A Thank You to My Principal, Tim Liles

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Originally published in TEACH Magazine, May/June 2021 Issue

By Abigail Smurr

“Welcome to the Wildcat family!” said a friendly voice on the other end of the phone. It was the spring of 2019 and Tim Liles, Principal of Sunnyside High School in Fresno, CA, had just informed me that I’d been hired as an ELA teacher.

We had met a few weeks earlier at my job interview. He was a tall, slightly balding man, and he’d greeted me with a big smile on his face. During the interview, he was personable and straightforward, and made an effort to make sure I felt comfortable.

I’ll always remember one question he asked me: “Is it important for the kids to like you?” I found out afterwards that he asked each applicant the same thing, because he was looking for particular qualities in his staff. But I thought the question said a lot about him too, about own his values and the culture he wanted to create at Sunnyside.

After I was hired, Principal Liles took me on a personal tour of the campus. It was important to him that we got to know each other, and this gave us the chance to build a connection before the school year started. We spent over an hour talking about our lives and about why he loved the school.

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Abigail Smurr currently teaches at Sunnyside High School as an 11th grade ELA teacher. She received her MA in Curriculum and Instruction from California State University of Fresno in 2019.

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Abigail Smurr
Abigail Smurr
Abigail Smurr currently teaches at Sunnyside High School as an 11th grade ELA teacher. She received her MA in Curriculum and Instruction from California State University of Fresno in 2019.

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