With every new year comes new faces to Wakeland. And some are familiar faces, just in new roles.
Wakeland lost two administrators: Assistant Principal Mr. Westby retired, and Associate Principal Mrs. Addo became the principal at Lebanon Trail. These were prominent and important positions to fill for the administrative team.
“Mr. Westby was great at taking care of things very thoroughly and always on time, so he left a void,” Dr. Edge said.
After Westby and Addo moved on, Edge had to find external and internal replacements. To fill the gap that they left, former coach, Dr. Harrell was promoted to assistant principal. Harrell now works with students with last names S-Z and helps with the science and foreign language departments among other responsibilities.
“Harrell has certainly filled in excellently with taking on some of Mr. Westby’s responsibilities,” Edge said. “He’s worked at other schools before he came here [as] a team leader and classroom teacher, so he has a lot of strengths. He really wants to make things better and almost immediately started doing that by putting in some processes in place for us.”
As Harrell has taken on Westby’s former tasks, the other assistant principals with experience at Wakeland have helped make his job easier.
“A good thing about Wakeland is all the administrators have tons of experience. Mr. Durand’s office is right next to mine, and downstairs, I go talk to Mr. Parker and Mrs. Sully every day,” Harrell said.
However, despite being new to the role, Harrell has been able to apply his leadership knowledge from coaching and teaching to his new position.
“Coaching is similar to being an assistant principal because it’s all about building relationships with kids,” Harrell said. “As an assistant coach, you work with the other coaches and try to fulfill the vision of the head football coach. As an assistant principal, it’s the same thing: you’re trying to work with other administrators to fulfill the vision of the principal and the school as a whole.”
Also, just like a sports team with two assistants gone, more than one assistant needed to be added to continue the performance of the team. From outside of the school, Mrs. Sellers was brought in to be an AP. Adding to the preexisting experience of the administrators, Sellers has been an FISD academic advisor for the past three years and was a counselor and English teacher at Centennial for 13 years. After having spent the last few years working off of any FISD campus, she was excited to be at Wakeland.
“I was excited just for the opportunity to actually be back on a campus. Being around students and staff, there’s a particular environment and energy that exists when a building is full of students as opposed to just adults all the time,” Sellers said.
Even though she has only been at Wakeland for a few weeks, she has already been impressed by the school.
“Wakeland has amazing students from what I can tell so far. They are mature, caring, and considerate,” Sellers said. “[Also] the staff are a veteran staff for the most part…and they have been incredibly welcoming and helpful.”
Edge was very excited to bring someone with Sellers’ experience onto the staff.
“I was really thrilled when the district told me I could offer her a position,” Edge said. “She’s worked a lot with the dual credit program in the past, so she’ll be a great asset for us. Even more than that, she understands programs and systems.”
Through their many different skills, Sellers and Harrell are focused on preparing students for the future.
“[We are] trying to provide them with the best of everything: the best teachers and the best lessons,” Harrell said. “[We are also] trying to help students acquire a growth mindset, so if you have that growth mindset, you’ll be able to persevere through the difficulties that you’re [going] to run into throughout your life.”
