This piece is the sixth in a feature series for National Assistant Principals Week. Read the rest here.
A distinct change passes over Associate Principal Matthew Warren’s face as he crosses the impending Brazos River—still beneath the underfoot bridge—his self-appointed landmark. In that brief moment, Warren shifts from family mode to the administrator the students know best, two antithetic selves coexisting in one body.
“When it comes to mental clarity, anytime I cross the Brazos River, I go into Clements mode,” Warren said. “When I cross the Brazos going back, I become a husband, I become a dad, and so I have that disconnect.”
Warren said he makes it a point to ease out of his “Mr. Warren mode” every evening to spend meaningful time with his family.
“I have a beautiful wife at home, and I have a son that’s two and a half years old,” Warren said. “Two and a half years ago, my entire life changed. I’m in this profession for students, making sure that all the 2,700 kids have the best education and that’s going to be my son one day, and I want to make sure that whatever we do, we can be proud to say as educators, we are providing the best opportunity for our students.”
Warren believes teaching is like a superpower – that a good teacher can truly impact their students in a way most aren’t able to. That was why he found himself in the profession, heart-deep through various positions across the district.
“I’ve been in Fort Bend my entire career,” Warren said. “I was at the school down the street at Dulles High School for about 10 years. I was a social studies teacher. I was a baseball coach, a football coach, and a cross-country coach, and so I have a lot of ideas when it comes to what Fort Bend ISD expects. So, transitioning to being an AP, it was a big change, because as a teacher, there’s a lot of deadlines. You have seven classes a day, and you have a very strict schedule.”
Warren said he made the change to Assistant Principal largely because he knew he had a son coming and wanted to spend more time with his wife. Coaching took three nights a week, and it meant time away on weekends as well. While he whole-heartedly respected and loved the position, Warren’s initial motivation — his family — overrode all else.
“When you get into the AP role, it’s much more fluid in a sense,” Warren said. “There’s deadlines, but there’s also a lot more administrative tasks. Then moving from AP to the associative level, the scope becomes bigger not in a micromanager way, but you have to be aware of what’s going on.”
Warren said one of his anxiety and stress relievers has been physical exercise. He holds himself accountable by challenging other teachers through Garmin, a fitness smart watch that logs his steps wherever the day may take him.
“Truthfully, every day is uniquely different,” Warren said. “I could be doing walkthroughs in classes, I could be having parent conferences, I could have a discipline hearing, there’s nothing truly structured.”
However, one thing that does remain constant is Warren’s daily goal: having one intentional, positive conversation with a student before he goes home for the day. With that accomplished, he can end the day feeling fulfilled.
“When work is over, typically, I’ll go home between 3:45 and 4:15, and get through all the emails that are pressing for the day,” Warren said. “I check in with my wife, give my son a big hug. We’ll go to the park as a family, have dinner, put my son to sleep, and just have time to talk with my wife and debrief about the day.”
One of Warren’s all-time favorite memories was the Cinderella performance in 2023. He said it was an incredible moment, sitting in the audience and admiring the handiwork of the theater students. Another fond memory is graduation.
“I love seeing seniors walking across the stage,” Warren said. “Ms. Gray does a great job. Also the week leading up to it, all the senior awards, senior ceremonies, we watch these kids go from freshman year to sophomore, junior, senior year, watching them grow. It’s always phenomenal.”
Another one of Warren’s cherished activities are classroom evaluations. He said it’s easy for administrators to get caught up in their duty assessing disciplinary conducts; oftentimes, they focus on the logistics rather than reaping the rewards and seeing their work in action.
“It’s incredibly refreshing to see the students fully engaged, teachers absolutely loving the content they’re teaching,” Warren said. “It’s evident just from walking in the classroom, that the students are enjoying themselves. It’s not one specific moment. When I go into a room, it’s like ‘Wow, that was incredible.’ That’s why you’re here. It’s for the students.”
Gratitude notes from those who know Warren best:
Principal Tara Baker: “Mr. Warren is the most efficient, most intelligent, such a hard worker. I always say I’m protecting him from himself because he does work so hard, and he does care so much. And he has a family. He has a little boy and wife at home. There are times when I will see his truck outside as I’m leaving, and I’m like, ‘It’s 4:30, you need to go home, or it’s 6 o’clock, you need to go home.’ We have that good dynamic that we can be each other’s accountability partner when it comes to balancing work and family.
He truly does work as hard, if not the hardest of anyone here on campus. He’s very organized. I could not be more grateful that he is the associate here, and he makes my job easier because he is that person that will handle many things so it doesn’t escalate to me. I’m very, very grateful for that.
In January of 2024, a little over a year ago, whenever we got word that I would become the interim principal, that would mean that we have an associate position and a principal position that I would essentially have to fill. There was no way that I could do those two jobs at one time. At that time, I had to decide which administrator that I felt would be the best fit at that time. It was a situation where I had to make a decision based on the timing of things, of who I thought I wouldn’t overload either because we didn’t know what was going to happen at that time. I did speak with Mr. Warren about stepping in and helping me with the master schedule, which is a very big task for any associate principal, especially in the spring because that’s when course selection starts. He came in not knowing anything about the master schedule and he just dove in head first. It was refreshing to me because I trusted him. I do trust him in anything that he does. I know the job’s going to get done and it’s going to get done right, if not better than what I had originally planned. That’s how I knew that he was the best to help me at that time, and he far exceeded my expectations.”
Administrative Assistant Christy High: “Mr. Warren is an amazing boss. He is always on top of everything that his job encompasses and he really strives to be the best person he can be for his students. They are the most important thing around here, and so he really wants to be somebody who is benefiting the students. And he’s fun when you really get to know him. He’s so much fun and just a caring down-to-earth guy.
A lot of our fun times happen as staff that gather outside of work but I know he likes to play pranks. We play pranks on each other so I guess the best memories are when we’re all goofing around and just being kids ourselves. We like to scare each other. We do a lot of hiding in the dark and popping out and scaring each other.”
Assistant Principal Eric Sweeney: “There are plenty of associate principals out there that sit, close their office door. They don’t want to help people. It’s easy to say I’m doing something and you’re not actually doing something. A lot of it is kind of the honor system. You can tell in a school when people care about it and they’re doing the right thing. But a lot of it is like, ‘No, trust me that I am. I’m doing it.’ I think Clements teachers have said at least that they really feel that way about us. That we’re all trying. Mr. Warren is the epitome of that, honestly.
Mr. Warren is constantly everywhere, constantly working behind the scenes. He will gladly be up to his neck in work and jump in to help you with the situation. I just think he is one of the most honorable people that I know. He is just sincere and wants to do the right thing at all times. They could not have picked a better associate for Clements. They could have searched in a hundred years and I don’t think that they would have found that. And I feel that sincerely. I would never tell that to his face because he’s my archnemesis. We are twins and we are enemies.
Over the summer, we went to a conference together, all of our administrators here. He was my roommate. We ran every morning in Austin, and I dragged him along every single morning as he sweat and complained. He didn’t actually ever complain about it. But he’s still telling me that his toe is broken from that because I’m a long distance runner. I ran track in college. That was the buildup to our CTV race, his revenge on me. And he absolutely destroyed me and destroyed my leg and my soul and my spirit in doing that. We are planning a rematch one way or another on this.
When I first took this job and was hired, people would ask us to stand next to each other to measure height and everything else. It happens to me every day, maybe at minimum twice a day that a student will come up to me and they’ll start talking to me about a consequence, about having good attendance, about something that they need. And I’ll look and I’ll say, ‘I’m not Mr. Warren.’ And they’ll look at me and they’ll say, ‘Oh.’ Every day, it happens.”
History teacher Kelsey Bates: “I’ve had many administrators and Mr. Warren is one of the best ones I’ve ever had. He is beyond efficient at his job. He always does things in a very quick manner. He’s always extremely efficient in terms of when you have a problem, you ask him, he’s always going to have the solution and then he’s going to say he’s going to handle it or he’s going to take care of it and then it’s done within 10 minutes. It’s really nice that there’s never any pause or waiting for anything. He’s usually always on top of that and getting stuff back to you and everything that you need.
I really just like how he’s always such a positive person. Every time I see him, the whole way he’s like, ‘Hi, how are you? How’s it going?’ And he always asks how was my weekend or how was my spring break or how was my winter break. Otherwise, he will ask, ‘Is there anything I can do for you? How can I help you?’ So he just has a really positive demeanor about him that makes him a joyful person to work with.”
