The new principal at the Baby Fold’s Hammitt School in Normal is very familiar with the campus, having worked there as a college student two decades ago.
Joe McQueen will lead Hammitt Elementary for children with emotional and behavioral disabilities.
McQueen worked as a college student for the Baby Fold while he studied at Illinois State University. While the program he worked for is no longer part of the Baby Fold, McQueen credited it for helping him to decide to pursue a special education and teaching degree at ISU.
“Everybody's so well-trained, and the way they respond is so therapeutic, and exactly how I've been trying to teach people how to approach kids ever since I left there,” said McQueen. “So coming home was fantastic.”
The Baby Fold also provides child welfare services, intervention services such as foster care, post-adoption services and support for expecting mothers, said Sam Guillory, vice president of development and public relations.
After graduating from college, McQueen taught special education at Bloomington District 87 for four years before moving out of Illinois. He returned in 2019 to work with the Regional Office of Education that covers Henderson, Knox, Mercer and Warren counties.
In his new role, McQueen anticipates a change in workload, saying it will be less consulting and keynote speeches, and more hands-on help for staff and students at Hammitt School.
“I think that's good. It's good to step away from that and really build my knowledge base based on all the things that they're doing to add to that sort of tool bag that I have,” he said.
Some of the staff at the Baby Fold today also were there two decades ago. McQueen said that says a lot about what working at the nonprofit is like.
“As the Baby Fold has evolved, they've evolved with it and moved into different positions and things like that, but their passion is still burning bright,” said McQueen. “And then to see the new people ... they still uphold that level of professionalism and that high level of passion is still there.”
The Baby Fold has evolved over nearly 125 years from an orphanage into the largest child welfare agency in Central Illinois. McQueen said how society as a whole views the people it serves also has changed.
“We were talking about trauma 20 years ago [at the Baby Fold], and having conversations on how trauma affects children and how trauma affects their behavior and how to deal with them therapeutically and how to give them safe spaces,” said McQueen.
While McQueen learned about it at the beginning of his professional career, he said since then mental health has now become much more understood.
“It took 15 years before anybody started talking about that. And I can remember chuckling to myself, thinking ‘this is how I cut my teeth’,” he said.
Guillory said the need for trauma-informed care was brought further into the public’s eye after the COVID-19 pandemic began.
“Our children are so impressionable. Yes, they are resilient, but they also are impressionable, and they respond to trauma differently than adults do. So, I think that gave us another opportunity to truly refine our skills,” said Guillory.
McQueen met with Hammitt School staff leading into the new school year. He said it was helpful to be able to get to know them before the classrooms become full again.
