After 11 years as the principal of Wiscasset High School, Susan Poppish will retire this week.
“It’s been a good ride here,” Poppish said. “It’s been a lot of fun, but I’m ready to slow down a little bit.”
Poppish is a career educator. She taught at Oak Hill High School for 23 years before her arrival in Wiscasset and has a total of 36 years in education, she said.
A resident of Litchfield, Poppish said she first heard of the position in Wiscasset when she called her former superintendent, Wayne Dorr, for a reference.
“I was thinking of transitioning to a different job, so I called [Dorr] for a reference and he said ‘there’s an opening here, we’d like you to consider it.’ I’d never considered being a principal before, but he strongly encouraged me to apply and I ended up getting the job,” Poppish said.
“I kind of fell into it a little bit. I had wanted a different kind of challenge but I didn’t realize I’d start as a full-fledged high school principal… It was kind of an interesting transition,” Poppish said.
After years in the classroom, Poppish discovered the administrative and public relations aspects of education. “I was used to working with people, not being responsible for people in a larger sense – employment, the whole gamut of custodial, cafeteria, secretarial… as a teacher I’d basically only been responsible for my own little microcosm, the classroom,” she said.
Poppish also faced issues in the larger community. “I walked in on some interesting transitional things in Wiscasset,” she said. “They were going through the downsizing of Maine Yankee, they were starting to downsize the district… there were lots of challenges the first year.”
One of Poppish’s early challenges was to foster a personal connection with her students. “Early on I decided I was going to really make sure that I applied the same standard that I had held myself to as a teacher, which was knowing my kids. Knowing their names. Being able to connect with them, making them feel valued by knowing who they were,” Poppish said.
Poppish spent her summer with an open yearbook, memorizing the names and faces of the school’s 430 students. “I only had a few misses the first year,” she said.
Another hurdle in Poppish’s early tenure was Wiscasset’s infamous mascot controversy. When I first came we had had the mascot challenged by some outside native groups,” Poppish said. “My charge was to lead a mascot committee… to try to discuss whether a change was appropriate.”
“Walking through the door in a community where that’s a very high profile, flashpoint issue was a real challenge for me,” Poppish said. “I wanted to be able to educate the kids about diversity [and] educate the community about diversity and not make them feel that I was on the attack.”
Although the Wiscasset Redskins, like their namesakes in the NFL and countless other sports teams, kept their mascot, the debate led to a new institution at Wiscasset High School: Diversity Day.
“We still have Diversity Day every year, so that’s a great thing,” Poppish said. “We bring in all kinds of outside speakers.”
After retirement, Poppish said she hopes to spend more time with her two grandchildren in Denver. Otherwise, she’s unsure what the future holds.
“I’m thinking that my ability to not be active in education in some capacity won’t be long-lived,” Poppish said. “I’ll probably be looking eventually for some part-time teaching.”
“I really miss that kind of contact with kids,” Poppish said. “Being principal you have a certain level of contact with high school kids; being a teacher you get much more, much closer to kids, much more able to influence their learning.”
“I’m kind of scaling back from [full-time work]. I don’t have an immediate plan, which is kind of jumping off a cliff without a parachute for me,” Poppish said. “I’ve never done that. I’ve always worked… I haven’t really taken any time off from education in 36 years.”
Although she sounds uncertain about post-retirement life, Poppish said she’s confident that now is the right time to leave Wiscasset. “I think a person who is a high school principal really needs to devote 100 percent of themselves,” she said. “I’m not able to give that anymore.”
“I’ve been very good at this job, and that’s not bragging,” Poppish said. It’s a wonderful school and a fabulous staff. The kids are great… but it’s the right time. And I feel that. So I’ve got to do what my gut tells me.”
“I’m going to miss my friendships with staff more than anything,” Poppish said. “It’s going to be an emotional week for me.”
