Drayton Hawkins

Drayton Hawkins currently serves as Vice Principal of Oak Ridge High School, part of the public school district Oak Ridge Schools in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Previously, Drayton served as Director of Middle School Education for Haywood County Schools in Brownsville, TN. In this role he led district-level support for grades 5-8.

Prior to this, Drayton served as a school-level administrator at all grade levels in the county:  as Assistant Principal at Anderson Early Childhood Center (PreK-K) and Sunny Hill Elementary (5-6), Principal at Ripley Primary School (PreK-2,) Assistant Principal at Haywood High School (9-12,) and Director of Sunny Hill Innovative Learning Center. Drayton taught literature and writing, computer, and English language arts to seventh grade students at Haywood Junior High School for eight years before moving into administration.

Drayton is a proud graduate of Tennessee State University where he earned a B.A. English.  He completed his teacher education courses at the University of Memphis and holds a Master of Arts in Educational Leadership from Trevecca Nazarene University.

Drayton shared Haywood’s curriculum journey in a column for The 74, Curriculum Case Study:  How a More Rigorous Curriculum Got Students in a Rural Tennessee District to Stop Skipping School.

You can follow Drayton on Twitter at @MrHawk731. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn.

Haywood’s Implementation Journey

In 2018, Haywood County Schools adopted the EL Education curriculum for grades K-5 (K-2 EL Foundational Literacy; 3-8 LearnZillion Guidebooks). In math, Haywood County schools use Bridges for grades k-2 and Ready Mathematics for grades 3-8.

Instruction Partners has been a shoulder partner assisting the district in curriculum-based professional learning in both ELA and math since 2019. Over time district leaders have taken on more leadership of ongoing professional development, but Instruction Partners still supports the Haywood team as needed with curriculum-based professional learning that includes unpacking the curriculum modules so that teachers understand the content they will be teaching and how lessons are sequenced to build students’ knowledge and skills.They also backward map instruction so that teachers can see how the lesson sequence prepares students for assessments matched to long-term learning targets. Finally, Instruction Partners’ coaches facilitate collaborative conversations between teachers and with district leaders to discuss data collected during walkthrough observations and evidence from student work.