Q&A With Brian Hendrickson, Who Takes the Helm at New Elementary School

Brian Hendrickson started this year as principal of the new Hop Brook Elementary School after a two-year administrative internship at Maple Hill Elementary School. That internship was part of his Sixth Year Diploma program in educational administration at the University of Connecticut. Hendrickson's experience includes teaching U.S. history at Hillcrest Middle School in Trumbull for five years and serving as social studies team leader there. He has an undergraduate business degree from Fordham and a law degree from Albany Law School. He, his wife, and their 13-year old daughter live in Farmington.

How will your background help you in your new position?

Having a middle school background helps because I know where the elementary students are headed and can better align the instruction they receive here with the instruction they are going to encounter in the intermediate grades.

My law background comes in to play with a number of issues — safety, communications, special education law — providing me with a framework from which to approach these issues. By no means am I an educational law expert, but a legal background trains you to identify red flags and potential problems and to remedy them as soon as possible. Good relationships are key. Most litigation is a result of a dysfunctional relationship so it's important to encourage positive relationships. When people get along they can work as a team. People go to court because they can no longer work together.

But of course my education background is what's most relevant. I've been fortunate in my career to have learned from excellent educators. I'm a mosaic of some of the best teachers and administrators in the state. In a way, I'm just a byproduct of a lot of good coaching and mentoring.

What is something from your previous school that you will bring to your new position?

Trumbull has an extremely rigorous and deliberate literacy program, including an emphasis on reading across the curriculum and making sure all the teachers are on the same page with each other about reading strategies so there is consistency from classroom to classroom and grade level to grade level.  

What are the challenges you foresee in your new school?

Everything is new, that's the big challenge. It's a new building. Several teachers have changed grade levels. We have a new, theme-based language arts curriculum so we need to spend some time working on that.

What plans do you have for your new school?

We want to meet the AYP (Annual Yearly Progress) goals of No Child Left Behind, and to stick to data-driven decision making and have that guide our instruction.

How has it been meeting all the teachers and administrators as you start this new position?

I'm fortunate to have a very hard-working, collaborative faculty. They have a high level of professionalism and dedication. It's my job to help teachers as they help students do their best. I try to empower them to contribute to and to share in the decision-making processes in the school. I encourage them to be pro-active in improving student achievement

I am also extraordinarily impressed with the quality and the caliber of the administration in the district. Naugatuck is fortunate to have the administration that they do. They stay current with all the best practices, they stay current with the research. They are very open-minded, they always have the best interest of the student in mind. They were all excellent teachers. That was a major motivation for me to seek out an administrative job in Naugatuck because of the colleagues I will have.

The biggest asset for Naugatuck is the community itself. There's a lot of pride. I'm really fortunate to be able to contribute to the community.

Do you have plans to bring any new instructional methods or educational philosophies to the school?

We plan to have positive behavioral supports, and not just negative consequences for bad behavior. Catching kids when they do things well is just as important being very clear about the behavior we expect. We also want to help students increase their metacognition — monitoring their own progress and knowing their own strengths and weaknesses.

I like to have students working collaboratively and cooperatively to increase student engagement.

We want kids working together with a high level of engagement in problem-solving tasks, as well as continuing to address the basics and fundamentals.