by Mark Cutshall

It’s morning at Mark Twain Elementary School in Federal Way, and, Maria, a six-year-old kindergartner, sees her principal coming down the hall.

Sizing up Doug Rutherford's nametag photo taken 13 years ago, she tells him, “Your hair used to be all black--and now it’s black and white!”

Funny thing is Doug has logged enough time in the principal’s office to know there’s another side to Maria’s honesty:
“Ten months ago,” he says, “Maria, who is Hispanic, was quiet and shy, and she didn’t know how to speak English."
Today, she reads and converses in both English and her native Spanish.

Doug, who has cooked up hundreds of soup and bread meals at Bethany over the past 25 years, has been stirring up an appetite for learning in one of the most challenging cultural landscapes imaginable.

“Our 475 students, collectively speak 15 different languages. Eighty-eight percent of our kids are minorities. Of these 40 percent are Hispanics and only 12 percent are Caucasian. Many live in one of 2,500 nearby apartment units. Sixty percent of our students move every year. These are families in transition, on the move because of changing jobs and changing family situations.”

Before the first bell rings at 9:15 am, Doug’s day is already in transition, greeting some 380 children who can’t wait to eat free or assisted breakfast. “On school days with late starting times, these kids get off the bus not having eaten at home and they automatically line up for breakfast, and we have to tell them to go on to class.”

“I want to help every single one of them. Many times I look at them and think, ‘If only they had a stable home.’”
Now in his 35th year in the Federal Way School District, Doug and his staff are writing an unfolding success story, though he would just as soon you don’t know because humility prevents him from using his own name.

“Our kindergarten team takes these young people like Maria, who have such great needs, and despite whatever lack of language a child has, they teach children how to read and write and these children make tremendous progress. Our teachers are passionate and rigorous, and expect our students to succeed. And they do.”

“To be a good principal,” he says, “you have to care about kids and keep your focus on what’s best for them. It’s about the right curriculum and keeping kids safe and finding the right staff and teachers who go the extra mile.”

Doug has hired teachers whose cultural heritage mirrors that of their students. “Teachers who share a common nationality, culture or background with their students want to work even harder and give even more. Because students identify with their teachers , they feel cared for and they’re more ready to learn.”

On school days he will drive 40 round-trip miles from the Green Lake home he and wife Margui, a home health care nurse and nursing teacher, have lived in the past 30 years. Oldest son Ian is in his second year of law school at Seattle University. Second-born Alex is finishing up a double major in history and aquatic science at the University of Washington, and daughter Kalli will be a junior next fall at Roosevelt High School.

During the school day, Doug is an early-morning curbside greeter to bus drivers, a noon-time lunchroom monitor, and a mid-day classroom observer. At memorable school assemblies, he has made friends to a boa constrictor draped over his neck by the infamous Reptile Man. One time at school Doug waged peace, quieting the flailing fists of an unwieldy drug-induced parent who threatened the well-being of her own child.

As he walks the halls, gets the unwelcome phone call, or sees a child who needs more than a principal can possibly give, he prays, “Lord, give me the wisdom to make good decisions.”
Not long ago, Brian, a six-year-old of Hispanic descent successfully re-stocked a fishpond before lunch, which entitled him to reach into the prize box. “I saw him hold up a chocolate bar,” recalls Doug, and so I asked him if I could have a bite. To which Brian replied:

“No . I got my salivation over it!” And because Brian knew his discovery was incomplete, he followed it up with another adult-like truth: “You can’t share your salivation with someone until you’re married.”

Sudden insight mixed with wise innocence and childlike logic. These ingredients for learning keep nourishing the minds of Mark Twain students—and the heart of their principal, Doug Rutherford.