GUILDERLAND — The line from Shakespeare that Marie Wiles has relied on throughout her life is from “Hamlet”: “To thine own self be true ….”

It’s part of the advice the king’s minister, Polonius, gives to his son, Laertes.

“There’s lots of ways to think about that …,” said Wiles. “I was brought up thinking in the literal way of that, about being honest and acting with integrity, which were values that I got from my parents, neither of whom went to college. And my father never even went to high school.”

Wiles herself not only went to college, earning her undergraduate degree at Temple University, but went on to earn a master’s degree from the University of Albany in secondary English education, and a doctorate at Syracuse University.

After starting her career as an English teacher — with a love of Shakespeare — she served various roles in two different Boards of Cooperative Educational Services before becoming a BOCES district superintendent.

Once she had a baby, Wiles wanted to cut back on travel and became superintendent of the schools in Clinton, near her childhood home, before being named Guilderland’s superintendent in 2010.

“I was brought up with that message: No matter what you do, you must be honest; you must stay true to your values; you must work as hard as you possibly can and always do your very best,” Wiles says in this week’s Enterprise podcast. “So to me, that translated into this lovely line from Shakespeare.”

That line — a father’s advice to his son — Wiles said, has been her “guiding principle as a human being.”

With the thought that others may be guided by Shakespeare as well, Wiles has just written her first book, “Lessons from the Bard: What Shakespeare Can Teach Us about School District Leadership,” published by Rowman & Littlefield.

Wiles describes becoming an author as “100 percent unintentional.”

Two years ago, just after the worst of the pandemic, she was asked to give a 10-minute talk to a convention of school superintendents about social-emotional wellness.

Feeling she didn’t know enough about the topic, Wiles went back to her days teaching English and drew on Shakespeare. “I immediately went to Macbeth because he breaks every rule of what you do in order to be socially and emotionally well adjusted,” said Wiles.

The talk was a success, despite several colleagues saying they had hated Shakespeare as students, and the editor of a magazine for school administrators then asked Wiles to write an article on the subject.

She did.

A few days after her 600-word essay was published in the magazine, in June 2022, an editor from Rowman & Littlefield said he’d like to help her turn it into a book. 

Wiles sent him a book proposal “and literally the day after I sent it, he sent me a contract …,” she said. “My husband was so angry at me when I had a contract within 24 hours of submitting a proposal because he’s a writer, too, and he has been down the road of trying to find someone who will publish.”

Nevertheless, her husband, Tim Wiles, became her copy editor and did such a good job that, when she got the proofs back from the publisher, she said, it took her less than two hours to make any adjustments.

Tim Wiles, who is retiring after a decade at the helm of the Guilderland Public Library has arranged for his wife to read from and discuss her book on his last day at the library, Feb. 2 at 7 p.m.

Her writing piqued the interest of their teenage son, Ben, who would “tentatively knock on the door” as she worked on Saturdays.

“Mom, can I come in?” he’d ask. “I’m always going to say yes,” said Wiles, calling the time she spent discussing her writing with her son “precious moments.”

“The book really was an unexpected vehicle to pull together a lot of disparate parts of my life …,” she said. “I reflected on being a student, a teacher, a school leader, a wife and mother … and then this part-time writer in between things.”

Her book is made up of five chapters, each devoted to one of Shaekespeare’s plays: “Romeo and Juliet,” “Macbeth,” “The Merchant of Venice,” “Julius Caesar,” and “Hamlet.”

“Part of the reason why I picked them was for a certain poetic justice,” said Wiles. “These are plays that people like me make kids read in school, and they may or may not enjoy it.”

Wiles wanted to dispel the idea of Shakespeare’s “loftiness” since she sees his plays — “once you get past the challenge of the Elizabethan language” — as “just really good stories about very human people with all kinds of flaws but also positive traits.”

The plays serve as “cautionary tales for school leaders,” said Wiles.

She begins each chapter with a quotation from the play to “summarize the gist of why this particular story would matter for people who are trying to lead schools.”

The reader becomes an active participant in learning modern — or perhaps age-old with a modern gloss — lessons from the plays as Wiles, like the schoolteacher she is, highlights major points with questions at the end of each chapter followed by more questions to engender discussion.

Wiles believes that most people don’t understand the work done by school leaders. People may watch a school board meeting, for example, and consider it boring.

“You have no idea how much effort goes into having a smoothly run, efficient board of education meeting — the planning, the homework, the prep … so much goes into it behind the scenes,” she says.

The same is true of a budget vote, a capital project, or a new course, said Wiles. “You don’t see the days and hours and weeks and months of all that has to happen before that becomes real.”

As she describes it, the work of a school superintendent sounds like the work of creating a play with much behind-the-scenes activity and hours of practice before the moment of enactment, which the audience takes as the reality.

Asked the source of her own intellectual hunger and ability to lead, Wiles cited two teachers. 

Patricia Dawes was her English teacher in fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades at St. Mary’s “a little tiny Catholic school in Clinton, New York.” Wiles said. “She was the epitome of the English teacher who wove together the power of reading and writing.”

Then, as a student at Notre Dame High School in Utica, Wiles was taught Advanced Placement English by Elizabeth Lemieux. “I was very quiet in high school and I don’t even think she will remember me …,” said Wiles. “But she would force us as thinkers to get beyond the words on the page … She just pushed us, pushed us, pushed us to think in more literary ways.”

Wiles believes anyone in a leadership role would find value in her book.

Leaders, she said, “make decisions on behalf of others, whether it’s their family or their business or their school or their legislative district.”

The central theme of “Hamlet,” she said, is “being able to follow through on your purpose; that whole play is about him knowing what his purpose is and not being able to act.”

“Knowing one’s purpose,'' Wiles said, is essential to leadership.

“It gives you the courage and the motivation to take the actions that you need to take in order to fulfill that purpose, and that lesson transcends any role there may be in life,” she said.

Asked what she saw as her purpose as the leader of the Guilderland schools, Wiles said that it is the same as the district’s mission statement — making sure all kids are future ready.

But she added, “I have stopped saying, ‘all kids’ in order to change it to ‘each and every.’ I think that’s a really important distinction.” She explained that “all kids” lumps together “this group of 5,000 students who walk through our doors every day.”

“But when you say ‘each and every’ you begin to see the individual needs and gifts and idiosyncrasies … all the things that make each child unique.”

Besides “Hamlet,” another play that resonates with Wiles right now in her leadership role at Guilderland is “The Merchant of Venice,” she said.

The “dark side” of the comedy, she said, is “the way that Shylock the Jew is othered in this play. And I think, because of the times we live in and the strong feeling that people can have about fitting in and belonging and being seen and heard and affirmed … that’s an area where we all need to work right now.”

Wiles went on, “It’s part of my strong commitment to the work we’re doing in Guilderland around diversity, equity, and inclusion, which I feel is the most meaningful work I’ve done in the district.”

Wiles has no plans to retire soon although she is past the eligible age, she said. She cares about educating the next generation of school leaders and will teach a course in the doctoral program at Russell Sage College in the spring.

“I don’t really have a grand plan ahead,” said Wiles, not even writing another book. “But I am a worker by nature.”

She concluded, like Polonius, with advice for young people.

“My biggest take-away from this life experience,” said Wiles of publishing her book, “is you should always say ‘yes’ to opportunities … If I’d turned down the opportunity to do that 10-minute talk at the conference, this never would have happened.

“So, even though it’s inconvenient or you don’t have time or whatever, when someone gives you an opportunity, say ‘yes’ — because you never know where it will lead.”