Coppola key to GSE’s involvement with local school districts

If the measure of a person is the connections he makes with others, consider these endorsements and recognitions about Vincent J. Coppola, a beloved career educator many credit with establishing the foundation for UB’s mission to make a difference in local school districts.

They’re right from the Book of Coppola, examples about crafting relationships that make lasting improvements, both personally and in an educational institution. If there’s a Coppola legacy, this is what it’s all about:

• “Vince rocked the house just like we expected him to. The ultimate voice of experience delivering a powerful message regarding the education of our children,” wrote Hamburg School Board President David Youviene after Coppola spoke at a meeting while serving as acting superintendent in the once-troubled school district. “He did it with grace and compassion and that great sense of humor we all love,” Youviene wrote. “Our hero, the man that picked up our district when we stumbled. Vince used his calming personality and his vast experience to lift us up and get us back on track to the great district we have always been.”
• In a lengthy editorial, the Buffalo News praised Coppola’s “yeoman work” as acting superintendent in Hamburg, finding a “happy ending of a disaster movie” after “calming the disturbances that were tearing the district apart.”
• The prestigious Executive Educator Journal selected Coppola as one of the top 100 administrators in North America. The West Seneca Chamber of Commerce named him Educator of the Year. Phi Delta Kappa gave him its Top Educator Award. Most recently, he was one of five educators in New York State and one of 24 nationally chosen for the Excellence in Educational Leadership Award presented by the University Council for Educational Administration.

UB’s Graduate School of Education has made getting involved with local school districts one of its highest priorities. Administrators, professors and teachers from UB and local school districts agree: Coppola was “instrumental in developing relationships among the school districts and the Graduate School of Education,” says Alan Gellin, communication and student/alumni relations specialist.

Coppola was one of the guiding forces that started the Leadership Initiative for Tomorrow’s Schools, or LIFTS, an administrative development program that has graduated some of the most celebrated school administrators in Western New York.

“I think there are very few people in public education who have served the Western New York community so well for so long as Vince has,” says Stephen L. Jacobson, UB Distinguished Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy.

At the center of these accolades is Coppola: former executive director of UB’s Western New York Educational Service Council (WNYESC); longtime adjunct faculty member in the Graduate School of Education and other local colleges; an educator who spent 40 years working in public schools as an English teacher, guidance counselor, assistant principal, principal, director of personnel and superintendent of local schools. He’s now a full-time consultant for the WNYESC who, incidentally, holds three degrees from GSE, all in counseling: master’s degrees in school counseling and college counseling/student personnel and a doctorate in counselor education.

Time after time, school after school, Coppola has become known for the connections he makes with others and the lasting relationships around teaching that have changed people’s lives.

When asked to explain his ability to forge these relationships, inspire others to find their true calling and find harmony in conflict, Coppola doesn’t hesitate. First, he talks about the skills he learned in his educational counseling training at UB. Then he credits his mother, Josephine Coppola, the quintessential Italian mother who taught him the importance of being kind and caring, and doing nice things for people.

“I think the skills that I learned in counseling here at UB helped me in administration,” says Coppola, who comes across in person as the funny, warm, smart, caring uncle everyone always wanted to have. “Learning to listen, learning to be supportive, doing the job with all the compassion that was in me. I found that I was able to help a lot of young people who needed a direction, needed some insight into the world of work, where they might be going into college, dealing with personal issues they were dealing with. I got a great deal of satisfaction out of that.

“I never felt I was a bureaucrat,” he says. “I always felt people were important. And it didn’t matter what your status was.  If you were to watch me in a hallway talking to people, you wouldn’t know if I was talking to a cleaner or the head custodian, or talking to an assistant superintendent. Because the conversation was always done with respect, attention, giving those people a sense that they were important to me and what they were doing there in school was important to us,” he says.

“I really think that’s the core of who I am, and I really think that’s the core of what I gained most from my experiences in the Graduate School of Education: that relationships are important and people are important. And putting them first.

“In this world which has become so fast-paced, and people using all the technology they have today, and people racing from one thing to the next, I think it’s absolutely amazing how people value and how grateful they are when some adult can sit and just give all their attention to them,” says Coppola.

“They may have a major issue or a problem. But just that time for them to express what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling, what they’re going through and having somebody make them feel special, that all their attention is on them, and you’re listening carefully, and you know that you’re hearing them, because you’re using those counseling skills — it’s important.

“There’s not enough of that going on today,” he says. “We’re like ships passing in the night.”

With Coppola, there’s always more to the story. He was captain of the Buffalo State College basketball team in 1957-58, and readily admits athletics gave him a self-esteem that had previously eluded him. He married a stunning Buffalo State cheerleader, Rosemary DeMarco, known now as “Rosebud,” who became a lifelong elementary school teacher, cherished by many former students for her own dedication and warmth.

Coppola’s first guidance counselor job was at small, rural North Collins Central where he coached the varsity basketball team for four years while Rosebud taught second grade and was adviser to the cheerleading squad. North Collins graduates still remember Coppola commanding the stage when he played Mr. MacAfee in the musical “Bye Bye Birdie,” a role made famous by Paul Lynde.

“I used to tease Vince that there was never a microphone he didn’t want to hold or an audience he didn’t want to address,” says Jacobson, one of Coppola’s staunchest advocates at UB.

“When Vince was heading the Western New York Educational Service Council, he was always being called upon by local school boards for advice and recommendations, and it was his gentle good humor that helped many of them through what might otherwise have proven to be far more contentious situations than they turned out to be,” Jacobson says. “His counseling background is probably what made him so adept at defusing adversarial positions.”