For the 2024-2025 school year, Montoursville Area High School welcomes former history teacher and now assistant principal, Mrs. Susan Wise. This is what the day in the life of Wise’s new role entails.
Wise arrives at school at 6:45 A.M, fueled up with water and a protein shake to start the day. She usually checks her mailbox first to see if there is anything to deal with, then proceeds to check her email, and lastly, if there is anything from the previous day she has to deal with, she may start with that.
At 7:30 A.M, she greets the Mock Trial team and lets them in the door. Following that up, from 7:45 A.M. until the first bell at 8:15 A.M., she attends a Math department meeting to discuss curriculum, PSAT training dates, score release dates, as well as math placement discussions with all the teachers in the math department.
Then, from 8:20 to 9:00, Wise attends a special education meeting.
When Wise was asked what motivates her every morning she responded with, “The fact that I love this job, I get to interact with so many people, I get to problem solve, I get to go out and actually see what’s going on in the classrooms.” Wise also said, “I get to get out and interact with a lot of kids, and not always with student problems.”
After the meetings are held, Wise spends the remainder of her morning from 9:00 A.M. to 10:30 A.M. with a mix of desk work and meeting with the principal, Mr. Matthew Johnson. From 10:30 to 11:24, Wise then spends her time meeting with students and discussing disciplinary actions.
From 11:24 to 12:10, Wise spends the 5th-period doing lunch duty, and then from 12:10 to 12:56 Wise gets to enjoy her lunch. Her lunch today was stuffed peppers and pineapple slices.
Before she leaves the school for a meeting at 2:00, Wise returns to work after her lunch with a mix of desk work and meetings with students. Following this time, she then has to attend an interview with potential social workers for the school.
Thankfully, Wise hasn’t had any challenges with her position so far, as she has been teaching here before she became the assistant principal, as well as help from coworkers.
“I really came in with a good idea, I did my internship here, whenever I was still an intern, I was aware of the types of things going on, a large part of that, when I was doing my internship, I had Mr, Johnson, Mr. King or Mr. Taormina to explain things for me,” Wise said. “Before Mr. King retired, he went over a lot of stuff for me too.”
Even with a new job, Wise said she is still learning a lot.
“It is all new to me, I am learning a lot of new stuff and how to do everything. I am kind of a nerd because I’m a lifelong learner,” Wise said, “I am using my brain, in a lot of ways I haven’t in a long time.”
As the new assistant principal in office, Wise was asked what she would want to change within the school. Wise responded with, “I don’t want to change the school, I would like to work more with the teachers on ways that we can build better relationships with the kids, I would like kids to understand that assistant principals are not just here for discipline, and there is always room for improvement in organization.”
Featured photo (above): Wise attends a Mock Trial practice to observe progress of the team.
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