Most of the staff and students in the Kalamazoo Public School district have had to make adjustments to the struggles of being all-online this year, but the newly hired assistant principal Alexander Hill has had to experience his entire first year as a LN administrator in the virtual platform. 

Hill worked in education for ten years prior to his four months spent at Loy Norrix this year. Hill also has been a wrestling and football coach for Loy Norrix for ten years as well. In his everyday routine at Norrix, he joins various classrooms to monitor, listens and participates in the Knights Rising Toward Graduation learning hub and does various preparations for the next school year.

“Mr. Hill’s job would generally be consumed with dealing with discipline, but with no students in the building and very few issues in virtual classrooms, it is hard to get him acclimated,” principal Christopher Aguinaga stated. “Instead of training by doing the work, there are a lot of hypotheticals.” 

The main way that Hill is preparing for the next year is practicing  “hypotheticals” such as going through typical scenarios of students misbehaving and what to do in terms of discipline. With this being said, Hill will have a lot of catching up to do this fall when students return to school in-person.

“My first year has gone pretty well,” Hill said. “The administrative team here have been very welcoming and helpful in the preparation of what the ‘normal’ role will look like. In fact, the whole district has been very welcoming.” 

In his new administrative role at Loy Norrix, Hill has a strong staff looking out for him in order to do his job effectively. To fill this tough position, Hill has to be good at what he does.

“Mr. Hill comes with several years of administrative experience before coming to KPS,” Aguinaga said. “He is very industrious and efficient with projects and he is very flexible.”

As this year has gone by, it hasn’t been all smooth. There still have been set-backs that Hill has had to make adjustments to.

“Some struggles I’ve faced is the fact that this year, my first experience, will be completely different from what my normal role will be,” Hill said. “Everything I’m learning and adjusting to in this transition is just for this year.”

Although Hill has been preparing for the next school year, it will be like having a new job. While online schooling is vastly different from in-person schooling, there is still some room for some normalcy. 

“I would say giving tours of the building to the incoming freshman has been the most memorable part of this year,” Hill continued. “Seeing the excitement on their faces to not only being in ‘high school’ next year but actually seeing some of their friends and being in an actual building built lot’s of excitement.”

There are many students that haven’t had the chance to properly navigate Loy Norrix’s hallways. Next year, the new freshmen will not have had in-person classes. The sophomores have been learning virtually all year, and the juniors will not have had a full year at Loy Norrix in-person as well. The only students who will have completed a full year in person at school will be the seniors next year which raises several alarms. Simple tasks such as knowing where classrooms are and knowing their teachers will be problems on their own.

No matter what happens next school year, it’s up to everyone to have each other’s backs, as the majority of the population at Loy Norrix, including Hill, will be new to the building.