Wheeling’s Corey Murphy has spent a lifetime in education.
From teaching to coaching and eventually school and district-wide administration, the current deputy superintendent for the Brooke County school system has worn many hats in the world of parochial and public-school education.
He had stops along the way as dean of students, teacher, and athletics director at Wheeling Central. He served as assistant and then principal at John Marshall High School before jumping to county administrative duties as the assistant superintendent. Then he made his most recent move to Brooke County Schools.
He’s served on both the WVSSAC and OVAC executive boards and has coached basketball at every stop along the way.
He currently coaches his oldest daughter’s West Virginia Elite basketball team and helps parent a tight-knit, blended family of four daughters along with his wife Lauren.
Safe to say, there’s not much Murphy hasn’t experienced.
That’s pre-pandemic naturally, a phrase many people will use as the year’s pass when talking about their life experiences.
Now, Murphy has been part of a team having to shift an entire educational program on the fly, not only in his professional life, but also his personal life.
He’s also heard his fair share of “whys” and “whens” coming from parents, students, players and family members. He gives them the best and up-to-date information he has available, but in these unique times, that information can change rapidly.
The pandemic has also afforded Murphy more time to spend with his family and gain a greater appreciation of the important things in life.
You serve in an administrative capacity for the Brooke County School District, along with having four kids in the house. How often are you getting the unanswerable questions of when and why, not only internally from the family, but also externally, from parents in the district, parents of your players, etc. It seems you’d be getting it from all angles.
In times of crisis many people look to their school leaders to have many of the answers to help them get their families through the uncertainty. As a district leader we have strived to stay ahead of the game, and this has required many long days planning and implementing to make sure our staff/students/families have what they need to get through this crisis. We have been working with our teachers and assisting in any way we can as they move their teaching to remote learning. This has consisted of many teleconferences to help facilitate their needs as they meet with students on a daily basis. I can say with much pride our staff has hit it out of the park in their efforts to keep our children educated. In the same breath, of creating a county wide approach teaching we must still feed our kids. This has been the challenge we received from the state governor and we have been working since day 1 of the closure to ensure our kids get basic nourishment. We have been packing food weekly and delivering food to those kids who do not have transportation to come to the school to get it. During all of this staff and parents ask questions daily wanting to know when we will get back to normal? Will we go back to school? Our response is we just don’t know. We just let them know our staff will continue to work and feed with our kids. In times like this we just listen and be compassionate to what our families are going through and do what we can to make life a little easier during the closure.
As a parent, my wife and I have had many conversations with our four daughters answering questions about what is going on and what they need to do to stay safe. During this time kids still need structure. We still set bedtimes and get the kids up by a certain morning hour to work on school assignments. It is still important for physical activity, so we spend time daily walking or riding bikes. If one thing positive has come out of this time at home is the strengthening of our family. It has allowed us time to talk more and reflect on our busy lives and see what is really important.
In terms of the district, how quickly did the plan to move from the classroom to remote learning come together? Was there already the framework of a preliminary plan in place, or was there a lot of thinking on the fly? How quickly was the administration and the teachers able to put something together. How has it worked thus far?
This was a very fluid approach from the beginning. School systems have never seen anything like this and although we do have plans for snow days there was never a long-term remote learning. With that being said, our educators responded quickly and impressively with what they created to still educate our kids. On March 12th/13th we spoke to other districts in the panhandle to come up with a coordinated approach and then met with our principals. Expecting to be out for a few days we asked our staff to prepare their snow packets for the first week to see where we go from there. While this was being prepared, we had to coordinate our food distribution, and this was our bigger challenge. Our educators are professionals and we knew they would rise to the occasion to meet the needs of our kids. During this week of snow packet assignments this gave us the time to hold many teleconferences with principals/teachers to help craft our long-term plan. Since that time, we have been able to communicate with our families via Facebook and website to launch our learning plan. This approach has been a success because we have many online platforms our students use daily and teachers can craft assignments to those platforms. During these unprecedented times there is thinking on the fly. Daily we hear of issues or receive suggestions from parents on how to make this easier and we evaluate and look to improve for the kids. Our staff and families have done a nice job of acclimating to our new environment and making the best of our current situation. Our next task is how to give our seniors their senior events. We have pushed back prom, senior awards, and graduation to mid-summer to see if at that time we are permitted to hold a ceremony. If this is not permitted, we have created a plan B to honor our students. At this time, were in a holding pattern because we are doing whatever we can to make sure our kids get what they deserved.
One of the few bright spots is that you’re probably getting a lot more time at home with the family than you ever have during the school year. Do you feel like you’re getting to know everyone all over again, or is there still a lot of schoolwork to be done for your job? Also, do you feel like you’re adding teacher to your growing list of responsibilities helping with the remote learning for your own children?
Spending more time with my family has been a bright spot, but it has been challenging because my job does require a good bit of time on a daily basis. My wife and I divide and conquer with schoolwork for four kids. I normally take my five-year-old twins and help them with their Kindergarten work on a daily basis. I commend their teachers for the quality of work that has been provided and I have gone back to my roots as a teacher in helping them learning remotely. My wife works with our third grader and our sixth grader has done a nice job being responsible for her work. It has been fun to see how different they are in their learning styles and what works best for them individually. This pandemic has been a blessing in disguise for our family to slow our lives down and realize what is really important to us. We have spent many hours taking walks, teaching the twins to ride their bikes without training wheels and one of the most popular activities has been a fire in the yard making Smores. Through all of this I have realized that we still need a schedule. We have set mornings as our school time, so in the late morning and afternoons can be spent taking care of things for my job. A school administrator must be flexible because so many things change on a daily basis. We continue to hold zoom conferences with principals and teachers, plus weekly conferences with the WV Dept. of Education as well as our normal board meetings and making sure we are feeding our kids. It is still a busy time in the school district and still working from the office and now at home has given me a new perspective on my family and how to manage all of the responsibilities.
For your basketball team, you’ve already had practices and competed in at least one tournament. Are you encouraging your players to get as much work in at their homes as they can so as not to get rusty for when the season finally does resume? Have all the tournaments been canceled, or are they more postponing than canceling?
It has become very unfortunate for our W.Va. Elite team that we only were able to participate in two tournaments before the shut-down occurred. We have a good group of girls who love the game of basketball and although were not able to practice I have seen many of our girls still with a ball in their hands shooting at home or doing some type of workouts. We hope we can salvage this season, but if we cannot, we will look to next year. Elite basketball has become special to my family and I know many of these girls love to play.
As someone in education, is there a fear of this becoming almost a lost school year? Distance learning is taking place, but there’s no substitute for in-class instruction for students and, naturally, not all students are receiving the same help at home. If students don’t return until the fall, they are going a full nine weeks, plus the summer, without that schooling. Do you anticipate having to play a lot of catchup the first nine weeks of 2021-22, not just in your own district, but across the board in all districts?
We had this exact discussion this morning on a zoom conference with the department heads of Brooke High School. This is unprecedented times and there is concern from teachers that the rigor of being in the classroom is being missed in this remote learning. Many honors/AP classes have been able to still provide the pace/rigor needed for these courses and we are encouraging our students to continue on with the test. Our general classes will take some reviewing when we do get back into school, but many courses may not look their normal course because teachers will have to improvise to help students. One thing educators do well is improvise and adjust as they go. We will continue to monitor curriculum and get guidance from the WVDE, but we have experts in our classrooms who know what these kids need to move on, and we will provide resources to help them. I have complete confidence in the teachers of our county that once we do return the plans we are working on now will be implemented to help our kids succeed and if they need modified to help our kids ease into their new grade level they will be modified to help the child.
