A Small School Is Still A Huge Task

Every time the school bell rings the day changes, the children change classes, and Tynie Mader has something new to do. A teacher’s gone. There’s no substitute. There’s a monthly newsletter to get out and copies to make.

Welcome to a normal day for Mader, the 40-year-old principal, superintendent, athletics director, and volleyball coach at Lambert School—the only school in Lambert, Mont. (pop. 200).

“So-and-so has a bloody nose, a teacher’s gone, detention, fights ... You don’t just sit down with a list to get five things done today,” Mader says with a dimpled smile.

Mader’s not complaining. She loves working with children and takes very seriously her job of setting a positive role model for young women in this rural farm and ranch community.

Because Lambert is such a small school district—25 teachers and staffers and 109 kindergarten through 12th grade students—Mader knows the name of every student, their parents, and a lot of the grandparents.

“I like small. I like rural. I like the people. I like knowing my students. I like knowing they’re having a bad day because grandma’s sick,” Mader says.

It’s also important to Mader to know her employees’ jobs—from the cook and janitor right up to the teachers. So she doesn’t shrink from mopping floors and unloading freight when necessary.

Mader, who was raised in Ekalaka, Mont., (pop. 410) started out in secretarial school but went into teaching at the urging of a co-worker. Her high school principal, Gary Tuggle, who was also the principal at a school where Mader taught, talked her into becoming an administrator.

It was her attitude, strength, and compassion for students that Tuggle recognized. “She has a tremendous need to do a good job, and she’s very loyal,” says Tuggle, now retired.

The Lambert School Board spotted those same qualities when they interviewed her three years ago, says Rick Mullin, who was board chairman then.

“It’s very hard to find a good superintendent,” Mullin says. But Mader gets the job done, he adds, calling her energetic, easy to work with, honest, and hardworking.

So hardworking that she sometimes doesn’t go home until 11 p.m. Other days she is in the office as early as 3 a.m.—taking advantage of quiet hours when she can dive into the growing pile of paperwork that often covers her entire desk.

Mader is neat and crisp in appearance and manner. Dressed in pressed khaki pants, a red polo shirt with a Lambert Lions Staff logo, and shiny loafers, she might have been raised in the military—all spit and polish. But she hasn’t unpacked many of her moving boxes since coming to Lambert three years ago and would still be eating off paper plates if her mother hadn’t unpacked her dishes and pots for her.

“I’m always playing catch up,” Mader says, shaking her head. But it’s all worth it to her.

“I’m watching them grow up,” she says. “Parents ask: ‘Tynie, why don’t you have any kids?’ I say: ‘I have yours all day, and then they go home at night.’”

Michael Millin, a high school freshman, says Mader’s a good superintendent.

“She keeps everything in line, so things don’t get out of hand. … But she gets strict if things aren’t right,’’ Millin says.

Chris Spade, the school’s science teacher, agrees.

“She certainly keeps a handle on things. There’s no question she’s the superintendent. That’s a tough job considering we don’t have another administrator,’’ Spade says.

The beginning of each new school year still gives Mader a pleasant sense of anticipation, however.

“I’m as excited in the fall when the new pencils and notebooks come out as the kids (are),” she says.

Brett French is a writer for The Billings Gazette newspaper.

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