GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (GRPS) -- When Dr. Michael Hastings walks the unique halls of Grand Rapids Public Museum School, he does so as both an educator and a proud alumnus of Grand Rapids Public Schools.
“I’m a product of Grand Rapids Public Schools, proud graduate of Grand Rapids Central High School in 1993,” he explained. “Go Rams!”
His path to education was not a traditional one. Before entering the classroom, Dr. Hastings worked in staffing, recruiting and human resources.
“I’d always been an educator, just not working in education,” he said. “I started off my professional life in the private sector with staffing and recruiting and human resources, helping people find jobs.”
Dr. Hastings first joined GRPS as a science teacher at Westwood Middle School. He later transitioned to district-level support through instructional technology. Now he oversees a school unlike any other in the district.
“The Public Museum School is a unique learning space,” he said. “We have a wonderful partnership that allows our students to come down and interact with artifacts on a daily basis.”
Those experiences help bring lessons to life.
“It takes them from looking at that textbook and reading about that person to coming down here and saying, ‘OK, in the textbook we talked about Native Americans and how they settled here. Here they are,’” he said.
Those real-world connections help scholars develop deeper understanding.
“That connection really provides that long-standing, ingrained memory, that learning that we’re looking for, rather than just the regurgitation that sometimes happens when we’re looking at a textbook,” he said. “We get to expose them to a lot of different things. You see the look in kids’ faces in any subject area because they’re seeing things in class that they haven’t seen before.”
When Hastings reflects on the legacy he hopes to leave behind, it comes down to one simple idea: care.
“My hope is that as a principal, they remember that I cared about them,” he said. “That I cared about them as an individual. Cared about the whole package as a person, not just the academic side.”