“ Every student, every parent, every opportunity to learn, every day for life.”
This is our new principal, Mr. Ortiz’s philosophy. He describes himself as good at multitasking, approachable, optimistic, a motivator, caring, a teacher, and is fun loving. Having interviewed him, I can wholeheartedly agree. His favorite animal (other than a wolf) is a lion and as a child his favorite book was A Separate Piece. He graduated from Columbia University, an Ivy League school, and is an enormous dog lover.
At first, Mr. Ortiz didn’t want to be a principal, he was very happy with being a high school basketball coach. Listening to him, I found that his administrator at the time believed he had the skills and traits a good principal should carry and encouraged him to become one. Based on the fact that he works well with students, parents, and the community, he succeeded and before coming to Walter Reed, worked at San Fernando Middle School for an amazing seven years. His favorite part of being a principal and a teacher is seeing students smiling in the halls and at their best in class whether it is working diligently or listening intently.
In about one year, Mr. Ortiz envisions Walter Reed to be fully equipped with technology, to have more project based activities, have students play a bigger part of school leadership and, by far most excitingly, having partnerships with local colleges to host college classes here on campus! Some other long term goals are enhancing electives (in other words to have more electives for each academy), to have more engaging activities for students, to make Walter Reed into a modernized technology school, and to know all students. His short term goals are to repair the AC units in classes, offer five week incentives for students who have perfect grades and attendance, and to play music while having fun activities during lunch.
Thanks to Mr. Ortiz’s beautiful plans for the following months and years, Walter Reed will flourish even more and become an ideal learning environment for all students.
-Brooke Sahanaja '22
Portrait by Principal Ortiz' Son.
Comments