Paul Bass Photo
Lonnie Garris Jr. started his most recent morning the same way he did on his first day working in a New Haven high school 41 years ago: asking for help in pronouncing a student’s name.
The student’s name: Medah Uwimana. On Wednesday she earned a bronze medal in a statewide poetry contest. Garris (pictured above), who is finishing up his 20th and final year as principal of Hillhouse High School, wanted to tell the school about the medal in his morning announcements. But he didn’t want to flub the name. So he checked in first with Medah’s teacher. Then he went on the PA system to congratulate Medah Uwi-MAY-na for her achievement.
Flash back to 1969. Garris’s first day as an industrial arts teacher at Wilbur Cross High School.
A New Haven school administrator had recruited Garris to come north to teach in New Haven upon his graduation from Norfolk State University in Virginia. Garris prepared to greet his students. He stared at the Italian and Polish last names — and wasn’t sure what to say. Growing up in the South, he was used to names like Jones, Wilson, Harris. Easy-to-pronounce names.
But “Grabawalski”?
Garris still remembers that name today. Not how to spell it. But how to pronounce it. That first morning at Cross, he learned how to say the name, from Grabawalski (or however you spell the name) himself. He learned other names, too. He asked the students for help. They all had a good laugh: The boys imitated how Garris tried to say their names, in a Southern accent thicker than it is today, after four decades in New Haven. Then they said the names right.
In a school system that draws families from around the world, Garris has remained determined not to “chew up” students’ names.
“It’s their name. It’s important to them. They would expect the principal to pronounce it correctly,” he said.
Garris has remembered not just the pronunciations from the first industrial arts class, but the bonds he developed with a “great group of young men,” some of whom he remains in touch with today. At least one of them, a police sergeant, retired before he did.
Now it’s Garris’s turn. He’s retiring June 30. That means the city school system’s losing one of its longtime leaders at a time of generational and programmatic change. It also means one of the city’s two largest high schools will have its first new top leadership since 1990.
Loads of New Haveners have learned Lonnie Garris’s name in that time, since a principal isn’t just a school leader, but a community leader as well. The Greater New Haven NAACP will be saying Garris’s name repeatedly Saturday at an awards event, where the principal will receive the chapter’s Susan Lincoln Education Award. No other current New Haven principal has run a school as long as Garris has.
In an interview at the school on the eve of the NAACP tribute and of his retirement, Garris reflected on achievements and lessons learned over four decades in public schools and two decades as principal at Hillhouse, which today has 1,000 students and 98 teachers.
He didn’t have advice for the new crew devising an ambitious system-wide reform plan. They’re ushering in a new era with new ideas. He applauds the effort. He’s just not part of the new team; his day has passed.
Still, his experience at Hillhouse definitely left him with tips for the next generation, whether or not they fall under the category of “reform.”
For instance: The need continually to study a school and see what it can do better. When he did that six years ago, Garris noticed that Hillhouse had just one Advanced Placement course. Soon Hillhouse had 13. (The number each year fluctuates, but remains in double digits.) The school won a national award for the rapid improvement.
Another lesson: Students at a big school like Hillhouse could benefit from belonging to smaller “learning communities.”
Garris created a bunch of them, for students to get a taste of potential careers like schoolteaching or medicine. The students take a broad core curriculum while investigating a possible career path in depth. “It’s like going to college and having a major,” he said. “We’re not saying to a 14-year-old, ‘This is your life’s work.’ We’re saying, ‘This is something you might try.’” In 15 years, the teacher prep track has produced 14 career instructors.
For another track, Garris created a communications lab where students write, edit, and produce videos. They also produce a daily morning school newscast broadcast in every classroom over closed-circuit TV. On a tour of the facilities Thursday, Garris greeted the teacher in charge, Polish-born Mr. Tyberiusz Skarzynski, by his last name, accurately pronounced, although the principal, like the students, does usually address him as “Mr. Ski.”
In another “learning community,” students plan, cook, and serve lunch at an in-school restaurant called the Kitchen Konnection. Garris is pictured with visual arts teacher Val-Jean Belton (at left in photo), who lunched on the students’ fresh-cooked “Big Spaghetti Paula Deen.” (“Lovely lady — I love that Paula Deen.”)
Garris took heat for one track he created: A Junior ROTC program. Local peace activists complained he shouldn’t be steering students to military careers. Garris had been a military cadet himself in school. “It taught me to be a leader. It taught me to be a speaker, an organizer, how to work in teams.” His son was a cadet at UConn. He was convinced a Junior ROTC program would help offer structure and opportunities to all kinds of students, from high performers headed for college to special ed kids needing direction, whether or not they ended up joining the army.
He believes that has happened in the program’s nine years. In the hallway Thursday he ran into the easy-to-pronounce “Cadet [Lillie] Moore” (pictured). He asked her why she, like 97 other current Hillhouse students, signed up. “I was skipping classes” as a freshman and sophomore, said Moore, who’s a junior. “I was hanging with the wrong crowd.” Now she’s on track, and ROTC helped, she said. She plans to study nursing in college.
Garris’ 20 years as principal did include some low points. Chief among them: When nine Hilllhouse students lost their lives to street violence in 1992. Garris points out that none of that violence ever occurs at the school; he makes sure it’s a safe haven. He also notes that no students have been lost to the most recent outbreak of street violence, which, he said, has tended to involve older people than in the past.
Garris, who’s 64 and an avid tennis player and “cigar man,” said he’s proud of what he’s accomplished as the Hillhouse helmsman. “I love this school,” he said. Now he’s looking forward to spending more time at home with his wife (two blocks from the school), seeing more of his 94-year-old Mother in Virginia, and traveling anew to Kenya and Zimbabwe, where he left a piece of his heart on previous trips he led with New Haven students. All of whom had names worthy of a principal’s pronunciation.
