By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
When Riverside Elementary School reopens next week after the summer break, principal Valerie Ulrich will have the nervous butterflies in the stomach feeling that come this time of year.
As the children get dropped off that morning, she plans to be outside to greet them.
Ms. Ulrich was hired in June to lead the school of 72 staff members and 265 pupils, as of late August. Her first day in Princeton was July 11, but the career educator has been using the summer to lay the foundation for her tenure here.
In an interview Aug. 26 from her office, Ms. Ulrich, 48, explained her decision to go into education, why she left being a principal in the Mattawan-Aberdeen school district to work in Princeton, and what she wants parents to know about her as she and they begin a new relationship.
“I like to consider myself a servant leader — here to serve those around me, guide, inspire, help people grow professionally in the directions in which they want to grow,” she said of her leadership style.
Ms. Ulrich, originally from Cape May, began college at Stockton University as a business major. It was not long before she decided that was not the field for her.
“I didn’t like it. It wasn’t speaking to my passions,” she recalled.
As a sophomore, she switched majors and never looked back. During her time as a student teacher, she realized she had made the right move.
Her first job out of college was in special education at the Southern Regional school district, in a high school, in 1993. Memories of that first day in the classroom remain vivid.
“I worked with really at-risk boys. And I remember standing at the door watching these really tall, big, troubled kids walk into my room. And I’m thinking, ‘How am I going to reach them? I remember being somewhat nervous about that.”
She got through it, able to build trust with her students. Those same skills will come in handy when she is seeking to build relationships with the Riverside staff she is charged to lead and the parents whose children will be under her care for the next 10 months.
“I want them to understand my enthusiasm and my passion,” she said of parents. “I want them to know my love of working with children and my openness.”
Married, she has two young sons of her own. Having been a teacher, she points to the skills needed to engage children in learning and make them excited to be in the classroom.
“But a good teacher is someone who has kids completely engaged all the time,” she said.
Ms. Ulrich said she sees this as an exciting time in education, pointing to a movement “to allow kids to be in charge of their own learning, to chase their passions and dreams and to develop their skills that are innate within them.”
“I think teachers,” she continued, “are moving away from being the person in the front of the classroom that delivers facts and instead are more facilitators to that individual learner.”
In Princeton, she found a district with an emphasis on wellness and balance and understanding who children are “and what their passions are …,” in her words.
“But I think Princeton has a beautiful balance and a great outlook for how to develop children into adults,” she said.
She has big shoes to fill. Bill Cirullo, her predecessor, spent 30 years in charge of the school. He died Feb.15.
“I feel like there’s so much of him here, so many important things,” she said in adding there will be an adjustment for some in going from him to her.
“I think it’s a process of me getting to know the traditions and wonderfulness of Riverside School and Riverside School and (the) community getting to know me and what I can bring to the table,” she said. “And I think that that’s a process of coming together and not an all-of-a-sudden change or me sort of coming in and taking over. Rather, it’s like a new relationship. And that’s going to take time.”
