With School Starting Next Week, Bedford High School Principal Henry Turner Says He’s “Ready to Go”

August 28, 2015

By Mitch Evans

Bedford High School Principal Henry Turner - Courtesy image
Bedford High School Principal Henry Turner – Courtesy image

With only a few days before the opening of school, Mitch Evans managed to corral Principal Henry Turner for a quick Q & A.

The new school year is about to start, are you ready?

The summer definitely comes at the right time in terms of students and staff needing a break but for me and my leadership team, closing out the year really means starting to plan for August. We have hired our new teachers, we have all our schedules ready to go, we have sports going on already, football, and other sports starting on Thursday. So we are absolutely, ready to go.

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In fact, one of the things we have done differently this year is to allow students to take their iPads home with them over the summer. In previous years we collect the iPads in June and clean them up, and update them over the summer, ready for the fall. This year, working with Apple, we were able to allow kids to keep their iPads over the summer. So for the first year, students will be coming in, ready to go. We have also had a number of iPad orientations for our incoming freshmen. We are going into our fifth year of having these iPads and I think they are a very central resource for our students.

Any other changes parents and students can expect for the coming year?

There are some terminology type changes. Levels, for example, will no longer be numerical, but instead will be referred to as: higher honors, honors, college preparation, and introductory. This was to ensure clarity for the rigor of the courses and also to ensure transparency for colleges.

This year we will be looking at our learning expectations by subject and by level. Our staff will be working on the details of these expectations this year. We will also be engaging in some discussions about our communication systems and how we support our kids here. We will look at what happens when a student is struggling in a class and what are the ways in which we support that. How we systematize those supports and communicate between teachers, students and parents.

We also have a few new faces this year, a new Director of Student Achievement, and three new administrators for our English, Foreign Language and Fine Arts programs. I’m looking forward to their fresh ideas and new perspectives.

This is your first position as principal and your fourth year at Bedford High School. What are your thoughts on Bedford as a school system?

I was actually thinking about this with regards to my opening remarks to the faculty. I remember being very attracted to the strong sense of academic culture in Bedford. We have some excellent teachers and motivated students. When I landed in Bedford, I felt that strong community feel and I love the diversity of the town. I really think this is a strength of ours. Over the last four years I have come to appreciate that we also have a very innovative culture in our schools. We celebrate and support new ideas from both our staff and students and we encourage a different way of thinking so that we can engage with each other. This is definitely one of my favorite aspects of our school life.

As a high school, I think we are a real leader in technology. We have increased our one to one iPad program, we have also expanded our robotics courses too. We now have a four year robotics course at the major and minor levels, along with an introductory computer course for students with less experience. We offer a Digital Arts course which provides students with the chance to be creative within the graphic arts field; and have been looking at AP (advanced placement) level computer courses for those students with more knowledge and experience. Generally our students are great at looking at how they can use technology to enhance their learning. They know where it is helpful and also when it is not so helpful for them to use computers. But we still struggle with the same problems other school systems have, which is students being distracted by computers and the misuse of social media. Our guidance counsellor is looking at our health curriculum and various ways to reinforce the good use of technology and techniques to tackle the problem of cyberbullying.

Looking back over last year, what are some of the highlights for you?

I think some of the activities that really stick outwere our successes with the science team who took part in the West Suburban science league and the Massachusetts Science Olympiad. We also saw Bedford place third in the LA2 Tenacity Challenge (an annual academic scholarship competition for teams of Latino and African-American students from urban and suburban high schools across Massachusetts). Bedford High School also hosted the twelfth annual Women of Science Scholarship Competition in December last year, and this was a huge success. We had a positive year on the athletics field and Keith Mangan (Athletics Director) was pleased to report that our levels of sportsmanship also improved. Our musical, Shrek, was a great success with very positive feedback from the community. I think these are just some of the highlights.

In terms of academic achievements, as the results are coming out, we did very well with our AP results this year. We also had some engaging conversations with our students. Some very challenging topics come up in the spring of last year, around race and diversity. As a result, our students did a great job engaging with each other and working through some difficult conversations. We also saw an increase in the ways in which our teachers are working with those students who are struggling. As a result we have increased our co-teaching (two teachers working together) in English, Math, Social Studies and Science classes for this coming year. We have also created our STEP (Succeeding through Experience) program, for those struggling students who need a smaller class size. This has really been an academic savior for some of our kids, and has allowed them to remain at BHS. I’m looking forward to rolling out the STEP program again for its first full year. Thinking back to education even 10 years ago, many of our special education students wouldn’t be going to our public schools, they would be in smaller, private schools, elsewhere. There is real value in saying that you are a Bedford High School student when you live in Bedford, rather than getting on a bus and travelling 30 or 40 minutes somewhere else. It adds to our school community spirit. This was a program that we knew we were going to need, but by the middle of last year we knew we needed it now. Working with Jon Sills (Superintendent of Schools) we looked at what these particular kids really needed. These unhappy children were happy and thriving by the end of the school year. This was a huge win.

You mentioned some of the challenges of last year. Would you like to go into any more detail for this interview?
I said this going into my first year, and I think I’ve said it every summer… “ the thing that you get nervous about, is the thing you don’t know about.” You can’t plan for it. I think that’s certainly what happened in the spring of last year. But we are always going to be challenged by our students. There will always be things that make us feel uncomfortable and we are going to question whether they are appropriate for school. There will always be differences in opinion between students, parents and people outside the community. After we held a school group discussion it really reinforced my belief that it is not our job to teach children what to think but to teach them to think. Also that they need to listen and to be respectful of differences of opinion and I think we do this very well as a school. We have been working with ‘Facing History and Ourselves’ in response to the anti-Semitic events in the prior year. This has helped change elements of our curriculum and assisted us with having discussions with our students around multicultural differences. The English department took a great lead in auditing their curriculum to ensure that we cover diverse voices in their literature and last year we had two new Asian-American and African-American courses. The history department has also been working over the summer months on how to incorporate comparisons and different perspectives and opinions on diversity. So we are not just giving one Native American perspective or one African American viewpoint.

We then had the bomb scare at the beginning of the school year. But you learn from those events, and it makes you better prepared for anything else that comes up. We were able to move 1,000 people, aged between adult to preschool, out of our building. From people who can walk out very easily to those who are not able to walk out of our building. And to get them out in a timely and safe manner, I think was a huge success. We have learned a lot in terms of how we respond in these situations and how we communicate with families.

On that point, as a leader in our school system, how do you foster effective relationships with your staff and with students?

When I first started at BHS, I did a lot of listening and getting to know people. I was able to meet with all the teachers before the start of the new year. A lot of those conversations were about who they are and their family life. I felt this helped to build relationships. As a teacher, as soon as you walk through the door you are ‘on’. So it is important to know about your staff and their lives, valuing who they are is important.

You asked me about further study, well one of the things I’m interested in now, is looking at how to sustain initiatives once they have been introduced. There is a danger once you have been in a job that you become complacent or have a confidence that may not be warranted. I realize that my job is helping the staff and listening is key.

For students, I try to leave the office and see them inside and outside the classroom. These kids spend a lot of time in this building, so getting to know them is very important, listening to their needs and issues. We talk about how they can leave their legacy (in a good way). Kids at this developmental stage are often telling adults that they don’t need them and we can take that to mean that they are OK. But really what they are saying is that they need some assistance. So even though they may be pushing us away, it’s good for them to know that we are still here for them.This is why the family/school partnership is important, to be informed about what is happening in these young adults lives.

One thing that came up in my other interviews was the level of pressure that students are feeling nowadays. Do you sense this at BHS as well?

Without a doubt, we are certainly seeing stress increasing for students as the college process becomes more competitive. Over the years our school has also become more rigorous which has impacted on our kids, being competitive within the school, and with each other. There is an intrinsic motivation to that stress but it can also be unhealthy. We have seen students who are not sleeping, who are increasingly depressed and kids who need support for temporary or long term crises. We are going into our third year of our Lighthouse program which allows students to slowly transition back into mainstream classes after a period of absence. It also helps kids who have suffered with head traumas and concussion. Looking at their short term needs and ensuring that they don’t get overwhelmed.

We have a Healthy Behaviors course as a part of our Physical Education curriculum. This introduces mindfulness, yoga, and ways of managing stress for teenagers. We want to help kids go through challenging situations, allow them to process their stress and deal with it. Not using cell phones and technology to distract themselves but instead learning and becoming more resilient to those types of stressors as well.

You talk about the students’ legacies, but what’s your legacy? What do you want to be remembered for, when that day comes?

I think I still see myself as a freshman. I’m not thinking about a legacy yet but I do think the things I’m prioritizing are ensuring that our students are individual thinkers. That through collaboration, our teachers will push themselves to refine and learn new skills and develop new ideas to help kids. I also think that we have done a significant job providing support for struggling kids. I hope that we are closing the achievement gaps and that we will be able to say that all of our students are achieving at a higher level, and to the maximum of their ability, and that we hold them to that.

Turner, recently back from a vacation in North Carolina, grew up in Melrose and now lives on the North Shore with his wife, who is a lawyer currently working in the human resources field in Boston, and his daughter. He is entering his fifth year as Principal at BHS and has an exciting year ahead of him, not least of all because his daughter starts kindergarten in September.

Always an educator, Turner studied history at college and then obtained his teaching licensure. At 22 years old he taught in rural western Massachusetts (the largest school district in the state.) He then held a position in both Newton and Lexington High Schools and in May 2014 graduated with a Doctorate in Education. He laughs when asked about further study, and says for now, he is just enjoying spending time with his family.

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