A life spent on the Lees-McRae campus shaped journey and goals of Elementary Education major Madison Hollar ‘12

Although she graduated with her degree in 2012, Elementary Education alumna Madison Hollar has been a Bobcat for about as long as she can remember.

“I was about three, and my mom enrolled at Lees-McRae in the education department. This was in the mid-90s and at that time Lees-McRae had a major in high school history education,” Hollar said. “She was actually a student at the college doing her degree in secondary education, so my very first memories of Lees-McRae were sitting in the basement of the library in classes that she was in.”

From there forward, Lees-McRae was a part of almost every aspect of the lives of Hollar and her family. Her mom went on to become an instructor at the college for more than 15 years, students floated in and out of their house for babysitting gigs and home-cooked dinners, and Hollar eventually earned her own degree from the college, following in her mother’s footsteps to earn a bachelor’s in education.

“For my brother and I, we grew up on campus. That was home. Our family—our family that we chose—all stems from there. It’s hard to talk about without getting emotional because it was just the heartbeat of our family for so long,” Hollar said. “I was adamant about going to Lees-McRae to do my degree. Just watching my mom teach, and the relationships that she had with students; seeing those relationships form and what that did to our family really inspired me to go into education. I was not going to go anywhere else, because I felt like Lees-McRae had the best of the best when it came to an elementary education program.”

Although she knew she wanted to work in education, Hollar also knew that teaching alone wasn’t her sole ambition. When reflecting on her time in grade school, she said she was always impacted by and formed strong relationships with her principals; relationships that inspired her to pursue this administrative goal for herself.

In North Carolina teachers are required to teach for three years before beginning the graduate-level education and licensure process to become an administrator. For Hollar, however, she felt that three years was not enough to learn all the ins and outs of the school system in order to be an effective principal.

She set a ten-year timeline for herself, after which she would leave teaching and switch to administration with a wealth of knowledge gained from a decade in front of the classroom.

“I felt like to gain the respect of teachers I needed to have a solid number of years under me, so 10 years was kind of my cut-off. In that time, I went back to grad school at App State, and I did a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction, and then I did an add-on licensure in school administration,” Hollar said. “I wanted to be more well-versed in the teaching side of it than just the managerial side. I love instructional coaching and supporting teachers with their instruction and curriculum.”

After 10 years of teaching elementary and secondary education in Avery and Watauga Counties, Hollar took a job as an assistant principal at Hardin Park Elementary School in Boone and worked there for two years. Now, having followed closely to the plans she laid as a newly minted teacher more than 10 years before, Hollar has reached her ultimate goal and accepted the job of principal at Blowing Rock School.

Through the many grades and subjects she has taught, and now the schools she has led, one of the most important perspectives she brings to her roles originated at Lees-McRae.

“I attribute so much of my beliefs and my values about education to the amount of diversity I was exposed to at such a young age and throughout my Lees-McRae experience from when I was three to when I was 20. I truly had 17 years of understanding what it meant to embrace people who were different or who were from somewhere else,” she said. “It being so small but bringing in so much diversity is incredible. You expect that from App because they’re huge, but for Lees-McRae to have the richness and diversity not just in students, but in degrees and programs, is impressive.”

Hollar said that the community she found at Lees-McRae—as a child, as a student, and as an alumna—has shaped her goals, the journey she took to achieve them, and who she has become along the way.

“I just don’t think I would be who I am or where I am if it weren’t for that place,” she said.