Earlier this year Principal Stephanie Smith resigned. Following her resignation assistant principal Daren Hammond, stepped into the role as West’s interim principal. This is Hammond’s first year at West. Before West, he was an assistant principal at Northwest and a physical education teacher at Hamilton Middle School.

Hammond believes his experience as a teacher has helped him be successful in his new position by forming relationships with students.

“I think teaching the kids and the community at Hamilton Middle School has put me in a great position here at West High, because those kids feed directly into West High,” Hammond said. “In fact, the sophomores, juniors and seniors, if they were at Hamilton, they took my PE class. I’ve got kids here. Knowing the families, knowing the students, and knowing how to talk and communicate with kids, I think has been one of my biggest successes, forming relationships with kids, talking with them.”

Stepping into this new role Hammond’s faced a lot of challenges, his biggest being adjusting plans for what is happening at West in the moment.

“I mean, in any administrative job, it’s really hard to put words to what your day all consists of, because the day kind of decides what it’s going to be for you,” Hammond said. “You know, any administrator that says they have their day planned out is in for a rude awakening, because you really have to be able to adjust and change to what happens in the building … there’s just things like that come up that as an administrative person, you have to be able to take on and figure out a solution and that’s all the administrators, not just me.”

In this new role as interim principal Hammond hopes to help change the narrative of West High and create a better impression of the school.

“When you tell someone you work at West High, the immediate reaction is like, ‘ooh. Are you okay?’ When that is not what West High is if you walk the halls,” Hammond said. Literally, 97% of our kids come here and do exactly what we want them to do. There’s a small percentage of those kids. I just pulled up statistics the other day that said 93% of our kids have one or no write ups. I think what the unfortunate side is we’ve let a very small population of kids and things that have happened in this building be the narrative of what West High is, and it’s simply not what it is”.

As interim principal Hammond hopes to repair and strengthen relationships here at West throughout the remainder of the year.

“Repairing some relationships, building up some trust, celebrating kids and teachers, I think, is your foundation of making change in a building,” Hammond said. If you don’t have the trust and relationships from the people and stakeholders of your school, all of those other changes are impossible-to-very difficult at the minimum, and so I’ve always been a relationship focused person. I think you guys, probably see that in the hallway. I try to talk with kids, try to talk to staff members. I try to acknowledge people, you know?”

Overall Hammond is excited to be at West and to be working in this community as the new interim principal.

“I’m ecstatic to be at West High. I taught at Hamilton for a long time. I love seeing my kids in the hallway. There’s nothing better when I hear a kid call me coach,” Hammond said. “I spent a lot of my time in this community teaching, and had a great opportunity at Northwest, and I loved my time at Northwest, but I am thrilled to be at West High and it’s, it’s an honor to be to be sitting here with the students and staff and community that that truly do love West High”.