March 19, 2025
How Resources Make the Difference
Discover the transformative educational journey of Dara Seamons, Assistant Principal of Instruction at Hilltop Elementary in Houston County Schools. Having served in the military before finding her true calling in education, Dara brings a unique perspective to her leadership role and commitment to student success.
Chapters
00:00 - Introduction to Dara Siemens
00:27 - Aspiring Principals Program Experience
00:57 - Using ABC Resources for Georgia Milestones
01:49 - From Military to Education Career
03:01 - Meeting Individual Student Needs
05:14 - ABC Company Customer Service Experience
Transcript
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Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company.
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I'm Devin Pintos, your host here, with Dara Siemens with Hilltop Elementary and Houston County Schools.
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Welcome, dara, how are you?
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I'm doing great.
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How are you?
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Fantastic, so tell us a little bit about what brings you to Winter Gale.
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Well, winter Gale this year I am part of the Aspiring Principals program through Gale, and so we actually had a class this morning, which is kind of our monthly meeting for this year, and so we've been here since about 8 o'clock this morning, and part of that is that we attend the conferences, and this being the Gale Conference, and we've actually been to several conferences just this year through the program, so that is what we're here for.
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That is wonderful and I understand you've used American Book Company books before.
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We have.
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Our school has actually been using ABC for a little while now.
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Back several years ago, we purchased the science and social studies version of the books.
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Teachers and students.
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We use them on a regular basis in preparing for Georgia Milestones assessment, and so this year we actually had just purchased, about two months ago, the ABC books for math for the new standards, for the new Georgia standards, and have just begun using those.
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But what our teachers like so much about them is that it was not only set by standard but by depth of knowledge questioning.
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So whether it's a level one, two or three question, they were really able to see that.
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Oh wow, these are the types of questions our students really need to be familiar with to be successful on the upcoming assessment.
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So we're excited about using them this school year and we'll see how it goes.
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Oh, that's wonderful, Dara.
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Great to hear that.
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Can you tell us a little bit about what brought you into the teaching profession in the first place.
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Well prior to teaching, I didn't quite know what I wanted to do, so I was actually in the military for a little while and then, once I completed my first term in the military, I went back and got my teaching certification, because I finally figured out that's what I wanted to do, so I got into teaching.
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I've been in Houston County since 2010.
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I've actually been at Hilltop Elementary School since 2013 as a teacher and now as an administrator, for this is my third year in this role as an AP.
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At American Book Company in Woodstock, georgia, we are committed to your students' success.
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As you can see behind me, we have our workbooks and we have online testing and e-books that go on fancy iPads over here, for instance.
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They're all designed to help your students succeed and have higher test scores on their high-stakes assessments.
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Give us a call 888-264-5877, or us on the web, abck12.com, and you can receive a free trial or a free preview book of your choice.
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Hope to hear from you soon.
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Bye-bye.
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Wow, that's wonderful.
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You're the assistant principal of instruction, I understand.
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Yes, sir, that's wonderful.
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Can you tell us, dana, if you have any short stories you can share about?
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Maybe in a significant experience where you're like this, student's life was impacted our school specifically, and even in our county?
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But we have students that they have needs that we have to be really intentional about attending to.
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And you know really specifically our SPED population and that population.
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They really have to have the teachers there that want to be there, that love learning.
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That love teaching and knowing that they're teaching is their purpose, that's their whole purpose of life is being there just for educating students.
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So I think you know we have our SPED population, we have our gen ed department at Gifted.
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I was a Gifted teacher and so not only you know focus on a remediation but on that enrichment piece of what our students need.
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What do we need to do to ensure that they're reaching their own level of success?
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Because that's the thing that everything that we do, we have to ensure that it's meeting that individual child's needs.
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So, again, just you know, not only you know getting in resources like the ABC resources, but really focusing in on what are our students really needing and being we're the experts our teachers know what to do.
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We have to make sure that they're getting what they need.
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That is wonderful, Dana.
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Is there anything else you'd like to share with the Gale community today?
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One thing I will say about ABC Company.
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They are fantastic, and I'll tell you my experience.
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We had actually ordered some books back in November, prior to Thanksgiving.
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We had a little bit of issue getting the books from FedEx and so the ABC Company.
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We actually had gone back and forth two or three different times waiting for the books to arrive.
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The books eventually, some of them came um, but because abc is awesome, they actually ended up delivering our books to my house the day after christmas, um, so we were able to get our order um and get them into the hands of our teachers and students immediately following winter break, um, and so you guys are awesome.
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So we appreciate everything that you've done to help us, uh, support our teachers and our students to make sure they succeed.
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Thank you so much.
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That's what we're here for.
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Thank you so much.
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Well, it's wonderful hearing from you, dana Seamans, with Hilltop Elementary and Houston County Schools.
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Thank you for joining us today.
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All right, thank you so much.
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