the job available at the time. I stayed there four years and then my last year I went into the regular education program. I had a strong desire to become an administrator and thought it would be good to go back to my alma mater. I decided to come back to Ames because I knew it was a good community to raise my kids and I knew a professor who had a similar research interest … so I came back to get my doctorate at Iowa State. Over the summer I really wanted to become a principal, but I didn't see any opportunities so I relocated my family to Tennessee on Aug. 1. Now we are back again.

Ames Patch: What are some of the biggest challenges facing education right now?

Anthony Jones: One of the biggest challenges is of course the No Child Left Behind act and concerns with standardized testing. That's the big worry when you talk about education as a whole. On a smaller scale, keeping students engaged and keeping up with the different things that are happening outside of education.

Ames Patch: What are the best things that educators have going for them right now?

Anthony Jones: Their passion for teaching. I always fall back on that. I was visiting some classes here today … one of the things I noticed is that we really have some good teachers here who enjoy teaching. Oh my goodness during this last class I visited, I was pulling paperwork from her lessons to take to my second-grader and bring stuff down to her age. The different variety and choices that this teacher had in her class, it was just really exciting to be in. Students were moving around and going to different stations and students were really engaged.

Ames Patch: If you could change any laws or mandates put upon educators what would it be?

Anthony Jones: No Child Left Behind would probably be the biggest thing. It has some really good positive things, but when you talk about meeting those goals there are so many challenges to meet those goals. When you think about a student, just one child entering school there are so many factors that affect that child and to bring it down to a test score is really cutting education short. If you don't get a certain percentile it means loss of jobs and budget cuts. From a policy perspective, if that is taken care of that is one thing that can allow teachers and administrators and superintendents and school boards to really be creative.