In a building filled with more than 2,400 students, you’ll find that every one of them is dedicated to serving their community and each other, thanks to the vision of their Principal Dr. Josh Carter.
His career journey started back in 1999 as an English teacher and a coach at Science Hill High School, the same school he now leads. After teaching for 13 years and receiving suggestions to pursue administration, he decided that would be the next step in his career.
“I wanted to have a bigger impact on the school and broaden my scope of understanding,” says Carter. He soon became an administrator focusing on 9th-grade discipline, a position he held for five years, which he would describe amusingly as “an interesting job as an administrator.”
In 2021, he became the school’s principal where he would use his expansive knowledge of the school and his various roles in administration to serve his students and staff.
This year, he says “trying to get back to a sense of normalcy” is what’s keeping him most busy.
“I think we’ve done a pretty good job,” he says. “We’ve made a real hard push to get as many kids involved in the school outside of the normal school day as possible.”
And according to Carter, he’s set a standard for himself to connect himself to his student body.
“Being out in the building every day trying to get to know kids,” he notes as one of his goals for the school year. “That’s one of the hard things about being an administrator. We’ve got over 2,400 students. So just trying to be out and get to know them and make sure that teachers see me and that they feel like they have support from admin in the building. That takes up a lot of time too but it’s well worth it.”
Ensuring students are one with their school is its challenge. Like most administrators this school year, Carter wants to maintain a happy teaching staff. Fortunately, he would tell you Science Hill is doing just fine in that regard.
“Teachers are pretty tired, there’s no doubt about that,” he says. “But I think this year especially I’ve seen maybe a resurgence in energy and excitement to get kids back and connected to the school. We have several staff members here that have just totally and completely bought into the idea that we have to get kids connected to the building outside of class time.”
One area he’s seeing this jolt in excitement across students and staff alike, he explains, is in the multiplication of their extracurriculars.
“We’ve had an explosion of clubs and all kinds of different things,” he says. “And kids have really participated well. We’ve had athletic events, a fall carnival and several service opportunities that a lot of kids have participated in. We’re just trying to get back into regular activities like that and get kids connected back to the building.”
“I think now we have more kids involved than we did even prior to COVID,” he adds.
During the pandemic, however, he says he quickly realized what students missed the most.
“We went home for spring break in 2020 and didn’t come back,” he explains. “Then we came back in August of 2020 and did a hybrid schedule for a while and eventually brought everyone back for about nine weeks that school year. I think the hard thing for the students was that their sense of routine and that sense of normalcy was lost.
“Our teachers did a terrific job keeping up with the academics. Now, when you’re not here every day there’s obviously going to be an impact on your academics. But our teachers did a great job being online and instruction was provided. But there’s nothing like being here every day in front of the teacher. So there was some struggle there. But I think more than anything else it was the social piece our students missed. Being with each other and just that social piece of learning. That’s an important aspect of learning. It’s not necessarily individual, it’s very social too.”
Setting priorities
Like any good administrator, Carter has set a vision for the school: seeking significance. The standard, which is also the school’s hashtag, is a laid-out plan of how they’re building a culture of significance within their school and the community.
“So last year coming out of COVID we talked about reconnecting and relationships,” he says. “Reconnecting kids to the building and making sure we’re building solid relationships so that every kid knows an adult in the building. And that was our primary focus last year. This year we’re talking about service and self-evaluation.”
“The self-evaluation piece for students is to look a realistic look and say ‘here’s where I’m at as a student. What do I need to do to get better?’ For teachers, it’s ‘here’s what I’m doing as a teacher. What do I need to do to get better? And it’s the same for admin.”
Speaking to service, Carter says it’s all about looking at the whole student and meeting them where they are.
“As the staff in the school, we want to identify the needs of the student and meet them,” he says. “That’s how we identify service. You identify the need and you meet the need. And then we want to teach that same thing to the students to serve each other and to serve our community. So we’ve had several days of service opportunities this year for our students. It’s a great way for them to learn that they can be significant by playing the role of a servant and serving their community. And it’s been a good way to bring us together and build our culture here at the school.”
Understand your role as a staff member and a student, then serve each other and your community: That’s the framework that’s been laid out for Science Hill by Principal Carter. But if you were to sit down and speak with him, you’d quickly learn of his humbleness as he often speaks of the grit and the impressive work his students and staff have accomplished.
With a smile on his face, Carter says the people are what make Science Hill special.
“There’s no doubt about it,” he says. “We have just a tremendous student body. As I said, we have over 2,400 students. Obviously, I’m biased, but they’re the best 2,400 students you could ask for. And we have a great staff. Our teaching staff’s tremendous. They’re dedicated to the students, hard-working and talented educators that do a great job every day helping our students reach their full potential.”
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