Washington Principal Says Career Choice Surprised Even Him

For Andrew Perry, principal of Washington School, one might say his career chose him.

"Everything's always been a surprise," career-wise, said the seven-year Westfield resident.

And the surprises seem to have paid off, both personally and professionally. At 56 …and proud …Perry has now spent more than a third of his life as a principal in Westfield.

He was at Wilson School for the first 16 years, and has been at Washington for five.

 And he said while he always loved the classroom, he's happy that he can be part of the big picture. "That feeling of helping everybody and all the kids and all the teachers and all the parents move forward in a helpful constructive way …that's gratifying on a whole different (level)."

But the education field was by no means instant gratification for this Brooklyn native who first attended Binghamton University as an undergraduate, and then transferred to Buffalo State College for his bachelors in Education with a concentration in special education.

His dad, an industrial arts teacher, encouraged him to go into the special education field because he had always worked with children with special needs.  "I spent at least the first five years thinking 'is this something I really want to do? It took a couple of years before I owned it instead of falling into it."

While teaching, Perry went to a part-time program at Buffalo State for his masters in Education. A few years later he also received his certificate of advanced study in Educational Administration from the same school.  

"In my fourth year of teaching, my supervisor showed up one morning and said there was an opening to coordinate a grant program working with kids throughout the city of Buffalo who had special needs," said Perry. "He said 'take all the time you want just let me know by lunch time.'"

After completing that one-year project, Perry realized "teachers hunger for feedback." His job was to assess what was going well and tell them what they were doing that was effective.  

The other aspect of the position, doing purchase orders and interacting with administrators, helped him realize "how much there is to education in addition to being in the classroom.'"

"When I went back to the classroom, I hungered for that big world again," he said. So shortly after, he returned to Buffalo State for his administrative degree and began to apply for jobs.

He landed an assistant principal-ship at a Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) school in Nassau County, Long Island.

As an assistant principal, he basically ran one of the two buildings that housed the program. "Although I was an assistant principal, I did most of the things that a principal does in terms of running a building …and found it very gratifying in terms of helping a staff work well together."

"It was a unique opportunity that I don't think most assistant principals get."

He said it was hard to leave the classroom at first. "I missed the close relationships with a class full of kids. And I missed that experience of sort of learning and growing as a small family over ten months."

He said he has realized over time that he can have both, albeit more limited, by "choosing to visit classes any time I want."

He said that experience as an assistant principal was life-changing.  "That gave me an appetite for doing it for real …and trying my hand at a regular education school."

So he became an elementary school principal in Merrick, Long Island for three years. And he said that, too, was eye-opening because students' and parents' needs were so different from his previous experience.

During those years, he had also decided he was ready to pursue his doctoral degree. "I had always known I wanted to get a doctorate in Education. I knew I had to be ready or I'd end up like many others ...'ADD' (all but dissertation)."  

He went to Hofstra University for his dctorate in Educational Administration.

I was close to finishing my dissertation and I took six months off when I had seen the ad (for Wilson School Principal) in the New York Times," he said. "I was a Brooklyn boy who had never been to Jersey towns like Westfield."

"I was given a tour of the town and the school and Echo Lake Park. I thought 'wow this is amazing!'"

When he took the job as principal of Wilson, where he was for 16 years, he lived temporarily in a room at the Westfield YMCA.  But he did "the complete tour" in Scotch Plains, Cranford and Mountainside before he decided to settle in Westfield.

His two boys, David, 10 and Adam, 8, attend Tamaques School. Having a dad who is a principal in town, he said, can be a mixed bag of emotions.

"I think in general they like having a dad who is a principal, but I think they like having a dad who's not their principal," he said. "I think they feel proud when they listen to other kids who may have been former students at Wilson or their friends who are students at Washington. Lucky for me the stories they hear are nice stories. It makes them feel good and proud."

But, he added, "that stuff can change in a minute. If I was embroiled in controversy, they might want to change their name."

Five years ago Perry joined Washington School as principal.

He said he is proud of changes he's made at both schools. But he's also proud of his staff's accomplishments in his tenure thus far at Wilson and Washington.

"At Wilson School … the staff did amazing things to get the community and parents and kids involved in all kind of extra things," he said, referring to several reading programs they launched. Such programs would culminate in a "reading play" with a packed house of parents and students.

The projects "were really great and made everyone feel like a community," he said. "The staff did a lot of things and really worked together."

He likened his experience to a bike race, where he's had to keep up with the "pack" of teachers as much as they've had to keep up with him.

Perry said he's also proud of helping to blaze some technology trails in the district since he started. "We did a lot of things at Wilson, and continue to do at Washington, that are fun for teachers …fun for kids."

He said he helped network his own computers, back in the day, by running wires from room to room. "At that time the district had just bought one computer for each classroom."

He said his school now uses electronic communication 'to the max."

Another proud accomplishment of Perry's is a two-night, three-day environmental field trip for fifth graders which he implemented at Wilson and continued at Washington. "My first couple of years we spent investigating the possibilities," he said. "We got the green light to do it as a pilot."

He said it was "wildly successful" and year after year fifth graders continue to name the trip as a highlight of their year.

The fall trip, for Wilson, goes to Fairview Lake outside of Newton, New Jersey.  For Washington, it is Camp Speers-Eljabar in Dingmans Ferry, Pennsylvania.  

"Over the years there have been so many unanticipated benefits (of the trip)," he said. "We do it because it ties into the curriculum and it's a great learning experience and a great social learning experience and a great 'pushing yourself' experience," he said, adding students are "confronted by challenges they've never had to so before.'"

But he said a big surprise has been "what it does for the staff every year."  The fifth grade teachers, along with some additional staff, attend the trip. There's also the added benefit, he said, of bonding early in the school year and having eight more months together.   

Perry said he's also proud of programs such as "poet in residence" that help students with "literary expression and literary writing," as well as state assessments. 

And he said while he's proud of his school's curriculum, and ongoing changes, he's also a proponent of taking a step back to absorb the changes. "Sometimes you just need to stop, take a breath, coalesce and just polish some things rather than just keep marching forward."

Perry said something that has surprised him, over the years, is the strides his school has made in going green. "In the last year, we've been able to do some pretty neat things with recycling that if you asked me a couple of years ago, I would've said 'we can't do this stuff. We're too busy.'"

He said the school has started recycling not only plastic water bottles, but bottle tops as well, along with milk boxes, tin foil and juice pouches. "The kids have been very responsive," he said.

The "Green Team" has helped institute "trash-less" days with reusable tupperware containers.

"I'm in the lunchroom every day," he said. "I do my share of wheeling around garbage cans. It's amazing how much less garbage there really is with all the recycling."

He said a large vegetable garden outside the school, started by a parent, also helps give students an enviro-friendly education as it's been integrated into the curriculum.

Perry said he's also had, and continues to have, some ongoing personal goals …"to be direct and honest with parents and teachers … but to do it in a way that gets me heard instead of getting people angry …'"

And … there's a second. "If there's one thing that I think of every day and try to really impart to teachers and parents, it would be 'no surprises.'"

"I mean bad surprises," he qualified.

 And he said that theory applies to all students, staff and parents.

"There shouldn't be a time when a kid finds out that they're getting a C, instead of a B, when all the bread crumbs that Hansel and Gretel left behind for a trail" say otherwise … teachers shouldn't be surprised by a parent telling them that for the last five months they've really been upset with the homework policy …parents shouldn't find out from teachers in January 'I've really been concerned about your child's reading since the first week of school'…and I shouldn't find out 'by the way, I'm having surgery tomorrow and I'll be out for three weeks.'"

"Communication, communication, communication… I think when there are no surprises and smooth communication it takes care of a lot of stuff."

Principal Perry said he applies the same philosophy as Dad Perry.

He said he tries to give his boys "as much of a forecast as possible."  And he said consistency is also key to his parenting style.  He said he is direct about his feelings and encourages his kids to be as well.

"It's not an easy thing to do. It takes responsibility and it takes courage. You have to speak your mind. It sounds simple, but when you think about it it's not so simple."

Another thing that's not always so simple, he said, is living and working in the same town.  "It's everything good that you would think about it and everything bad that you would think about it. It's nice to have the connections, but sometimes it's just nice to be anonymous."

And while he does live and work here in Westfield, locals may not know just how "worldly" he is. 

"I've done a fantastic amount of traveling around the world in my life…a lot of it has been somewhat exotic." Among his many adventures …rock climbing in the Tetons, horseback riding in the San Juan Mountains, a two-week bike expedition in a small, private province in China, excursions into the mountains of Tanzania and hobnobbing with the mountain Gorillas in Rwanda.

And at the end of August, at the request of his kids, he journeyed with them to the Grand Canyon.

And as his personal journey continues, so too does his professional one at Washington.

"There are so many things that go into making a school run well.  If you have one and you don't have the other …things don't go well. Most people would agree that if you don't have kids learning and liking to learn and being able to demonstrate that learning in objective ways … you can't be a successful school."

"There are all sorts of things that we have been doing and continue to do that will help that."