If everything had gone according to Tonya Norwood’s original plan, after graduating from Wayne State University in 1993 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, basketball fans might be watching the proud east-side Detroit native as part of the upcoming television coverage of college basketball’s March Madness tournaments.
A perfect assignment would have paired Norwood with her good buddy, Steve Smith, the Detroit Pershing, Michigan State and NBA basketball great, who also has distinguished himself as a basketball analyst on TV since retiring as a player from the NBA.
However, roughly 30 years ago, as Norwood was trying to pursue what she thought was her dream career in TV, while working other jobs to make ends meet, another dream began to formulate.
“I thought I wanted to be on TV covering sports and I was doing internships to get experience — I even had an internship at The Palace (the former home arena of the Detroit Pistons in Auburn Hills from 1988 through the 2016-17 NBA season),” she said.
“But, at the same time, I was working at the Cadillac plant and I was subbing (substitute teaching) at Finney High School,” the 1987 Pershing High School graduate recalled about a frenetic period in her life when Norwood said she feared that she may “break” during the process of pursuing her goal.
Norwood continued: “During that time, I came to realize that my heart was with the kids I was working with at the school and that teaching is what I really wanted to do. So, I started taking classes to get my certification.”
For Norwood, obtaining her teaching certification was just the start of an ambitious 30-year climb as an educator and pursuer of higher education, during which she received multiple degrees, including a doctorate degree from Wayne State University’s College of Education in 2016.
Norwood put her education to work by serving as a teacher, counselor, assistant principal and principal at schools in Detroit and metro Detroit. And Norwood’s performance in those roles did not go unnoticed, as honors came her way, including the Fred Martin Detroit Educator of the Year Award from the Coleman A. Young Foundation; the Michigan Chronicle “Women of Excellence” award; and the Detroit Pistons’ “Game Changers Award” presented by Farm Bureau Insurance Michigan, which Norwood received at the Pistons’ current home, Little Caesars Arena.
Nonetheless, despite her many accomplishments, Norwood insists that during Women’s History Month in March — or anytime, really — the greatest lesson that can be learned from her career requires an understanding of the “grind” that made it possible.
“It’s not how you start, or even how you finish, it’s what you do in between,” said the now-57-year-old Norwood, who today shares her expertise on school culture, climate and morale through her consulting firm Optimal Leadership Solutions, LLC. “So, I have always shared those stories about how I had to be resilient growing up, because you don’t have to let your past determine your future.”
The stories that Norwood candidly shares about growing up can be painful to absorb, as she describes a little girl who was teased at school because of her clothes, while facing other challenges from time to time, including housing insecurity and “not having any role models.”
However, Norwood’s story starts to get brighter when she describes her arrival at Pershing High School following a brief time at Cass Tech, which she left, in large part, because she didn’t feel like she fit in with the student culture.
But Pershing felt different to her right from the start.
“My first day at Pershing, our school secretary told Steve Smith to: ‘Take the new girl around to her classes, she’s smart, she just came over from Cass,’ ” recalled Norwood, who later became the captain of the cheerleading team that provided inspiration for all of the Doughboys sports teams, including when Smith starred on the basketball court. “Steve was the first person I met at Pershing, but people didn’t know that he had honors classes, too.
“Steve was smart. And when people started saying he was going to the NBA, I said: ‘Steve, you’re not going to the NBA, you’re too skinny.’ And he said: ‘Tonya Boo, I’m going to the NBA!’ ”
Norwood says she also is extremely grateful for the former longtime Pershing secretary and current president of the Pershing High School Alumni Association that connected her to Smith on that first day — Ann Connally.
“We call her Momma Connally,” said Norwood, who also served as Connally’s student aide. “She would give me bus tickets and was one of the few people who knew that I was catching three buses from Mack and Bewick to get to Pershing (located at Seven Mile and Ryan).”
Like Connally, providing extra support and encouragement to students has been a constant for Norwood, as well.
One of the more visible success stories connected to students Norwood has mentored is Treyvon Harlin, one of Norwood’s former students from Finney High School, who also received a doctorate degree from Wayne State’s College of Education and is now the principal of Harper Woods High School, where Norwood once served as principal.
But Norwood says the opportunity to inspire a student to strive for any goal, including mental health, is equally fulfilling for her.
“They used to say: ‘Oh Tonya is just a sub.’ And now I’m Dr. Norwood. … So my message to any student is that you can do anything,” said Norwood, who says creating a healthy school culture that is strong enough to offset the negative effects that social media has on a student’s mental health is vital to the success of any school.
“We have students today who feel like they have to look a certain way, or dress a certain way to get ‘likes’ on social media — it’s like a drug. And when they don’t get the ‘likes’ it affects their mental health. So, we have to have honest conversations about these things and we can’t give up on wanting to inspire each student. If we have a chance to pull someone up, we must do it.”
Norwood, the proud wife to Willie Norwood Jr., mom to Willie Norwood III and proud daughter-in-law to the late Willie Norwood, whose devotion to his family, business and former team, the Detroit Pistons, was a source of inspiration for the entire family, still has a major goal that she would like to accomplish at a place that has been instrumental to her success.
“My goal is to be a professor at Wayne State, because I want to empower and teach principals how to create healthy climates and cultures at our schools,” said Norwood, who once donned the costume of Supergirl from the DC Comics Universe with a pair of roller skates on Halloween when she was the principal of Noble Elementary School to show the girls at the school that they were “strong, beautiful, intelligent, humble and capable of doing anything they set their minds to.”
And Norwood will pursue becoming a Wayne State professor in the only way she knows how, which is true to her Detroit roots.
“I’m just a little Black girl from the Jeffries Projects, by way of Mack and Bewick, who just believes and puts God first,” she said.
Scott Talley is a native Detroiter, a proud product of Detroit Public Schools and a lifelong lover of Detroit culture in its diverse forms. In his second tour with the Free Press, which he grew up reading as a child, he is excited and humbled to cover the city’s neighborhoods and the many interesting people who define its various communities. Contact him at stalley@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter @STalleyfreep. Read more of Scott’s stories at www.freep.com/mosaic/detroit-is/. Please help us grow great community-focused journalism by becoming a subscriber.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: How Detroit’s Tonya Norwood rose from substitute teacher to principal
Reporting by Scott Talley, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
