On the inside of the door to the main office at Nashoba Regional High School, there hangs an inspirational quote: “Today is not just another day. It is a new opportunity, another chance, a new beginning.”
Parry Graham, principal of Nashoba Regional High School, will be living out that message when he bids staff, parents, and students adieu at the end of the school year, and embraces a new opportunity and a new beginning of his own.
Graham will be leaving Nashoba to travel to France with his family, where they will live for a year, while he works on his current book, a parents’ guide to public education.
As someone who has been in the education field for more than 20 years, Graham has found that parents often have a limited understanding of public education.
“[They] don’t know much about schools, how they work. When they encounter something [such as bullying, or their student is struggling] they have no idea how to resolve it,” Graham said.
The book is intended as a resource to help well-meaning parents learn the appropriate ways to protect and advocate for their children, as well as to navigate the public education system. The guide will be sprinkled with amusing stories, and illustrative examples of emails to send/not to send, whom to contact in certain situations and other helpful advice for parents, such as how to recognize the qualities of a good teacher and what to do when parents suspect their child may have a teacher who is not good.
Graham is halfway through the first chapter of the anticipated six chapters it will take to complete the book. The structure is laid out, but the book itself had been essentially put on the “back burner,” as Graham focused on his other roles.
“I had three things to do: be a principal, a husband/father, and an author,” said Graham. “And I could do only two of those things. I put the book aside to be a principal and a husband/father.”
Graham has been the principal of Nashoba since 2012. Originally from Asheville, North Carolina, he nevertheless had strong roots in Massachusetts. Graham’s mother was from Gardner, and he remembers family visits to the area. Later, Graham attended Williams College to earn his undergraduate degrees in German and psychology and, still later, obtained his MAT in education from Tufts University. He met wife, Betsy, while living in Cambridge. They moved back to North Carolina so Graham could attend graduate school at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he received his Ed.D in educational leadership. Their two children were born there, but the Grahams always knew they would eventually return to New England. They relocated to Concord five years ago, when Graham became principal at Nashoba.
The job of a principal is a challenging one, acknowledges Graham.
“As a principal, you make tough decisions about kids and adults that impact their lives,” he said.
Some challenges are not specific to Nashoba, such as trying to adapt organizationally to meet the needs of students who may have no post-high school goals or whose definition of success differs from that of the majority of students who want to do well, get good grades and go to college.
“We don’t have that many kids [who differ in that way], but each one is important,” Graham said.
Another challenge, also not unique to Nashoba, is the level of stress today’s teenager experiences.
“It’s a hard time to be a teenager,” Graham said. “Social media changes the nature of their relationships with each other and with the world. It’s hard for them to find their own private space, not to feel like they have to be plugged in. It creates an underlying anxiety we adults didn’t have [at a young age].”
“We need to learn how to better support the non-academic stress that is part of being a teenager,” he said.
Teachers at Nashoba remember Graham as encouraging and supportive of both students and staff. Johnna Doyle, science teacher and girls’ volleyball assistant coach, who has worked closely with Graham on several educational initiatives in the past couple of years, said he was “always open to new ideas and very encouraging to try things that don’t always fit into the standard educational box.”
She said Graham was “always working to support the individual efforts of staff and students.”
Likewise, Journalism and Video Broadcast Teacher, and former head of the English Department, Jacquie Carter, spoke of Graham’s support of staff and students.
“He encourages collaboration and innovation,” said Carter. “Students have benefitted from his desire to support teachers as they collaborate about curriculum during our late start PLT’s [professional learning teams.] Parry has been instrumental in advocating for this time on behalf of staff and students.”
“I have a bazillion good memories,” Graham said.
He reminisces about the pep rallies, school plays and musicals, sporting events, proms and, of course, graduation.
“Graduation is always emotionally powerful for me,” he said.
But, in the end, it is “the people, kids and adults, that you remember and enjoy the most,” Graham said.
Graham will not only be remembered but sorely missed, said Doyle and Carter. Carter adds that she is both “excited and jealous about his upcoming adventure in France.”
For Graham, he admits he “is happiest when on an adventure with my family.” He and Betsy had discussed living abroad for years, but now the timing seemed right. They wanted to experience the adventure before their children, Sydney, 12, and Jared, 8, were in high school and no longer willing or eager to go. Graham says that while currently Jared “would be happy anywhere, as long as there were Legos,” Sydney was initially not “too excited.” But once she saw photos of the apartment where the family will live in Lille, France, and because she has started to learn French in school this year, she eventually came around to the idea. Both children will attend an international school during their year abroad.
The proximity of the international school and its accessibility to Paris and other European locations were the main considerations behind the Grahams’ choice of Lille as their home away from home. Recommended by friends who live in Paris, the area of the city where they will live has “kind of a Brookline feel,” Graham said.
The children will have a two-week vacation from school every month and a half or so, and the family plans to “travel a ton,” Graham said. They hope to visit Berlin, Prague, Bavaria, as well as Tuscany and Umbria. Graham, who speaks German, has been learning French, and will most likely attempt to add Italian to his language list as well.
In the meantime, Graham is looking forward to settling into their new life in France, working on his book, spending more time with his family, and taking French cooking classes. His wife will be able to continue working remotely at her job as an independent marketing consultant.
Once the year is over, the family will, says Graham, “return to Concord, to our life and our home that we love here.”
And, while Graham thinks that he will most likely remain in public education on some level upon his return, he will not be seeking another position as principal. Just what that position may be, Graham is uncertain, yet unconcerned.
“I’ll worry about that later,” he said, his attention focused, for now, on his new beginning.