Assistant Principal Elenz-Martin
Nicole Elenz-Martin will now serve as Aragon’s assistant principal and advisor for Service Commission, thus eliminating the dean position at Aragon.
Along with other positions, Elenz-Martin has worked at Aragon for 14 years as a Spanish and AVID teacher and served as instructional technology coordinator alongside Vincent Bravo.
Last spring, the idea to remove the dean position was brought up as a result of recent changes in enrollment.
According to fellow Assistant Principal Ron Berggren, the district board decided to convert the dean position to a more administrative one due to increased student enrollment.
“Now [an] administrative position means that you can for example do evaluations with teachers,” Berggren said. “It gives us more options and flexibility on things we need to do as a school for administrative coverage.”
Berggren also discussed the selection for the new position.
“After looking at all the candidates, we realized we probably had the best person right here,” Berggren said. “Ms. Elenz-Martin already has the teaching experience, the familiarity with the school, the trust of the faculty and has already established herself into Aragon’s community.”
Elenz-Martin talked of how different her role is now.
“I feel like I am in a totally new profession in a lot of ways, even though I’m not. I’m still in education, but instead of being in a classroom where it’s pretty contained. . . I at least know what the day is going to be like, when your in your own classroom teacher. With administration, the day is full of surprises all day long,” she said.
With an extended administrative staff, the administration has the resources to better enforce school rules, which will be discussed in upcoming flex times. “It’s just making sure that students are being able to respect what the policies that are in place, whether their school policies, whether their district and board policies,” Elenz-Martin said.
Attendance clerk Carolina Patino also talks about the enforcement of policy.
“A lot of [policies] weren’t new. A lot of them were just policies that were starting not to be enforced as much, and they just wanted to reintroduce them so they can start fresh,” she said.
In addition to her responsibilities as assistant principal, Elenz-Martin will serve as the advisor to Service Commission.
“My job is to oversee that the Service Commissioners are fulfilling their responsibilities and commitment to be excellent ambassadors for the school” Elenz-Martin said.
Also as advisor for the service commission, Elenz-Martin plans to focus on increasing unity and spirit throughout the student body.
“[We] keep on working on building school spirit [and] school culture,” Elenz-Martin said. “Respect is a huge thing. Respect between student to students, student to teacher, or teacher to teacher. Having that respect and appreciation for differences and for supporting each other in learning.”
As the assistant principal, Elenz-Martin has many hopes to create a more welcoming culture.
“I would say a number one overarching goal is… to keep on building on the culture of the one love movement… and knowing that this is a safe community where everyone is welcomed, [and] everyone is proud to be here,” said Elenz-Martin. “I would love it if everyone was feeling comfortable enough to be able to give smiles to each other in the hallways.”
Although she will not be teaching Spanish this year, Elenz-Martin hopes to stay involved in Aragon’s Spanish community.
“I hope students will come and speak Spanish with me in the hallway where if they have questions about Spanish to come and ask me,” Elenz-Martin said. “I get to speak Spanish with the Spanish-speaking families who are visiting, and I get to work with el Grupo de Padres Latinos.”
While Elenz-Martin is no longer teaching students and has taken on an more administrative role, she still strives to have close relationships with students and support them.
“[The most important thing to me is that] I still feel connected to the students and that students still see me as a resource for support,” Elenz-Martin said. “It’s super important that they don’t feel like I’m at this whole other different level that they don’t interact with. I want to be just as interactive with students as I was as a teacher.”
