Answering the Call

Superintendent of Jasper City Schools Ann Jackson has had a monumental task in front of her since assuming the job in 2014. Regardless of the circumstances, her goals remain the same: to impact students in a positive way and get everyone pulling in the same direction. 

Words by Jenny Lynn Davis | Images by Ryan McGill

Many educators know from an early age that they want to be teachers. They come home from a day at school, line up their toys and read to them, or pull their siblings in the room and make them take spelling tests. There’s always that feeling; they just know. 

For some, like Dr. Ann Jackson, the path is not always as clear.

“I could describe it as a convoluted path at best,” Jackson laughs. “I graduated from Brigham Young University (BYU) with my Bachelors in Marriage and Family Science, then my master’s in counseling from UAB, and that led me to working as a private counselor and juvenile probation officer.”

Jackson thrives by building relationships and getting to know others. Probation and counseling work allowed her to do just that. Interacting with others, seeing them through challenging times in their lives, and providing techniques and resources that helped their situations improve seemed a perfect fit for her. 

Then one day, she received the phone call that would allow her to work in a way she had never envisioned for herself. “Someone I knew that worked in education gave me a call and said, ‘We need a counselor for T.W. Martin School,’” Jackson recalls. “I started scrambling, trying to think of any school counselors I knew that I could recommend to them. But that’s not what they wanted. They wanted me.”

With some hesitation from fear of the unknown, Jackson accepted the position. During her tenure at T.W. Martin, she also worked as a classroom teacher through a provision that allowed her to receive her teaching certification. She was thrown into the deep end and expected to swim. She counts it as one of the best things that ever happened to her.

“I wasn't really sure about being in education at first, but within a few weeks of being with those kids every day, I just knew,” Jackson says. “I felt like I was really making an impact in a way I never had before. I had found my calling.”

After a few years at T.W. Martin, she received a call from Glenda Crawford, principal at Jasper’s Maddox Middle School, asking if she was interested in the school’s open counselor position. With T.W. Martin facing closure, Jackson felt it best to transition into the city school system and become Maddox’s new counselor.

“That was the beginning of a chain of beautiful events,” she says. “From Maddox, I went on to become assistant principal at T.R. Simmons, then principal at Memorial Park. Paired with an internship I had done at West Jasper and a stint working at the alternative school within Walker High School, I have officially, at some point, had a role in every school in the Jasper City system.”

That experience was the perfect precursor to Jackson’s current role, Superintendent of Jasper City Schools, which she assumed in the fall of 2014. “Every day of the last seven years has been a whirlwind,” Jackson laughs. “But I wouldn’t change a thing in the world about it.”

The day-to-day of her job is never the same. Dr. Jackson works to support school administrators in their tasks. She oversees hiring processes, and over the last year, monitors COVID safety procedures and assists in the development of plans to bridge the learning gaps created by the pandemic.

While the work can get overwhelming at times, Jackson does not back down in the face of challenge and adversity because she knows she is serving a purpose much greater than herself.

“Saving souls is the greatest calling there is, but I firmly believe that right after that is educating young minds,” she says. “What we as educators offer, in any capacity, is so vital and important to kids, to a community, and to the livelihood and future of those kids and those communities.”

“I don’t see my role as being any more important than anyone else’s,” Jackson continues. “I am here to support the faculty and staff of Jasper City Schools so that we collectively can do all we can to help our students be successful in the next steps of their lives.”

As every new school year begins, Dr. Jackson wants those under her leadership to understand that the Jasper City school system is poised for greatness because of the people that comprise it.

“I tell people this often, and it sounds like I'm just saying it to say it, but we have the best kids, teachers, parents and best community support, and that is a game-changer,” says Jackson. “We're all pulling in the same direction—to do whatever it takes to help our students. We're set up so our kids can do whatever they want to do and be whatever they want to be, and we're going to give them as many opportunities to be successful as we possibly can.” 78