WHITE SALMON — Serving since the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year as the interim principal of Henkle Middle School, White Salmon Valley School District officials announced that Brian Morris will serve as the school’s principal in a permanent capacity.
At the White Salmon Valley School Board meeting in February, Superintendent Sean McGeeney said that Morris “has done a fantastic job over the course of the last eight months … He has the full confidence of his staff.”
Morris will continue to serve in the role at least into the next school year, McGeeney said.
Columbia Gorge News sat down in an interview with Morris to get an idea of how the school year has gone for Morris and Henkle Middle School.
Unsurprisingly, COVID-19 mitigation has been at the forefront of the Henkle Middle School principal’s list of priorities this year.
“When I agreed to take the job, we kind of thought COVID was behind us,” he said. And then, of course, the delta variant hit. For the first three months, Morris was leading the team in COVID-19 mitigation. “I didn’t feel like a principal at all, really. (It was) once we got over that hump and things started calming down that I felt like I’m actually doing a principal’s job, where I’m trying to lead.”
He praised the ability of students to work with staff and administrators and be respectful towards others in the building by wearing masks and maintaining social distancing standards. “I was really impressed,” he said. “Very rarely did I have to discipline a student.”
He said the teachers and staff also handled the situation very well. He was proud to say that Henkle Middle School never closed down due to COVID-19 exposure. “I attribute that mostly to the community taking COVID protocols seriously, to keep it under control.”
Morris, 52, had previously served as Columbia High School’s assistant principal. Last summer, former Henkle Middle School Principal Haley Ortega resigned and the district named Morris as interim head.
He said staff and faculty have been very supportive of him during his first year as principal. Asked who Morris has leaned on for support, he named Intervention Specialist Michael Kane, Office Manager Mindy Rude and Jim Anderson, Student Skills Center coordinator as those who have helped him through the year. He also expressed gratitude to all the teachers for their support.
“The teachers did not have a choice in me coming to be their interim principal,” Morris said. “And they really welcomed me with open arms, and they really gave me a chance to be who I am. And I felt welcome from the beginning.”
As the mandates have gone away, Morris is keeping an eye towards the future of Henkle Middle School. He said he is looking to challenge staff by asking, “How can we make this school better?”
He said it’s a conversation currently ongoing. Last week, students were handed each a copy of a “School Climate Survey” designed to bring student voices into the conversation, he said. And parents will be included in the conversation; Morris said one of his goals for next year is to create a parent advisory group to seek out their perspectives.
Morris is also looking into additional funding opportunities for staff training and professional development.
The end of the mask mandate in school does not also mean the end of the effects of COVID-19 on students’ educations. Morris said Henkle Middle School, like many in the state, has suffered a loss of learning at the hands of online education platforms. It’s an inequity between the students who had more support at home during the days of virtual learning and those who did not, he said.
“You see it nationwide, it’s nothing special about White Salmon schools,” Morris said. Revelation of the learning gap prompted Morris to create a pilot program in school that uses computer software, Language Live, to bring students up to a reading level on par with their peers. The school is waiting to see the results before expanding it to a larger group of students.
For Morris, middle school is part of his DNA. Morris started out as a teacher at Wind River Middle School in Stevenson, where he taught multiple subjects for 16 years. He later earned administrative experience there before taking the position at Columbia High School.
“I love middle school and middle schoolers. It’s a place where I belong,” he said. “Middle schoolers are more accepting of adults. They’ll give you high-fives, they’ll talk to you, they’ll engage with, so long as you show them that you care about them.”
Asked if there is anything he learned this year, or if there was something he wanted to improve upon, Morris said that he was relearning the decision-making process, and was interested in learning more about the “science of learning,” which was a relatively new concept when he had started teaching in Stevenson.
“As a principal, we say we’re going to do X-Y-Z on a given day. But half the time we’re reacting to what’s happening every day. If we’re lucky, we get half of what we set out to do. The other half is just reacting.”
To Morris, being a principal requires patience and a whole lot of listening.
“People think the principals at the top — no. Principals are in the middle, because you got the parents and community on one side; you got teachers, and then you got students, and we’re in the middle of all of that,” Morris said. “You got to be able to listen and understand, have some empathy, and be able to try to challenge people to think outside the box. And then I guess lastly, to be able to put those visions into action.”
Commented
Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles.