In his high school band in Pennsylvania, Alan Spicciati played the euphonium, a baritone-voiced, small-tuba-like brass instrument.
He “loved band, lived band, breathed band” and planned to be a band director.
And that’s what he was, in the Highline School District, for many happy years.
Although he has long since aside his actual baton, as the Auburn School District’s new superintendent, Spicciati is still out in front, ears tuned to the blending harmonies and occasional dissonances of a very grand band indeed, expressing the core of a big-hearted, soft-spoken man who loves what he’s doing.
“I love seeing kids develop,” Spicciati said recently. “I love trying to find out where their potential is and help them reach it. It just has a very natural appeal to me, and I’m still doing that, just from a different part of the organization now.”
Spicciati succeeds former Superintendent Kip Herren, who retired in July after seven years at the post.
Gentle approach
One key principle that guides Spicciati in these still-early days of his tenure is this: never roar into a new job and upend things just for the sake of upending them, scrapping plans you didn’t bother to take the time to understand.
Better to quietly observe, he says, to learn about the people, and listen.
In his case that means taking the time to understand progress the district’s strategic plan, now in its third year, has made to determine whether the district should create a new plan for the 2015-2016 school year, or make modifications and finish what’s already in progress.
“I have seen situations where a leader comes in with the answers, and at that point it doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong because people aren’t with you,” said Spicciati, 44. “What I’ve observed of the Auburn School District, thus far, is there’s really distributed leadership, and they’ve worked hard through the Teacher Leadership Academy to have not just one leader but to have many leaders. I want to understand how that has come to be, and that’s the model I’d like to continue.”
He said he loves problem solving, especially helping others to find new ways of doing things.
“In my career I’ve been able look at our students’ skills and some of their data and find kids who are ready for higher-level courses, maybe algebra in the eighth grade, maybe it’s AP courses. A kid who has the skills, but who doesn’t look like a kid we would assume capable of that,” Spicciati said. “And that’s always given me a lot of gratification, to know that I found somebody who deep within them has the ability, but maybe people haven’t recognized that. “
A bit of that, he says, is his own story, an expression of his personality.
“I’ve never been the loudest one, the one to come on really strong, but I’ve tried to have core competence and integrity. A lot of times those qualities in a student can get lost, especially in a school with a large population. But if you really take the time to know students, either by getting to know them personally or by being really diligent with the data, you can find kids who have skills we really haven’t made the most of yet and put them in opportunities where they can really grow and succeed,” Spicciati said.
Small town boy
Spicciati grew up in Malvern, a small suburb of Philadelphia. A city much like Auburn, he says: blue collar, fond of parades, older downtown. A resemblance that helped attract him to Auburn.
His father taught at the Indiana School for the Deaf before he moved his family to Pennsylvania to teach at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf when Alan was young. He went into business for a time but spent the last 15 or so years of his career as a substitute teacher of foreign language and history.
His mother was, briefly, an English teacher. After raising Alan and his brother, she became an editor, going to work for an insurance publisher that does the CPCU (Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter) accreditation.
Beyond parental influences on his career choice, there was music.
“In high school, it was band. I enjoyed working with younger kids, and with my parents being educators, I just had a career interest in being a teacher. I really idolized my high school band teacher, Lee Knier; he was clever and witty. He helped me really understand things that I didn’t know about myself. My best teachers did that, helped me see a potential in myself that I hadn’t seen,” he said.
A Little League coach, Don Reimenschneider, was another hero.
“I was just another kid, and he said, ‘No, I think you could be good at this, if you really applied yourself.’ Those kinds of moments have really stuck with me. I remember we had a pitcher with a sore arm, and it was a championship game and the kids wanted our friend, David, to pitch. Don said, ‘You know, a couple of years from now, nobody will remember if we won the game, but they will remember if David got hurt.’ That kind of thing has stuck with me. I try to live with integrity, and I’ve always slept well when I acted that way.”
A career in education
Spicciati began his teaching career in New York state as a replacement for a high school band teacher who had taken a year off to complete a doctorate. In 1994 he and his wife, Shannon, — they’d met in college — moved to Washington, where she began work on a master’s degree in music at the University of Washington, and he began teaching elementary band in the Highline School District.
He was with Highline for 21 years.
“I always thought I’d be a band director. I loved band, loved music. I played the euphonium – a baritone-voiced brass instrument like a small tuba – in high school and college. I thought I’d be a teacher my whole career. When I was looking at my master’s degree, I thought it would be interesting to explore school leadership. And you know, one thing just led to another over time.”
And so he rose from band teacher at Tyee High School to high school assistant principal to principal at Beverly Park Elementary to positions in central office. In 2008 he completed his doctorate at Seattle Pacific University and became the district’s interim superintendent and chief accountability officer.
“I feel I still like being close to kids, but I also feel like I have some skills that can help a community and really be a part of something, as a leader and by myself,” Spicciati said. “One of the things I’ve done a lot over the last years is coach youth baseball. I love seeing kids develop. I love trying to find out where their potential is and help them reach it.”
His wife plays oboe with the Auburn Symphony Orchestra and has played with the Seattle Symphony and Seattle Opera on oboe and English horn. She teaches at Pacific Lutheran University.
“I don’t play anymore, I wish I could,” Spicciati said. “Brass instruments are very physical, and it’s hard to keep up those skills. I played as long as I taught. When I moved into administration, it left me. I always think someday I’ll go back, but I haven’t had the time recently.
“We have two boys, Sam, 12, and Andrew, 15. They’re the joy of our lives, and they’re our hobby right now,” he said. “We don’t have time for a whole lot of other things. I love going to concerts, and I pay a lot of attention to baseball. A lot of my hobbies are living vicariously through (Shannon’s) music.
“I was attracted to Auburn because it’s very well thought of throughout the region. …I have a lot of energy for the job,” Spicciati said. “One the things I’m excited about is I have 21 years in education, I’ve got all my degrees, and I’ve got a lot of my career ahead of me. I feel like I have a lot of energy for the job.”
