When it comes to nominating principals in Southwest Mississippi, participants in the Enterprise-Journal’s 2023 Education Awards tended to favor experience.
The four finalists for Best Principal all have more than 20 years in the education profession:
• Rochelle Collins is only in her first year as South Pike High School principal, but she started in Magnolia as a substitute teacher in 1996 and worked her way up. Collins also has the unique pleasure of leading the school where she was the Class of 1992 valedictorian.
• Lori Harrell has been North Pike Lower Elementary School principal for the past eight years and has been at the school for 22 years in all. The school has 825 students from kindergarten through fourth grade.
• Kelli Little is in her 16th year as Higgins Middle School principal, and was a teacher at the school for 11 years before that.
• Lakya Washington has been Summit Elementary School principal ever since it reopened eight years ago.
Voting for winners of the 2023 Education Awards continues on the Enterprise-Journal’s website through next Tuesday, Jan. 31. Near the top of the website’s home page, click or tap on the Education Awards logo to participate in any of the 29 total categories.
Everyone can vote once per day in each category.
In interviews this week, the four Best Principal finalists talked about the issues they face today, along with the joys and worries of being in charge of a school.
North Pike’s Harrell said, “One of the things I enjoy about it is helping people in education build up their students, where they can better hone their craft. That’s my favorite part, helping the teachers.”
A challenge, she added, is that as principal, her ability to spend time in classrooms is limited.
“I make time for it,” Harrell said. “I had a lot more time when I was assistant principal. I do wish I had more time to be in those classrooms. Whenever they invite me to a room, I am always there.”
For Collins, her Magnolia roots spur her efforts at South Pike.
“I love kids. I love students. I love the community,” she said. “I graduated from South Pike, so this is my community, and I want to give it my best.”
She said her first year as principal is going well, and she is learning a lot.
“You try to meet people where they are, just have a collegial relationship so you can work toward a common goal,” she added.
If she has a concern, it is about the school’s perception.
“The community doesn’t always recognize that sometimes when things happen, there is a bad rap because of one or two children — but there’s a generalization about everybody at that school,” Collins said. “But I come here every day, and these are some of the best kids I’ve ever encountered.
“We have to teach our children how to present themselves. It’s not the mass of students sometimes; it’s a student making a bad decision who has to learn that what they did was incorrect,” Collins said.
At Higgins, Little said she was drawn to school administration because “I’ve always loved the whole school, I’ve always loved data.”
She said she loved being a teacher, but moving upward was the right decision for her.
“Now I get my hands involved with helping even more children, not just the 25 or 30 that I was assigned as a teacher,” Little said. “I also get to build teacher capacity — recruiting, keeping them and growing them. I’ve had several teachers become administrators and are now their own principals, or coaches, or interventionists.”
Little noted that school technology has improved greatly over the years.
“I started at a time when we wrote on chalkboard and whiteboards,” she said.
Washington, the Summit Elementary principal, said her path into education was set from an early age. Rattling off a list of influential McComb School District teachers, she recalled an assignment in high school English teacher Cherrie Randall’s class in which students had to write a letter to themselves, to be delivered in five years.
As promised, Randall sent Washington her letter five years later. In it, the former high school student said her aspiration was to be an assistant principal.
She met that goal at Higgins Middle School, and also was assistant vocational director at the Business and Technology Center before moving to Summit when it reopened in 2015.
“There is so much that I like,” Washington said. “The interaction and work with the students is my driving force. Seeing their smiles, watching their light bulbs come on. The student aspect of it is very gratifying for me.”
Discussing students, the principals said some things are different than they used to be — and some are not.
Washington said COVID-19 has been her biggest career challenge, by far.
“There were definitely academic setbacks,” she said. “I think we are getting our feet under us again. We are having to learn how to re-engage with kids, instead of using Zoom, and keep them engaged.”
Harrell said, “They have more needs for social and emotional instruction, if you will. Language and vocabulary for our youngest children, I have seen more of a need to address when they come to school.”
Collins said, “It’s a different time. Social media and those things have made things more difficult for students. That’s the biggest change, more information for students more quickly.”
But she added, “The kids haven’t changed for me. They’re still kids. They want love and guidance.”
Little observed that today’s schools have to deal with both schoolyard behavior and social media behavior — even at Higgins, which covers grades 4 through 6.
Even so, she said, “I am very, very fortunate that I wake up every day and cannot wait to get to work. I love what I do. I love the students. I love the teachers. It is amazing.”
