The Puzzle I Never Get Tired Of: What Years of Course Planning Taught Me About Every Student’s Path to Graduation

When I was six years old, I almost lost my eye.

I had to be flown to Houston for emergency surgery, and I still remember the surgeon making me feel like everything was going to be okay. I decided right then that I wanted to be a doctor.

For years, that was the plan.

I went to college, studied science, and eventually began working toward a Ph.D. in genetics at Baylor College of Medicine. I pictured myself becoming Dr. Beltran, conducting research and teaching at a university.

However, life had other plans.

I got married at 19, became a father at 20, and spent 10 years earning my bachelor's degree while working full time. During graduate school, I discovered that the part of the work I loved most was not the research.

It was teaching.

I took a job teaching high school science in the middle of a school year and fell in love with education. From there, I became an instructional coach, moved into campus and district leadership, worked with curriculum and instruction, and eventually found my way to Education Advanced.

Looking back, there is something fitting about where I ended up.

I never became the doctor I thought I would be. But, I discovered that one of the things that gives me the most joy is building master schedules.

I Like Building Things

My grandfather was a carpenter.

I remember watching him work with what he had. There were limited supplies, something needed to be built, and he had to figure out how all the pieces could come together.

I think I inherited some of that.

A master schedule is an enormous puzzle. You have a finite number of teachers, classrooms, periods, courses, requirements, and students. You cannot simply add another piece because it would make things easier.

You must build something with what you have.

But unlike a normal puzzle, there is not one correct picture on the front of the box.

Because every piece represents a person.

When I first became an instructional coach, the person who hired me told me something I’ll never forget: I had been hired to work myself out of a job.  

My responsibility was to prepare myself for the next opportunity to impact more people, and master scheduling became part of that education.

I began realizing that what a student experiences throughout an entire school day matters.

Maybe a student performs better in math in the morning than in the afternoon. Maybe another student thrives in a large, energetic classroom while someone else shuts down in that environment. Maybe two students simply should not be in the same classroom. Maybe a particular teacher is exactly who a certain group of students needs.

On paper, two schedules can satisfy exactly the same graduation requirements.

That does not mean they will produce the same experience.

The goal was never to make every part perfect. That is impossible.

My goal was to create as many opportunities as possible for that student to experience great instruction, positive relationships, and an environment where they had the best chance to succeed.

The Students Who Changed Me

When I got my first teaching job, I quickly learned why someone had been willing to hire a brand-new teacher in the middle of the year.

I got the kids nobody else wanted.

My former teacher had the AP students. Another teacher had the students somewhere in the middle.

I got the students who needed more support.  

I was honest with them from the beginning. I told them, essentially, "I'm new at this. Have some patience with me. I want you to have fun, and I want you to learn something."

A lot of them responded to that honesty.

Others took longer.

There was one student in particular who taught me a lesson I carried through the rest of my career. Over time, as I got to know him and understand his story, I realized how easy it is to judge a student when you only see what is happening in front of you.

Once the barriers came down, I saw an incredibly intelligent, articulate young man.

I also realized how different his life had been from mine.

I had been a gifted student. I took honors courses. I grew up fairly sheltered.

His experience was completely different.

From then on, whenever I was building a schedule, coaching a teacher, or talking with a counselor, I thought about students like him.

You really do not know everything a kid is carrying when they walk through your door.

Another student made that lesson even more personal.

He struggled tremendously in school. So much that he took my biology class three times. At different points, he missed class, slept through class, or had difficulty focusing. People had begun to write him off as lazy.

There was much more happening underneath the surface.

Eventually, things began to click for him. He caught up through summer school and online coursework and graduated with his cohort.

Years later, he became my son-in-law.

Today, he and my daughter have two children.

I cannot think about his story without wondering: How many people had already decided who he was before taking the time to understand him?

And how many students are sitting in classrooms right now with adults making the same assumption?

Those experiences changed how I thought about scheduling because they taught me something simple.

A student's current performance is not the entirety of that student's potential.

Sometimes something as small as the time of day a course is offered, the teacher assigned to it, or the environment surrounding that student can make a meaningful difference.

You cannot solve every problem with a schedule.

But once you understand that the student behind the schedule has a story, you cannot build it the same way again.

You Have to Know What Happens in Classrooms

Some of the most valuable information I gathered never came from a spreadsheet. It came from being in classrooms.

As an instructional coach, I observed teachers constantly. Sometimes, when teachers were hesitant about a new instructional strategy, I would teach the lesson myself while they watched.

That gave me the chance to see students in completely different settings.

I might see a student struggling badly in chemistry in the morning and then watch the same student excel in math later that afternoon.

Clearly, the student could do the math.

So what else was happening?

I started asking those questions about teachers, too.

Teachers have rhythms just like students do.

I remember talking with a teacher who taught integrated physics and chemistry. Physics was more difficult for that teacher, and they told me that having a conference period before teaching that content would give them time to prepare and feel more confident.

That conversation mattered to me.

We have to take care of kids, but we also have to take care of teachers.

A technically correct master schedule can put the right number of students in the right number of seats and still fail the people inside those classrooms.

To build one that truly works, you have to understand what happens after the bell rings.

Sometimes the Pieces Still Don’t Fit

The hardest part of scheduling is that you cannot always give everyone what they want.

There were times when a teacher absolutely loved teaching a particular course, but only six students requested it.

I could not justify running the class.

There were other times when I knew a teacher was exhausted, but I also knew that nobody connected with a particular group of students the way that teacher did.

Those decisions were hard.

Leadership can be lonely because you learn what people need, you want to support them, and then you still have to make decisions involving competing priorities.

I always tried to take care of teachers as much as I could.

But when I had to choose, I chose students.

Adults can advocate for themselves.

Many students cannot.

Some have parents or grandparents who will call the school, ask questions, and make sure someone listens. Some students are confident enough to advocate for themselves.

Others have nobody speaking for them.

If educators do not, who will?

The Numbers Matter. The People Matter More.

Course planning requires precision.

Credits matter. Prerequisites matter. Graduation requirements matter. Staffing matters. Enrollment counts matter.

You cannot build a responsible schedule by ignoring any of those things.

But knowing the requirements is only half of the job.

You also have to know the people behind them.

That means counselors sharing what they know about students. It means administrators understanding what is happening on campus. It means teachers communicating what they see in classrooms.

And it means listening to students themselves.

A student may be planning four years of high school, but that plan should not simply be something adults create for them.

• What interests them?
• What are they good at?
• What do they want to explore?
• What do they think they might want to do after high school?
• What opportunities does the school offer that could move them closer to that future?

The answers will change. They are supposed to.

The point is not to predict a student's entire life in eighth grade. It is to make sure someone is asking the right questions.

Why This Still Matters in My Work Today

One of the things I was taught early in my career was that the farther you move from the point of implementation, the broader your viewpoint becomes.

But you also become farther removed from what is actually happening.

I have tried to never forget that.

Whether I was standing in a classroom, working at central office, or now supporting districts through Education Advanced, I ask myself the same question:

How is what I am doing affecting the people in the classroom?

That question shapes how I think about Pathways today.

Course planning can involve hundreds of pieces of information about one student. Historically, that information might have lived in a filing cabinet, a notebook, a spreadsheet, another software program, or simply inside someone's head.

Bringing that information together gives educators a fuller picture.

But having the information is not enough.

You have to use it.

When I train counselors, I come back to the same message. Get to know your kids.

Let students tell you what they are interested in. Look at the courses available to them. Help them understand how today's choices could open opportunities four or five years from now.

Technology should make that easier for educators.

But the purpose of the technology cannot become the technology itself.

If a system makes your job easier, great.

Use that time, information, and capacity to take care of kids.

That is why we are here.

Remember Your Own Path

After more than 15 years in education, if I could ask educators to remember one thing when they are working with students, it would be their own path.

Remember the people who helped you.

Remember your siblings, cousins, friends, classmates, or relatives whose lives unfolded differently from yours.

Most of us can think of somebody and say, "I was lucky. I had someone. They didn't."

Empathy comes from remembering those relationships.

When you are looking at the student struggling in your classroom, sitting in your counseling office, or standing in the principal's office, ask yourself whether that student reminds you of someone you know.

Then ask yourself how you would have wanted that person to be treated.

Educators spend an enormous part of a child's life with them. We have to take that responsibility seriously.

And when resources are short, requirements change, or the puzzle seems impossible, we have to get creative.

That is what educators do.

At the end of my conversation about all of this, the only thing that came into my mind was the Golden Rule: treat others the way you would want to be treated.

None of us got where we are entirely through our own strength.

Family helped us. Friends helped us. Mentors helped us. Experiences helped us. Sometimes complete strangers stepped into our lives at exactly the right time.

Students deserve those people, too.

So, build the schedule.

Meet the requirements.

Solve the puzzle.

But never get so focused on making the pieces fit that you forget what those pieces represent.