This piece is the first in a feature series for National Assistant Principals Week. Read the rest here.
The television blares witty remarks from “The Real Housewives” as Assistant Principal Ashli Taylor dips crackers into a smooth hummus paste and laughs alongside the housewives, the full sort of shoulder-shaking laugh.
“I love watching reality TV,” Taylor said. “It’s horrible for my brain, but it relaxes me. I also enjoy going to estate sales and buying junk for some reason.”
Taylor loves reading, a hobby that has carried over from her time as an English teacher.
“I taught English here at Clements for 12 years,” Taylor said. “I taught English 2 and what at that time was English 2 Pre-AP and now is English 2 AAC. I love sophomores. I always stay with 10th grade. They’re my favorite age.”
For six of the 12 years, Taylor was the department head, but after the retirement of one of the APs, she shifted into administration.
“There are some things about teaching English that I really miss,” Taylor said. “I miss having that kind of relationship with students where you see them and talk to them every day and read their writing and nerd out about literature. And no one ever wants to talk to me about grammar anymore but I still like to talk about grammar.”
One of Taylor’s favorite things is chatting with students. She said that although most students don’t realize it, even the most simple conversations bring her “great joy.”
“When the kids stop by and say hi, it’s definitely a day brightener,” Taylor said. “Seeing kids who find successes when they’ve met challenges before is very, very gratifying as well.”
According to Taylor, a big part of her job is helping people figure things out and move forward. As a result, it often gets very busy during the day, with little downtime.
“We have duties in the morning, at lunch, and after school,” Taylor said. “I attend lots of meetings. I visit classrooms. I do my best to assist teachers whenever they need any kind of help. I do the same for my students. I have students in my office split. I help them with lots of things including their discipline, their punctuality, their grades, their credits for graduation, all kinds of stuff. So, assistant principals wear a lot of hats.”
Taylor sometimes feels like she is being “pulled in lots of different directions,” which she normally resolves through prioritization and keeping a clear timetable.
“My word for this year was focus, because it’s easy with all the things that bombard us in a day to lose focus on what’s important,” Taylor said. “And for me, what’s important is being an instructional leader and going into classrooms and helping teachers.”
In 2016, Taylor won Teacher of the Year, which she said was a “really special time.” In all, Taylor has spent 18 years at Clements—starting in her 20s—which she still confesses is hard to wrap her mind around.
“Since I started here, I got married, I had children, and it’s just been a wonderful time,” Taylor said. “Clements is truly my home away from home. That’s very much what I consider it. And the people that I’ve worked with for almost two decades, they’re very important to me.”
Gratitude notes from those who know Taylor best:
Principal Tara Baker: “Mrs. Taylor is probably the funniest person I’ve ever met in my life, and her laugh is very infectious. Her laugh just makes you smile, and I think that anyone who is around her will say the same thing. She’s one that will have the difficult conversations, but she has spent years establishing that trust and respect with students and teachers that when she speaks, people listen.”
Administrative assistant Brianna Russell: “We have a great dynamic, we communicate well, and we have each other’s backs, too. Great support, both from her and from me, like yin and yang. She is just a huge joy. She is always sweet and nice and caring and comfortable. I feel I can go to her for anything. Not only is she my boss, but she is also my friend, so we have a really good relationship. I think my favorite memories are at our holiday parties whenever we can just be ourselves, and we have a great time and laugh and we talk about books a lot. I really love talking about books together.”
Assistant principal Kevin Byrd: “She is just an incredible human being. She has the ability to hold people accountable, but also be caring at the same time. She’s direct and she’s firm, but people also know that she cares about them. She is, I would say, the dictionary definition of what an AP should be. She’s a wonderful teacher. She’s a great instructional leader. She’s probably the best English teacher I’ve ever worked with, and I’ve been around education for 25 years.
You don’t come across many people in your adult life after you have kids and you’ve gotten out of college that you become really good friends with. I always like to tell her she’s the little sister I always wanted and she tells me I’m the older brother she never wanted because she has two older brothers. She’s just a really good friend. She’s a great colleague. I definitely think that from the time that I got here in 2007 to now, my life has been blessed by Ms. Taylor.
Back when we were still teachers, first period every day all the English 2 teachers would meet and we would go over assessments. We call them data teams. And so we met over where the lunch detention room is now. Well, we were walking on our way there first period and she was walking behind me and Ms. Taylor used to have a tendency to fall. She was carrying her cup of coffee like she always does, and we were walking along on the backside of where the mural is and she tripped and spilled her entire cup of coffee down my back. It was hot, and so I was in pain, and she was in pain from falling down, and neither one of us really seemed to care about the other one because we were in our own pain. Then, we wound up laughing at each other. I tell that story quite often to people, and she does not let me walk in front of her on the stairs. We’ve had a very good relationship. She’s probably put up with me way more than I put up with her.”
Calculus teacher Ricardo Garcia: “Ms. Taylor is someone that I talk to all the time. We talk about parenting, we talk about our love of professional wrestling, our experiences growing up in small towns. She’s a great mom, she’s a great friend, and I always laugh when I’m with her. We spend a lot of time together because we’re on some of the same committees for the campus, so anytime that we’re together, it’s always just a good time because we enjoy each other’s company in general.”
English teacher Glenys McMennamy: “Prior to when she got married, maybe like the second or third year that she was here, I was helping plan and get things ready for the wedding and doing her bridal photoshoot and cute things like that. We are good friends and we like a lot of the same things, like we’re both readers, but then also celebrated the things that are different about us, like she’s a Longhorn and I’m an Aggie.
For a long time, for whatever reason, sometimes students would mistake us for each other, because we were both brunette, petite, white ladies with glasses at the time. We would call each other twin because even other teachers and principals would call us by the wrong name, and so she’s the Longhorn twin and I’m the Aggie twin.
Prior to her becoming department head she and I were already like good colleagues that would talk about our wishes and hopes for the future, and so that also in some ways deepened our relationship, because we could talk about how we could do things better as a department and she actually had a role to help make that possible. I think we both share the philosophy that whatever we’re doing, we have to have measurable data to see student growth.”
Also, when you have a friendship as a colleague and you’re willing to be vulnerable with someone to talk about, ‘This is something I feel like I’m struggling with, how have you handled it?’ I think that means that your friendship is deepened, because that starts from a place of trust. With her now as a principal that is the supervisor for the English department it’s actually a magical, really rare thing because most of the time a principal is just assigned an academic department regardless if that’s the experience that they’ve had as an educator previously. So the fact that she is a former Teacher of the Year English teacher at Clements and is still at Clements as a principal is one of the more wonderful things about her role, because she has her finger on the pulse of the specialness of what it means to be a Clements student.
One of the one of the things I value all the more about her is that she’s able to be a person who was once our colleague in a kind of lateral, equal kind of way, and now is able to be a person in authority but still remembers and holds that aspect really close to her heart in the work that she does with students and with teachers.
