Dr. Aleisha McCallie is the principal at Tyner MIddle Academy. Photo by Angela Foster.
Dr. Aleisha McCallie started her career in engineering but quickly left the field to pursue her lifelong calling to teach.
Now the principal of Tyner Middle Academy, McCallie rose from the classroom to education’s version of the boardroom thanks, in part, to the School Leadership post-master’s program she completed at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2020.
The skills, industry expertise and state license she got through UTC allowed McCallie to make her first move from teacher to assistant principal in 2020.
“UTC had a perfect way to make sure my options weren’t limited in climbing the corporate ladder of education. What I learned at UTC was priceless coming into an administrative role,” McCallie said.
Her 16-year career in public schools has been fueled much more by passion than by earning potential, she said.
“Education is freedom. It’s choices, something nobody can take away from you.”
A born math whiz, McCallie was a de-facto teacher to friends in school growing up, first in Ohio and then in Chattanooga, where she moved with her family in the second grade.
The north-to-south culture shock hit her hard.
“I went from being encouraged to be a thinker and to have a voice to being silenced…I quickly learned Southern culture to survive.”
It was difficult and dismaying, but McCallie remained determined to help written-off classmates learn algebra and geometry, subjects that came naturally to her.
That experience in childhood carried over into her first days as a teacher and stays with her to this day. It reminds her never to let any student fall through the cracks, she said.
“I want to bridge the gaps in life and make them see that school is a purposeful experience. I help students realize they have a purpose.”
In the same way that McCallie has always believed in her students, others have believed in her.
“Over the years, I had principals and colleagues tell me I should become a principal when I didn’t see it myself,” McCallie said.
She earned an EdD in 2016 and was appointed to Tyner Middle Academy in 2022.
Barry Kamrath, head of the UTC School Leadership program, said McCallie is a leader who “just gets it.”
“Aleisha has got an intangible ‘it’ factor and a lot of it has to do with her ability to understand the struggle that students go through. Her career reflects that; she is already a principal,” Kamrath said.
McCallie said her strengths as a school leader are her “Type A” personality, which drives her knack for “getting things done” and her instinctive care for students.
“They come into my office and it’s welcoming and they can take a breather and talk to me…I live to see them leave my office standing a little taller, even if it just keeps them out of trouble for a moment,” she said.
Her advice for kids and adults alike: “Always be like a duck; above the water you’re poised while underwater your feet are always moving.”
