After 18 years of Scott Bacon as Blue Valley High’s principal, the Tigers are getting a new leader. Dr. Charles Golden is stepping into the challenge of filling Bacon’s role.

When beginning his career as an educator, a new and unplanned opportunity opened up, taking Golden on a path to where he is now.

“I was almost done with a Ph.D. in English Literature at [the] University of Toronto when my wife applied for jobs in Blue Valley. It was the year Blue Valley West opened, and they were desperate for teachers,” Golden said. “After she was hired, the HR director found out she was married to somebody who had a year of college teaching experience and had pretty good reading knowledge of Latin. [He] basically said he needs to apply for jobs because there were no Latin teachers with certifications to be found and there was an emergency certification process that the state was allowing at the time. I got a job I wasn’t looking

for and I started teaching Latin 1 through 3 — I loved it.”

Following that year, an obstacle prevented Golden from continuing as a Latin teacher but took him on a different track.

“[The No Child Left Behind Act] had happened that year, and there were new rules about how certification happened,” Golden said. “I couldn’t get a traditional certification in Latin, but I could get one in English pretty easily because I had done a lot of graduate work in that. In about a year and a half, I got certified to teach English and never looked back.”

After teaching for 15 years, he started administrative work which inspired Golden to take on a new role.

“It’s a challenge, but the opportunity to be a principal and to help facilitate what a team of really strong teachers [and] staff are doing together and to help get things out of the way so that they can do their work,” Golden said. ‘It’s a rewarding [and] helping job.”

While taking over the role of principal, Golden doesn’t want the school to differentiate itself from past years.

“My goal isn’t to come in and change a whole bunch of stuff [but] to come in and watch, listen and help us keep being the best version we can be,” Golden said. “I hope students, faculty members and parents will see that just as Mr. Bacon has been approachable, eager to listen and eager to get to know people, they see that for me, too.”