A guy who’s up for a challenge – that’s something that could be said about Warhill High School’s new principal, Jeff Carroll.
In 2009, after holding a principal position once before, he helped construct day-to-day operations of the then-new J. Blaine Blayton for a year before the school opened. He also served as its principal in its first year of operation.
He had to construct almost everything from scratch. There was no school tradition or history to fall back on.
“I couldn’t just ask, ‘Hey, how did J. Blayton do ‘open house’ last year?'” he says.
His up-for-the-challenge style also bleeds over into his personal life. For example, Carroll went from having no immediate plans for a child to raising a 5-year-old boy – all in three weeks.
He and his wife jumped straight into helping their child get ready in the mornings, teaching him how to ride a bike and deciding what TV shows are age-appropriate.
In fact, he says, becoming a parent has changed the way he does his job. He says it’s taught him what it means to be “on the other side of the desk” with his own child.
There are times when he has to take off his educator’s hat and put on his parent hat in the school system; it’s always an opportunity to reflect how he does his job.
“How can we improve or fix that?” he says.
When it comes to education, Carroll has an impressive and extensive background. He did not always plan on teaching, though.
He originally wanted to join the CIA or work for the federal government and started out in Soviet Studies at Yale. His junior year was an appropriate time to focus on a communist country as he watched the Berlin Wall topple. And then the Soviet Union crumbled – something he was able to gain insight on by taking a class with William Eldridge Odom, head of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan.
Carroll later decided to enter a teaching preparatory program during his junior and senior years at Yale. He earned his teaching license and jumped into teaching in 1991 where he went to high school – Riverview High in Sarasota, Fla.
From his time at Riverview on, Carroll’s career is almost as rigorous as the multiple triathlons he has completed.
After a year at the school, he moved to Virginia for the first time to teach social studies at Stone Middle School in Fairfax County, then it was on to the Blacksburg area to earn his doctorate in education leadership and policy studies from Virginia Tech. All the while, he taught in Roanoke County.
Carroll later took a job in Chantilly as the assistant principal of Franklin Middle School.
In 2007, he found himself on the Peninsula. He started at Poquoson Elementary but soon moved on to his development of practices at Blayton Elementary.
Carroll says he was happy to help at Blayton, but it was a bigger challenge than he anticipated. He also wanted to get back into secondary education and took an assistant principal position at Lafayette High School.
Named principal just this summer, Carroll is settling in at Warhill High, learning the position and planning to implement the same “Guys Read” program he started at Lafayette High.
“I forgot how much fun it is,” he says with a smile. “I love high school.”
