Michael Jordan has always had a heart for the underdogs.
As the principal of the school inside the Juvenile Detention Center, which falls within San Antonio ISD, he thrives on helping educate students that are forgotten or have fallen through the cracks.
“The students at these facilities really appeal to what I want to do,” Jordan said. “They light my fire and my passion of what I want to teach. I have a heart for it.”
A Laredo native, he was raised in a modest family with a Navy father, and took a similar path himself. He completed his undergraduate work at the United States Naval Academy and worked as a naval officer before medically retiring and deciding on his next chapter.
“I had always said ‘when I’m done in the military, I’m going to teach and coach.’ That is what I kind of wanted to do,” Jordan said. “I just didn’t expect it to be as fast as it was. I ended up coming back and doing that.”
He earned his master’s degree at UTSA, and after starting his educational career with a year teaching at a private school, Jordan has amassed 18 years with SAISD, starting with two years teaching math at Pickett, the district’s former disciplinary alternative education placement center.
“I liked to see the excitement those kids would get,” Jordan said. “It taught me every kid deserves a chance. Just because they were in an alternative school doesn’t mean they were bad kids. Most people gave up on those kids. Those are the kids I’d go to first.”
After his time at Pickett, Jordan felt the call to leadership. He worked four years as an instructional coordinator and assistant principal at Longfellow Middle School and another four years as principal at Irving Middle School before coming to his current position at the Juvenile Detention Center.
At the center, Jordan manages 23 staff and up to 120 students living and learning in modules of 8-12. Students receive instruction in core subjects, reading, and physical education. The center is also staffed with a social worker, transition specialist, and special education teachers to meet all the needs of the students there. Jordan starts his days checking in on the modules, the teachers, and the detention center staff to make sure everyone is ready to go for the day.
“I’m a big believer in really caring about your team to make sure they are ready to service the kids,” Jordan said. “As principal I’m not teaching that class every day. My job is to make sure the kids have what they need, and the teachers have what they need, so they can go in there and do the best they can for the kids.”
Their students come from all over the county, and only stay an average of 22 days while their cases are being adjudicated, but for each student, there is coordination with the home campuses across the county to make sure the student’s return to campus is as smooth as possible. It does mean a lot of constant transition.
“What we’ve had to focus on is making sure the teacher knows who these kids are, how can they differentiate instruction for them, and just being able to manage the first day of school, every day, because the population here changes daily,” Jordan said. “We have to assess them each day and figure out how we are going to move them forward while they are here. We know it’s temporary, we know we can’t fix everything, but we want them — when they come here — to feel like they had value added to their education.”
Each student that comes through their doors requires research to try to get all the educational data they can to provide an excellent education. But Jordan says the reasons why they are there don’t matter.
“We use the motto ‘we don’t judge, we educate.’ We don’t want preconceived notions of the kids,” he said. “To us they’re our students and our job is to do the best we can to help them be successful.”
Jordan also oversees the 12 SAISD staff at the Healy Murphy Center and the Healy Murphy Pre-K, and provides oversight for district students placed at the Bexar County Juvenile Justice Academy, so throughout the day, he is also checking in on any students at JJAD and making sure district staff are doing well at Healy Murphy.
“It’s a lot of the same kind of thing, going through classrooms, working with kids, working with the administration there,” he said. “The Pre-K for sure, that’s probably the facility where I get to interact with the kids more, because they’re 3 and 4 years old so anyone who walks into the room is their new best friend.”
The kids, Jordan said, are what keep him going. For several years he was also principal of the school at the Children’s Shelter, and those students had a profound impact on him.
“When I was at the shelter — we’re talking about kids 3K through fifth grade — that were literally the night before removed from their homes for abuse, and they’re thrown into this campus, and they show up to school the next day,” Jordan said. “To me it really hit home that there’s a group of kids out there that just are going through stuff we can’t even comprehend, and they get lost in the system. So that really appeals to me to help students like that — so much so that I adopted two kids.”
He and his wife fostered and ultimately adopted two children through an outside organization. Their adoptions were finalized two years ago, and they both attend school in the district.
“Had I not been in this position working with those campuses, I don’t know that I would have been as motivated for that,” Jordan said. “I’ve shared that journey with the entire staff. I do try to treat the staff like part of a family. We’re all in different places but we’re all working toward the same goal.”
He has staff members at the detention center with quite a bit of tenure, one with 19 years.
“We’re a hidden gem,” Jordan said. “Generally teachers only leave here when they retire. One way I measure myself is ‘does my team want to work for me? Would I be motivated to go out and teach every day if I were my own boss?’ It’s been rewarding that people stick around.”