Recently, we invited EHS principal Erick Naumann to one of our staff meetings to participate in our first “Chat with the Principal” of the year.  We threw him a wide variety of questions, and these were some of his responses.

On the principal’s top priority

“Everyone knows the safety of the students comes first. Making sure everyone is safe, making sure the teachers are safe, the students are safe, so that we can get to a spot for us to learn. School is usually a safe place for a lot of people and I want to keep it that way. I know there’s a lot of stuff going on inside and in other schools and kids coming back from the pandemic, but the number one job is to keep kids safe.” 

On motivating the staff

“The fortunate thing is that at Everett High, we have staff that are super dedicated that really don’t need motivation. A lot of our staff are here to help kids and help each other. This year has been difficult because of Covid and everything is hard with communicating, but we have a dedicated staff that motivates them. I try to help them with their issues. That’s what I try to do everyday. Am I successful? I don’t know but I will try.”

On the problem of students considering dropping out of high school

“It’s a huge problem that we are trying to prevent. We have some new positions this year, we now have Ms. Paiva, who is kind of like a dropout prevention coordinator that gets in touch with students who have not been in school. I know some students have different issues, whether it’s anxiety or they are falling too far behind. We are always looking to be aware of those students, because I don’t want anyone to drop out. I think students deserve the right to have a high school diploma and everyone should have that opportunity to graduate, no matter how difficult it might be for them. Some people have a lot of stuff going on and there is a lot of pressure they can’t deal with so they drop out, but we want to give people pathways so they can finish school. So if they want to go to college or they want to do something else they have that high school diploma. I don’t want anyone to drop out. We can’t solve all of it, but we have a lot of people reaching out with guidance and Ms. Paiva to try to help out. And if you know someone who needs help from dropping out, than have them come see me and I will definitely reach out.”

On rumors about the school resource officers being removed

“So as of right now, as far as I know, there is no plan to remove them. We have Officer Ramuno, Officer Williamson, and sometimes we have Officer Donnelly. But as of right now, there is no plan to remove the school resource officers. ’I don’t see our police officers as someone who’s in your face. They try to be more of a resource, someone who’s there for students, asking how they can help out. Our officers aren’t people who are looking to arrest anyone, they’re more there to just help out around the community. So if something bad were to happen, we do have school resource officers here. But I don’t know of a plan to remove them.”

On EHS’ reputation

“I don’t think it’s about our school reputation, it’s about Everett’s reputation. You see my jacket (referring to the Everett jacket he was wearing), I’m wearing it and it’s like 90 degrees outside. I love this jacket. I wear this jacket wherever I go, because no matter where I go I’m proud and happy to say that I’m from Everett. Even when I’m walking out on a Friday night and someone says, ‘Hey I saw your school was on the news,’ and I’ll be like, ‘Thanks for your positive encouragement. My school is a great school.’ This school is a great school. You can go wherever you want to go if you put the time and effort into it. You can go to Harvard, you can go off and be a billionaire and do lots of things. You can go to all colleges, you can get into the military, you can do whatever you want if you put the work in. So what people say about Everett, some people think we are poor, we are trash, we are this, we are that–this upsets me. Every time a kid gets into these schools that they weren’t normally going to and do things that they normally wouldn’t do, I’m so happy I’m from Everett. Everett is my life. Everett is in my blood and I think everybody should be proud to be from Everett.” 

On his previous career

“Before I was principal, I was principal…so before I was the principal of Everett High School, I was at the Parlin as a principal for, I don’t know, 6 years maybe. Before that, I was at the old Everett High School. I was the Science Department chair, before that I taught AP Biology, and Principals of Technology, which is like physics class. When I first started teaching I was teaching health, so at the old high school I taught health to every kid in the building. Before that I worked at a school in Cambridge as a Spanish teacher. I also taught some PE. When I first got out of college, I was working at a physical therapy clinic because that’s what I thought I originally wanted to do. I actually wanted to be a physical therapist. So I started doing athletic training. When I got out of school I got a job at a physical therapy clinic. I just didn’t like the way it was working because it was a clinic that in town and what they were doing was they were running up bills for people so they could sue people, so you would come in and the guy would be like, ‘Oh yeah, we will do this, this, and this, and run it up so people can have a lawsuit,’ and I didn’t want to be part of that and that’s why I wanted to teach. I started teaching PE, I went to five different Catholic schools, and one of the schools said you would really make a great teacher, what do you think about teaching?  I thought PE and because I was at a Catholic school I could get my masters degree for fifty percent off and then I knew someone here, and they said why don’t you apply at Everett and then I started my career here.”

On his favorite sports teams

“I am a big hometown team fan, I love the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots and Red Sox. Big time fan of hometown teams. But for soccer, I love Brazil to play in the World Cup, so that is a national team that I like to watch. I like anything hockey, USA National Hockey Team during the Championships. I love international competition. I am a sports person, so I love all sports. If it’s relevant at the time, if it’s something really big, I’ll watch it. I’ve never seen cricket on TV, so I would like to learn a little bit about cricket. I’ve watched soccer, water polo, volleyball. I am a big Montreal Canadians fan because they have a history of always winning. It has always intrigued me for years because they would always get the top pick of the drafts. They were French speaking, they dominated hockey for a while, and it’s just a long tradition, like the Red Sox and Yankees. I like watching the marathon, sprinting. But, my body wasn’t built to run a marathon. I could sprint for a couple seconds, maybe, but for 26 miles, I don’t see any joy training for it.”