Profile: Jeff L. Dillon
Personalizing His Ministry Work in School
BY PAUL RIEDE/School Administrator, December 2018

Jeff Dillon

JEFF DILLON WAS immersed in reinvigorating the academic culture of his rural school district in southwestern Idaho when a pair of envelopes arrived, unbidden. Each contained an offer that was way too good to refuse.

The FedEx envelopes from Apple invited the two schools in the 500-student Wilder School District to apply for ConnectED grants. The grants included an iPad for every student, a MacBook Air and iPad for every teacher, an Apple TV for every classroom, commercial-grade Wi-Fi throughout the district and 17 days of training for all teachers and assistants.

Wilder’s elementary and middle/high school both won the grants, becoming two of 114 Apple ConnectED schools. In the process, Dillon, who had been exploring new approaches to using technology in instruction before the Apple offers arrived, was freed to fully embrace personalized, mastery-based learning.

The transformation of the district, now in its third year of personalized learning, is dramatic. Wilder’s schools now have no grade levels or bell systems. Students work at their own pace and at their own level, advancing when they are ready.

“They are becoming owners of their own learning,” Dillon says. “They come to school every day and are successful in learning every day.”

The overhaul has drawn national attention. In August, AASA and the Successful Practices Network, citing Dillon as a “maverick leader,” named Wilder one of the 25 most innovative school districts in the country. In September, the district was featured on “CBS This Morning.”

Apple initially contacted Wilder because of its high poverty rate. All of the students in the farming community 40 miles west of Boise receive free lunch. Enrollment is 70 percent Hispanic, and a quarter of students are English language learners. Annual student mobility is 30 percent.

“So how do you meet the needs of all of those kids?” Dillon asks. “You have to personalize that.”

Dillon, who turns 53 this month, has a deep knowledge of the community and firsthand experience with academic struggle. He grew up in Wilder, doing daily chores on his family’s pig farm. He was dyslexic, so school was a struggle. He says he initially went to college because a couple of friends needed a third roommate.

After his freshman year at Eastern Oregon University, he transferred to Northwest University, a Bible school in suburban Seattle. Before he took his first job in public education, he spent 14 years working as a pastor and youth pastor in Washington and Oregon.

In 2001, with a growing family, he returned to school to get a master’s in teaching. “I really feel that it was a call to ministry, but ministry is different to different people,” he says.

For a brief period, he worked as both a pastor and a middle school science teacher. He returned to Wilder in 2007 after his mother alerted him to an opening for K-12 assistant principal. At the end of that first year, he was named elementary school principal. In 2012, he moved into the superintendency and now fills that role and is secondary school principal.

Dillon eagerly takes on new challenges, says Rob Winslow, executive director of the Idaho Association of School Administrators. He chairs the association’s Legislative Priorities Committee, and earlier this year ran for state education superintendent.

“He’s always someone reaching out and stretching himself,” Winslow says.

That constant striving put his district in a position to hit the ground running when those letters from Apple arrived, Winslow says.

“They were ready,” he says. “He had built a culture, and he had his staff ready.”


PAUL RIEDE is a freelance education writer in Syracuse, N.Y.

BIO STATS: JEFF DILLON
Currently: superintendent, Wilder School District, Wilder, Idaho

Previously: elementary principal/Title I director, Wilder School District

Age: 53

Greatest influences on career: My previous supervisors, Doug Kaplicky, Doug Rogers and Dan Arriola, provided the mentorship for me to be successful. I still call them often for guidance and support.

Best professional day: The day we rolled out iPads to all of our students, the day “CBS This Morning” visited our campus and the day we were recognized as one of the nation’s leaders in innovation.

Books at bedside: Bible

Biggest blooper: When I falsely accused an elementary student of stealing. The look on the student’s face is burned into my memory, and I use it as a reminder to not jump to conclusions when investigating student misbehavior.

Why I’m an AASA member: The collaboration with colleagues from across the nation. The ability to access high-quality professional development through cohorts.