Clarke Middle School principal Christopher Pendley stands in front of CMS after school on Aug. 26. Pendley was formerly an assistant principal under Tad MacMillan and is grateful for the things MacMillan did in his time as the CMS principal. “Mr. MacMillan was sort of like a fixture, I think, in Clarke County and in Clarke Middle School, and I think we definitely miss his leadership in terms of the work that we were doing in sustainability and with the school gardens,” Pendley said. “He’s just always been a presence in our building that’s sort of a good person to have around and so we miss seeing him on a daily basis.” Photo by Elena Webber
Clarke Middle School Principal Christopher Pendley has taken the place of former CMS Principal Tad MacMillan who retired after the 2018-19 school year.
Clarke Middle School has a new principal, Christopher Pendley, who entered the role for the 2019-20 school year. Pendley was formerly the assistant principal of CMS for three years working under former principal Tad MacMillan.
“Mr. MacMillan was really good at ensuring that I got to experience everything I would need to experience in order to do the job that he was doing. Not that I had to do (his job as principal) with or for him, but he made sure I got to see all of the things, and I felt like that prepared me well (for being the principal),” Pendley said.
According to Pendley, his transition from assistant principal to principal has been smooth.
“The people that we’ve hired are super enthusiastic, they’re engaged with our community, they are ready to go out into our community, and what I’ve found so far is that they are all willing to do whatever it takes so that our kids are successful,” Pendley said. “That’s been a really heartening thing — to take over a building and have that many people (support me).”
CMS English Language Arts teacher Mollie Sherman started working at CMS the same year Pendley did and is impressed by his efforts in his new position.
“I think that Mr. Pendley has done a really wonderful job (transitioning into the principal position). He took the things that worked well last year and over the summer during pre-planning, really reinvigorated those and got (the school staff) excited about them,” Sherman said.
Pendley’s main goals are to improve literacy and numeracy, as well as the structure of assessments so that teachers know exactly what students need in order to advance to the next grade level.
“(Assessing students at regular intervals to measure improvement) seems sort of like a common thing that teachers should do but, with as much as teachers do on a daily basis, it’s something that has sort of fallen by the wayside, and so we’re coming back to that,” Pendley said.
