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National Principals Month Profile: Leawood's Maria Malik
October 4, 2022 -- Leawood Elementary School Principal Maria Malik says her passion for education started with a teacher she had trouble connecting with in elementary school.
“I had a teacher in fourth grade, and I knew that I could be better than what was presented there. I always remembered how she made me feel, and I told myself I would never make children feel that way.”
It’s a passion that has grown to carry her through college and 36 years working with students in Columbus City Schools.
“It definitely was a learning curve,” she began. “Neither one of my parents ever went to college.”
That wouldn’t be the case for Malik. She spent the first part of her college career at Youngstown State University before transferring to Toledo University. Just before graduation, she was recruited by CCS to serve as a second-grade teacher at Eakin Elementary.
Malik describes that experience as a learning curve. “I was like, ‘am I going to be any good at this?’”
With the help of veteran teachers and others in her school, she found her stride in the classroom, eventually teaching fourth and fifth grades. Malik then took a several-year break from the classroom to work for the district’s academic leadership team where she found herself missing her students, setting her on the path to become a principal.
Her efforts to connect with students is apparent when walking around the school. Students hold their arms out wide and wait for hugs as she makes rounds through the halls.
When she first started as principal, Leawood Elementary was a Priority school, one of the lowest-performing five percent of Title 1 schools in Ohio over a specific period. That is not the case now.
With nearly four decades of dedication to CCS, Malik explains that her students were always the motivation behind her work.
“I’ve always felt like I needed to be in a place where a lot of our children need to be cared about no matter where they came from, where their parents came from, where their parents are in life, where their parents are in education. I think I needed them as much as they needed me.”