A look into the life of our new Assistant Principal

I think we can all agree that seeing familiar faces and meeting up with old friends and teachers is one of the best parts of returning to school. However, with each new school year, new faces appear, and this year, one of those new faces is Ms. Phillips, the 11th-grade assistant principal.

Getting to Know Ms. Phillips: 

Meet Ms. Liz Phillips. A Maryland native, she grew up in Reisterstown, MD where she attended Franklin High School before graduating and becoming an education major at Goucher College. Her journey to Goucher College is one of her proudest achievements, as she became the first in her family, including her parents, grandparents, and older siblings, to attend college.

Currently residing in Carroll County, Ms. Phillips lives with her husband of 18 years and their two children, a 15-year-old son and a 13-year-old daughter. Beyond her role in education, she has a passion for singing, reading, writing, and running. She even embarked on a marathon training journey in 2020, coming close to completing it with a 22-mile training run before an unfortunate knee injury interrupted her plans. Nevertheless, she made a full recovery and maintained her passion for running.

Ms. Phillips is also a woman of core values, with grace, gratitude, and community at the forefront. She believes that our values define who we are and shape our daily experiences. She shares, “I feel like a lot of people walk away from their day as being like, here’s all the ways that I failed. But if you identify your core values, you usually can walk away from your day saying “at least I was able to pour into one of these.” Her efforts in practicing grace and gratitude, as well as kindness and honesty, have been crucial in her career, not only as an educator but also as a leader.

Leadership Journey:

Speaking of her leadership role, when discussing why she wanted to go into education, Ms. Phillips said she had always wanted to teach but never had a clear idea of what. She went from wanting to teach music, to wanting to teach English as a professor, to wanting to teach reading. She has worked as an elementary school, middle school, and high school teacher. Yet, something she never thought she would want to do is go into leadership. She always thought she didn’t have the “right” personality for a leadership position but eventually realized there was no such thing as the “right” personality. “After working with different leaders and getting to lead things myself, I realized that there are lots of different personalities that a leader can have and it’s really important to be that authentically, in order to build a team,” she explained. 

Authenticity has been an important lesson she has had to learn throughout her leadership journey. Ms. Phillips described instances when she first began engaging in leadership activities, such as round-table discussions, she tried to follow common advice such as “Be the first to speak” or “Be pushy”, but was left feeling disappointed and even said, “I hated it, and I left that round table thinking that. was. terrible.” It was not until the second round-table discussion that she focused more on being herself, and she left thinking, “Now if they don’t like me, at least they know who they really don’t like.” (Fortunately for us, they really liked her!)

Her closing message: 

Due to her personal experiences, Ms. Phillips encourages everyone to be authentic. She counsels everyone to never undervalue themselves or their intelligence, to make the most of it, and to never give up on a problem since we are capable of handling it.

This school year, Ms. Phillips intends to visit more classrooms and meet more students. She aspires to become more active in the community by attending more community events and letting people know she is very approachable and eager to help anyone in need. She hopes that every day she will be able to leave the building feeling that she has done the best she can for her students. Ms. Phillips said that sometimes educators and leaders focus more on being right but she believes that, “you really don’t have to be right, you just have to be fair, and just help as many people as you can,” which was a crucial lesson she learned while working in education.

So, if you spot Ms. Phillips observing your classroom or strolling through the halls, don’t hesitate to say hello and give her a warm welcome to our school cOMmunity!