After years at La Entrada, Adrienne Philippe is stepping into a new role as instructional vice principal here at Woodside.
Philippe has been in education for 25 years, and throughout her career, she has made many jumps through schools. Philippe was originally a middle school math teacher for five years, then a high school math teacher for 10 years, an administrator at a middle school for nine years, and is now here at Woodside as an Instructional Vice Principal.
“I’m really glad that I gained the experience that I did at the middle school level,” Philippe said. “[It] really showed me the importance of how visible and how connected an administrator needs to be with their staff and students, and families.”
As a send-off, Philippe’s previous school, La Entrada, gave her a graduation to move on to a new chapter of her career in the high school field.
“My previous school really wanted to send me off properly,” Philippe said. “So in the summer, they had a late graduation party for me to talk about stories about what we liked most about our time there.”
Philippe’s many years of teaching helped her transition into an administrative and instructional role at schools. The process taken to get to this point in her career was through the Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP).
“I knew I wanted to be a teacher,” Philippe said. “I thought I was gonna be an elementary school teacher, but I did the STEP program, and they didn’t have elementary as an option, only middle school and high school. I was scared of high school, so [I chose] middle school.”
After being at a middle school for a while, she decided to transfer to a high school to try something new and challenge her previous skills.
“There are so many moving pieces and so many moving parts that need to be taken into consideration [for high school],” Philippe said. “I knew that I was ready to try something new. I missed high school, so I took a leap of faith and said, ‘I’ll give it a try.’”
Going from middle school to high school could be a big jump for some. These two different levels of schools have differences that make working at each level distinct.
“The biggest difference between La Entrada and Woodside is that the students here don’t run around,” Philippe said. “The little kids are very full of energy, and they’re still so young, and they want to play, and recess is all that there is to life. But here it’s almost like a community college setting, a way more focused and relaxed vibe.”
In addition to this change that Philippe took on, she also took the jump from a previous administration position to an Instructional Vice Principal.
“Instructional Vice Principal really focuses well on instruction, so a lot of all the testing arrangements, [such as the] PSAT, SAT, APs, all fall under my scope,” Philippe said. “I’m also working a lot with the district in terms of the district-wide benchmark assessments and helping support teachers if they’re interested in proposing a new course. I also work hand in hand with our counseling department.”
Although these responsibilities may be different from her previous position in the administration at a middle school, Philippe expressed that she thought these changes would be good.
“I’m always looking to challenge myself,” Philippe said. “I felt like I could offer more. I really enjoyed connecting with students and families, but I like systematically and programmatically how things are running at schools, so this is a larger scope that would be interesting to look into.”
Philippe came to Woodside with a plan to get to work and to make sure her role is as thorough as it can be.
“[I feel that it’s important to] form relationships,” Philippe said. “I’m out as much as I can, trying to attend events, walking around classrooms, connecting with the staff, meeting the families, just forming as many relationships as possible, because it’s incredibly difficult to provide support or invoke change if you don’t have any kind of relationship with the folks that you’re working with.”
After discussing her short-term goals, Philippe touched on her overall career goal for when it’s time for her to retire.
“I want to do a really solid job so once I ride off into the sunset one day, [I hope] there’ll be recognition or appreciation [towards me],” Philippe said. “At the school that I just left, they have this funny little saying right now, that’s ‘What would Adrienne do?’ So kind of just having myself positioned in a way that folks respect and recognize my organization and the way that I would handle situations.”
