JOB DESCRIPTION:
I guess if you would say technically is that I oversee the day to day, I guess, events, running of the building, management of the building. There’s a lot of stuff that goes into that so, wow, where do you start? My responsibilities would include like retaining staff, evaluating staff, I oversee the high school budget, which is a chunk of money that you got to spend smartly because we have over 1800 students in the building and 150ish staff members. What else? I don’t get involved with a lot of students discipline, the associate principals do that, but you know, I collaborate with them, things like that. I kind of collaborate of oversee the professional development for the teachers. Just kind of running the day to day operations and the short term and long term planning, it’s a lot.
DO YOU DO MORE FOR STAFF THAN STUDENTS?:
Yup. I guess, yeah, to think about it, my role as far as what I do, a lot of my working is with adults, so I work with teachers and staff a lot, I work with parents a lot, things like that. You know, parent complaints, parent issues, or concerns, I make a lot of parent phone calls, meet with parents, things like that. A lot of meetings with our teachers, with our instructional coaches, we plan professional development for our teachers. Where our associate principals tend to do more on the student level, stuff like you’re tardy, you’re absent, you’re skipping class, you’ve made a bad choice. We do cover for each other, so I do that every once in a while, or if there is something bigger than we are all working on it. But yes, the majority of my work is with adults, even though I try and work hard to get to the student level because that is the fun part.
WOULD YOU CONSIDER WORKING WITH STUDENTS THE HIGHLIGHT OF YOUR DAY?
Yeah, I think as educators we all get into education because, you know, working with young people is the hope, is the future, is what we want to do. Which you know when you’re teaching a classroom, that is 99% of what you're doing, you’re working with young people, which is awesome. And then you get to sort of my scenario, the question you get asked is “why would you become a principal? Why do you want to be an administrator?” And I think for me, it probably came through my coaching, I coached earlier. I do enjoy the aspect of leading and doing some of those things. I think some of my strengths lean more towards the strategic thinking stuff. But, I definitely miss the daily interactions with students. Like when I get to get into a classroom or days like this when I am meeting with young people, those are good days. Adults' complaints, concerns and bad things, those aren’t fun days. You do that because it’s part of the job, but it’s not what I wake up and want to do. A good day for me would be going out and about, getting into classrooms and seeing students, going to our events, that’s fun.
DO YOU LIKE TO SEE HOW YOU IN YOUR POSITION CAN IMAPCT A YOUNG PERSON'S LIFE?:
Yeah, I think that’s the cool thing. I mean when we talk about retirement, people come and go, we have teachers who have been here for 30+ years or longer, and we talk about “What’s your legacy?”, when you have done this for so long as an educator. And it’s you guys. There’s not like a “Oh, I built this giant building one day” or “I invented this thing”. It’s the thousands and thousands of students who have crossed your path or gone through your classrooms or passed through your building and the hope is that we have set them up to be successful in their future. You know I go back to, “Why education?”, I think for me, I believe that it goes back to the Founding Fathers, why they created public education. And the reason was because they believed that we have to have an educated citizenry in order for the public to be successful. Education opens so many doors. It’s a tough gig right now, there’s a lot of pro/con in education. Everybody still believes that if you leave high school and whatever you do next, it gives you options. And I would hope that every young person that comes through here has choices and options. Some may go to college, some may go to careers, some may go to the military, who knows. But I hope they have choices because if you don’t graduate, I know for a fact that your choices get very limited very fast and that’s a hard life. I don’t want that.
FUN FACTS:
Free Time Activities -
Oh boy. I like to be outside when it’s nice. I play a lot of golf when I can. I don’t get to play as much as I want to because I do work year round, even though people don’t know that. I work all summer, so my contract is year round. But if I take vacation days, I try to get on the golf course. I can go after school in the spring and the summer. I do love sports. I like to go to the Iowa Hawkeye football games, I like to go watch my Kansas City Royals, my baseball team, play, I follow the Chiefs. A lot of family time, my kids are getting older. I got a kid whose a freshman, I got a kid in college, so we like to get together and do stuff. I like to cook, believe it or not. I am trying to figure out ways to do things better, ways to be healthy ish. I work out as much as I can, about 4-5 days a week. I just try to stay active.
Favorite Movie -
I have seen a lot of movies, I’m pretty old. One that I have enjoyed recently was ‘Top Gun 2’, the second ‘Top Gun’. I enjoyed it so much because I was young when the first one came out, so that was very nostalgic for me. So twenty years later they made the sequel, to get to kind of be the young person now as an adult, it was pretty cool. That was a neat thing.
Favorite TV Show -
TV is different these days because it’s all about streaming, y’know. Right now, we are watching ‘Suits’, which is old. But I’m catching up on it because I didn’t watch it when it was on. The show that I didn’t think that I would like but I was immediately addicted to was ‘Game of Thrones’. I didn’t watch it when it was on, everybody was talking about it, it became kind of this cultural icon, it was part of jokes people made, I didn’t understand it because I didn’t watch it. I started watching it, thinking I was going to hate it because I don’t usually do fantasy and all that kind of stuff. I got sucked in right away and I binged watch it over COVID. That a really, really good one. Other than that we watch all the ‘Yellowstone’ things, like all the spin offs and all of that stuff. Just always looking for the next show with a bunch of seasons.
Favorite Foods -
I debate this all the time. It’s either pizza or tacos. Taco pizza is not bad. But if I was going to eat something forever, it would probably be pizza. You can mix it up a little bit. It’s probably the safe option but I really like it. We actually just bought a pizza oven so now we make them at home.
