Being chosen as Van Buren Elementary School principal has fulfilled Gavin Steele’s long-term dream.
“Elementary is my passion. There’s no question about that,” Steele said, sitting in his assistant principal office at Brown County Junior High School.
“Mr. (Brian) Garman knew that when he hired me for this job that I love junior high kids — we have had a lot of fun at the junior high in the four years I was here — but he knew that at some point my long-term dream was to return to elementary school as a principal. That’s what has made this transition so nice, is that Mr. Garman (the junior high principal) has been amazingly supportive,” Steele said.
Steele began his teaching career 10 years ago in Brown County Schools.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]High school Principal Shane Killinger hired Steele to teach third grade at the former Nashville Elementary School when Killinger was principal there.
Steele also taught fourth and fifth grades, then went to teach special education at the high school for a year before he was named assistant principal of the junior high.
As assistant principal, Steele was responsible for athletics and discipline issues.
“I hate leaving the great things that we got started in the four years under his leadership,” Steele said about Garman. “He’s been great in allowing me the opportunity to be a part of everything.”
“But under his guidance, I’ve been involved with every initiative we’ve started here at the junior high, and I think a lot of that is him knowing my long-term goal is to go back to an elementary and be the principal,” he said.
Steele, who is from northern Indiana, said originally, he had not even planned to look for work in the southern part of the state.
“My whole plan was to graduate from Ball State then I move back north, because all my family is in education and most of them are up north,” he said.
He went to a job fair at Ball State University to help a friend find a job, and he ended up speaking speaking with Killinger about Brown County Schools.
“He convinced me, ‘Oh, just come down. Just come down, take a look, see if you like the place, see if it fits you.’ Sure enough, I came down. There happened to be a position open and I fell in love with the place,” Steele said. “We’ve been down here ever since.”
Steele, his wife and two young children now live in northern Brown County.
Falling dominoes
Even though Steele has been approved to take over for Van Buren Principal Christy Wrightsman, the transition hasn’t officially happened yet. Other dominoes must fall into place first, he said.
Wrightsman was chosen at the end of July to fill a new, grant-funded, districtwide job to study curriculum and how it relates to career placement. She has been keeping her duties as principal until a replacement was hired.
To fill Steele’s job at the junior high, Greg Pagnard will move from the assistant principal job at Brown County Intermediate School.
Seventh-grade language arts teacher Thor Davis will move into Pagnard’s job.
This leaves an opening in seventh-grade language arts that must be filled before everyone can move, so that no school is left “empty-handed,” Steele said.
On Thursday night, the school board approved moving Helmsburg Elementary third-grade teacher Alyssa Stanley to Davis’ spot at the junior high, and moving BCIS special education teacher Cortney Hitchcock to Stanley’s spot.
“There’s a lot of moving parts that will happen,” Steele said. “The agreement has been once the final domino kind of falls.”
Steele said he encourages the school community to “have some patience as we work through this whole transition then we’ll get started as soon as possible.”
He said he is “super excited” about the challenge of running a building.
“The timing has made this really interesting, because I am coming in after the year has started, so we know right away there’s going to be a lot of work on getting to know each other and building relationships, hearing what the staff wants to do and where they want to go with it,” he said.
“I am the lucky person who makes sure they have everything they need to do what they want.”
Your building
Steele said he has no major changes planned for when he takes over as principal.
“People ask me, ‘What are you going to do when you get down there?’ I don’t know. There’s a lot of great things going on there that I hope we can continue,” he said.
Steele said he expects some changes to happen eventually, but not until he gets to know his staff and their visions for the building. Then, they will begin to work together on setting short- and long-term goals for Van Buren Elementary.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re the PE teacher or art teacher, you need to have a voice, because this is your building. We’re going to represent the Van Buren brand, and we have to figure out what we want to do,” he said.
Steele said he is most looking forward to having more direct interaction with teachers and making sure “they understand they have somebody who has their full support” and that they can come to him.
“We’re going to be a team of leaders,” he said.
He wants to hear from parents, too.
“I hope they understand that if they’re upset about something or have questions about something, that they know they can come directly to me,” he said.
“I’m there for the students, the teachers and the parents. I am not there for one group, but we have to all be in this together, and everyone’s got their part in it.”
