Dr. Aaron Willette clocks in early in the morning, ready to greet every student with a warm smile, a high-five, and the occasional small talk. At recess, he strolls around campus and strikes up conversations with students. A simple greeting — “Hey, how’s your day going?” — helps students comfortably open up aspirations and concerns. 

Now in his 19th year in education, Willette draws from his experience in schools in California, Honduras, Kuwait, Thailand, and China to create one-of-a-kind episodes for DIS students. 

Dr. Willette wishes to nurture students with creative mindsets and prepare them for their future lives. “We don’t need kids that can regurgitate facts and information, and they need to have that, but they also need to be able to solve the problems that are going to face their generation, and those are pretty substantial problems. We want our students to be able to tackle those problems in their personal lives,” he said. 

Willette aims to nurture intelligent thinkers with his educational expertise. “We want them to be able to handle the issues that are going to affect their personal lives, and be creative and be real,” Willette said. 

Moreover, he understands that students do not fit into cookie-cutter molds. “There’s some kids that are really good at math, but terrible at writing and there’s some kids that are really good at writing, but terrible at math. But the goal is to get them to where they need to be and be proficient to the college level. We have to be able to teach those kids no matter who they are,” he said. 

His educational philosophy drives him to look for hidden gems among students. “I don’t look for people doing things wrong, I look for people doing things right, and congratulate them on what they’re doing right, and you’ll work on the things that you’re doing wrong little by little, but I want, you need to have that space to operate, you need to have that time to be independent and make those choices,” he said. 

Dr. Willette’s educational values stem from his childhood memories. “Some of my own experiences, as a kid growing up, my parents gave me a lot of responsibility, a lot of respect, and a lot of space to make my own decisions and own mistakes, knowing that we will make mistakes, and we will have those issues throughout our entire life,” he said. 

Willette’s grandfather steered him in the right direction throughout his adolescence. “For me, I think it was my grandfather who gave me the most guidance,” Willette said. “[My grandfather] was more direct when my parents were well, if that’s what you like, honey, go do it (laughs). Being more direct and supportive in the same way, but also just saying ‘if you’re an idiot, you’re an idiot, go to school.’” 

In Thailand, Willette came across the opportunity to offer the counsel his family had offered him. “[The student] was in ninth grade, and he was not reading and writing at his grade level. Not only that, I didn’t think that we would be able to keep him at the school because he was so far below all the other students,” Willette said. 

However, Willette’s team of student support specialists and teachers figured out specific skill sets the student had. “They started to identify areas that we could support him in if we had accommodations. We met with the parents and over the course of about a month and a half, we got a diagnosis of some neurodiverse learning needs. He had dyslexia and dyscalculia, so dyslexia made it hard for him to read, dyscalculia made it hard for him to do math,” he said.

Based on the student’s learning needs, they provided him with learning accommodations. “We got him a reader pen that would read out loud for him if he scrolled across the words, and that helped him with his reading,” Willette said. “When we were able to do that and give him those supports, he became an amazing student too, especially since I didn’t think he was going to be able to stay in the school that year.”

Even after Willette left the school, the student excelled thanks to the learning devices and set goals to go to college. “It doesn’t have to be the end goal for every student, but it showed his improvement in the end. It was cool to see him take his chance and for us to give him what he needs. He flowers and blooms into this really intelligent and incredible student,” he said.

With many more success stories under his belt, each campus Willette inhabits has settled down as a second home. “This profession is something that I really love doing, and that I’ve been in it long enough, I have students who have kids of their own, and they have careers of their own. Hearing their successes really makes me smile, and you get to be a formative person in someone’s life forever,” Willette said. 

Willette plans to bring the same energy to the DIS campus. “My last hope is that, over the next, five or ten years or however long I’m at this community is that I have a positive impact on the school and on the students and that maybe someday, when you’re getting interviewed by somebody, you can say, my principal at DIS would always talk to me about, whatever it is that influenced them,” he said.