By Ari Howorth
Staff Writer
After taking a maternity leave for the first semester of the school year, Jennie Wright (pictured right) returned to Mira Costa and resumed her previous job as vice principal at the end of January.
Wright’s last day of work before her leave was the last day of the 2010-11 school year. She took up her job again at the start of this school year’s second semester.
“I feel like the new kid on the block,” Wright said. “Even though I’ve been here for 10 years, there’s a whole new group of teachers and a new group of kids, so it was weird to come back. After a few days, however, I got back in the swing of things.”
The responsibilities of each vice principal change throughout the year. This made it easy to divide up Wright’s various responsibilities amongst the other vice principals.
“Now she’s one of us,” Principal Ben Dale said. “A lot of us administrators have kids. That’s good because we all understand the demands at work and the demands at home. When you don’t have kids at home, it’s hard to really understand what the administrators with kids at home are going through.”
Wright is content about how things were run in her absence. Even though there is some catching up to do, she wasted no time getting back to work and visited about 20 classrooms on her first day back.
“While the Mira Costa faculty did a great job in running school activities,” sophomore Joe Marine said, “ I feel that we all awaited Mrs. Wright’s return. We are excited to have her back and look forward to her doing the job that we all know her for.”
While all Costa educators have to balance their work and family lives, Wright and her husband must deal with an extra difficulty; her husband is a vice principal at another school.
“We make it work,” Wright said. “Although, it’s difficult to go from spending 12 hours a day with your baby to seeing him for an hour and a half, if you are lucky. The hardest part is definitely leaving the house in the morning.”
Even though Wright’s life has drastically changed, she is ready to give this semester her utmost effort and doesn’t feel being a parent will interfere with her work too much. The Costa administration is excited to finally have her back on campus.
“She brought our team midyear energy,” Dale said. “It reminded all of us of the energy level that we need to have, especially in the middle of the year.”
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