Chicago principal turns traumatic past into purpose

WGN and Nexstar are once again highlighting local women doing amazing things for their community in our Remarkable Women series. 

This is a story of Iysha Jones, the beloved principal of Doolittle Elementary on Chicago’s South Side, who found a way to turn her traumatic past into purpose.

There’s a photo of four daughters in her office, but there are 259 kids total, that she calls her babies.

“That’s the lens from which she approaches these children as if they were hers,” Joan Dameron Crisler, the principal liaison said. “And so she wants the same things for them. The same quality education, the same opportunity, the same access she’d want for her own children.”

Her daily rounds have one purpose, to make sure the kids know to their core they are seen and understood.

“I make sure we see everyone. We see everyone,” Jones said.

Jones said her early life shaped her approach to her career.

“When I was a young girl, my father was a victim of gun violence in my household. He died in our home and I was in the next room,” she said. 

By sixth grade, she said decided to end her pain with a bottle of pills. 

“I woke up the next day, my ears ringing, headache and I’m like, ‘Okay, it didn’t happen. I’m going to go to school,’” she said.

At school one teacher changed everything.

“He said, ‘I’m glad you’re here today. I’m glad I saw you today.’ And I looked and ‘I was like me?’ ‘Yeah you,’” she said. “It changed my life. It did because someone was glad to see me.

“I remember telling a student that lost his father and I said, ‘Hey I lost my dad too.’ And he said, ‘Well my daddy got murdered.’ and I said, ‘Mine did too.’ … You have to be brave enough to tell your story and identify with them.”

“We know when we get those children and do that for them, there’s no limits to what they can accomplish and she does that,” Crisler said.

“I’m living proof you can go from a really bad situation, feeling hopeless and helpless, and then you can be the principal of the school,” Jones said.  “And I am going to make sure they get the very best because that’s what they deserve.”

Jones has cultivated this phenomenal environment at Doolittle Elementary because of  how she invests and connects with  each of those students .