Page 4 - Bella September 2015

Sherry Hill
Principal Barton Jr. High
A Perfect Fit
By Joan Hershberger jhershberger@eldoradonews.com
When the job fits, everyone benefits. there ever since. In 2003, she received her master’s degree in
Sherry Hill found her perfect fit at Barton Junior High School. She began teaching Social Studies there in 1989, served as assistant principal and this fall she entered her tenth year as principal.
It took a few years for Hill to find the perfect fit. After graduating with honors from El Do- rado High School in 1979, she enrolled in the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
“I did not know what I wanted to be,” she said. “I didn’t know that I needed to go to class when it was cold.” She returned home, enrolled at Southern Arkansas University, married Greg Hill, worked and had a child before she returned to SAU where she realized, “I liked Social Studies and history and finally after working in the real world, I realized I should have done that from get go. I see a lot of kids not knowing, and think, ‘don’t do what others want you to do.”
In Dec. 1989, she graduated from SAU and was hired to finish out the year for a teacher on maternity leave from BJHS and, except for a year at Washington Middle School, has been
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From 1990 until 2003, Hill taught Social Studies. Then “my friend said, ‘I’m going back to college be a counselor and you are, too.’ We both started in counseling and very shortly in realized we were not cut out to be counselors.
I was in a counseling class - that was not just for school but also for agencies. We were role playing. I was the counselor, the person I was counseling was supposed to confess that he had committed a murder.”
“So Miss Hill what are you going to do?” the teacher asked.
“Call 9-1-1,” I said.
“The class fell out laughing. The teacher did not think it was funny at all.”
Someone asked why she was in counseling and told her she needed to be in administration.
Hill asked El Dorado School Superintendent Bob Watson, whom she had known since he was her high school principal, “If I shift to that do you think that is the right thing to do?”
“Yes, ma’am I do,” he replied.
Hill switched and now says “It’s ironic, I do a lot of counseling with teachers and parents.”
administration and became the assistant princi- pal at Barton.
Two years later, Mr. Watson came and said, “What are your plans for the future?”
“When he says that, you know he has a plan,” Hill laughed. His plan took her to Washington Middle School as the principal.
“I told Mr. Watson, ‘I love Barton. If the prin- cipal’s job comes open, I would like to come back there’.”
She enjoyed her year at WMS. The next year, Barton principal Larry Walters, became the principal at the high school and Hill returned in 2006. “I had really good staff of 65 teachers. They get along with one another. They support each other. They like to have fun. They have a sense of community with each other.”
Glancing at a ceramic piece hanging on her wall with cheerleader names, Hill said, “I was the cheer coach for 12 school years, I loved
it. I had a great time. That is what I miss, the relationship with the kids as a sponsor, coach, teacher. You don’t have that as principal.”
“I like this age of kids — teachers say it is way