On Wednesday, September 18th, I sat down for an interview with our new principal, Carlyn Carroll. She seemed energetic and excitedly answered every question with an analogy or her love for Centaurus. She says that the transition into her new role has been graceful, calling it, “probably more joy than I thought I was going to experience.” Mrs. Carroll was an assistant principal under Dan Ryan. She describes the difference between the two roles like standing up on a surfboard: “…you know everything about a school because you’re an assistant principal, but then you become the principal and all of the sudden, the whole picture has to be clear to you”.
Carroll’s teaching career started at Boulder High School, where she taught English for sixteen years. After teaching English and SEL in the classroom, she became a dean and assistant principal at Boulder High before making the move to CHS as assistant principal, but she didn’t always want to work in education. She was born in Boston and attributes some of her leadership qualities to growing up with a single mom. She says when you are a latchkey kid (“that’s a term from the 80’s”), “You can project and present that you got it together and you can act from your heart with absolute certainty.” After high school, she went to CU for fashion design before switching to education.
“What I loved about language arts is it gave me the avenue to help kids present who they were in the world.” She says, “If we feel connected to our teachers, we feel valued and seen.” Creating connection to a community for high schoolers is a theme that runs across all of Carroll’s goals. Her motive for becoming an administrator was to expand her circle of impact: “It wasn’t like I was ready to leave the classroom. I just knew that I could do more for students on a bigger level.” What she hopes to do is make all students feel welcome and embraced by the community. She has spent her first two months doing student, teacher, and parent outreach. She started a student executive board that she meets with once a week to ask what they notice about Centaurus that they want to change.
Equity is important to her: “My equity team is going to work on what [it feels] like in classrooms for all kids. Do they feel represented [and] do they feel like there is a belief in their limitless potential?” Ideally for her, “If we have a certain percentage of students of color in our school they are present in all of our programs in the same capacity.” In addition, this year the Centaurus PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports) did research about how to create a positive learning environment in classrooms through predictability.
Her plan for actualizing kids in a safe way is to create a place where students and teachers feel comfortable coming to talk to her as well as their peers about their problems. Carroll feels that needed school policies for this environment are already in place, though she adds, “it’s really a feeling”. She tries to embody the behavior she wants students to connect with. She says, “All I can do is be the light…if I’m the light and you see me constantly trying to be the light as the leader of your school then when you’re around me that might filter out to the next person”. Obviously though, it’s not realistic for one school to fix all problems in the life of every kid. When asked if she thinks this school can provide kids with the support that they need she said, “It just depends. If it’s unrealistic of course not. We don’t have infinite amounts of money”. When students have problems outside of what the school might be able to solve, she plans to connect first and find smaller ways to make students feel welcome. About her student executive board she said that it’s the “First year doing it so we might not have all the answers yet, but we’re getting there”.
Carroll has achievable goals and is leading her charge for school spirit. She appears to be an extremely optimistic person, looking forward to her work as principal in the coming year. She says that, “When it becomes uncomfortable to be unkind, that’s when you have capacity”. Her message is that we must all work together to make Centaurus a school that we are happy to be a part of and happy to invite other people to. Many are hopeful to see how her spirit may change the energy of the school and excited to see her playing music and dancing each morning.
