When Herndon High School opens its doors next week for the new school year it will have a new freshman-class assistant principal, Penny Myers. A former Spanish teacher at Hayfield Middle School in Alexandria, Myers spent last year working at Herndon High as an "administrative intern" through the Fairfax County’s Learning Empowering Assessing and Developing (LEAD) program. The LEAD program is supported through a five-year grant from the Wallace Foundation, a private foundation in New York City that focuses on educational leadership. LEAD takes teachers and administrators from inside the county that want to become principals and places them at area schools for a one-year internship. This allows them a slow immersion into the system so that they may better understand the position. Though the interns are employed under a teacher's contract, their salary is paid by the grant.
“The program looks for and develops leaders for the school system,” said Myers. “You work primarily with kids as an intern so you can really get a feel for the school.”
This year, as an intern, Myers created a Latino PTA because she saw that was something that Herndon was lacking.
“The program is great for helping develop leadership skills,” said Myers. “You meet once a month for leadership training with other interns around the county and you can learn from those that have been in the school system for a long time.”
HHS principal Janice Leslie has helped teach leadership sessions for the program and has had a LEAD administrative intern in her school four out of the past six years.
“The program brings in great people who are highly motivated,” said Leslie. “Normally Herndon likes to promote teachers or administrators from within our own building but the interns that LEAD gives us do a wonderful job.”
At Herndon, each class has its own vice principal who rises as the class does, from freshmen to seniors. Myers is the vice principal of the class of 2007.
This year’s senior class vice principal, John Werner, had only pleasant things to say about Myers. “She always wants to do her best,” said Werner. “She is truly competent and really cares about the kids.”
Since Myers has graduated from the LEAD program, a former Langston Hughes Middle School math teacher, Prosperanta Calhoun, will take her place as the new administrative intern at Herndon High.