National Principals Month Spotlight: Andy Hall of Cherokee HS!

October is National Principals Month!  Our Principals are Elevating the Excellence every day in our schools by providing leadership and inspiration.  We’re recognizing one of these amazing leaders each day.  Please join us in thanking them for all they do each day for our students and families, teachers and staff, and communities! #CCSDElevateTheExcellence  #ThankAPrincipal

Cherokee High School Principal Andy Hall

Why did you choose to become a Principal?
It chose me actually.  I loved every minute of being an English teacher and a coach, and after 12 years doing those things, I moved into to administration as an assistant principal to expand my impact on students and staff through that role.  Anyone who has been an AP (or met one) knows that being an AP is hard but rewarding work, and I wanted to do the best I could in that role, not really thinking that being a principal was necessarily up next.  While working as an AP at River Ridge High School, I was lucky enough to work with principal Dr. Kerry Martin whom I admired for her ability to lead a school in all phases, from the students, to the staff to the community.  One night, she stopped me in the middle of my running around organizing and leading a parent information night and told me, “I can’t wait to see you leading a school building one day.”  It hit me like a bolt of lightning that night, and I worked to become a principal from there, knowing that it’s such an important job with such an important influence on the members of our community. 

What inspires you in your work as a Principal? 
The team approach that we embrace at Cherokee High School inspires my work.  With thousands of students, hundreds of faculty and staff members, and thousands of community members involved, a school has to function as a team to meet the needs that are there.  The work of the students and staff here at Cherokee inspires me daily, and being able to be the leader humbles me and energizes me at the same time.  To see our students achieve their goals, whatever those may be, and to play a small part in that inspires our team at CHS. 

How are you Elevating the Excellence in your school?
At Cherokee, we strive to make the most of our time with our students every day.  Our instructional leadership team of teachers, administrators, counselors and our instructional lead strategist are working to increase teacher understanding of reading and annotation and feedback strategies to use with students in all content areas, and our professional learning communities are aligning learning targets and success criteria to freshly unpacked standards to ensure rigor and relevance for our students.  We are proud of the hard work that all of our professionals do here at Cherokee, and we are happy to meet the challenge of doing even better as we go.