Meet The Principal

By Mark Carpenter

People’s Defender

“Our job is to give these kids the skills they need to be successful.” Those are the words of Mr. Ben King, who is in his ninth year as the principal of West Union Elementary. After spending time as an administrator at the high school level, King made the move to the elementary and has never looked back.

Ben King grew up right here in Adams County and attended school in the Peebles district- Peebles Elementary, Franklin Elementary and graduated from Peebles High School in 1996. He says that growing up his parents instilled in him the idea of hard work.

“My Mom would stay at home with us and my Dad worked as a mechanic and just seeing the example of always working hard showed me that good things happen when you work hard,” says King. “I think the time that my Mom spent as a stay-at-home Mom taught me the importance of relationships with kids, how relevant that was.” King grew up with one sister, Amy, who is now a teacher at the Ohio Valley Career and Technical Center.

King began working mowing yards at the age of 13 and he says work kept him from being involved in many extracurricular activities in school. He also worked at Plum Run Stone and for local farmers putting in straw or cutting firewood, whatever was needed.

After high school, King decided to attend Shawnee State University.

“I went to Shawnee, left and went to Ohio University for a quarter, and then realized that I didn’t like it, so I went back to Shawnee,” King explains. “I quit school to work but got laid off and decided to go back to school again. My degree was actually in History, not Education. Rob Meade and I both went back to school through a grant from the Scioto County ESC. My intent at the time was to either work as a college professor but after I graduated, I decided to substitute teach a little bit on the side. When I did that, I realized that I really liked teaching. Brett Justice was the assistant superintendent and he told me about a program for intervention specialists so I went back to school while I was a full-time sub at Western Latham. Eventually, John Lawhorn met me in the McDonald’s parking lot and told me that Adams County was hiring an intervention specialist and handed me a contract. That was my interview process.”

That led King to a position at Peebles Elementary as a sixth grade intervention specialist and he spent five years there before moving over to West Union High School as the Assistant Principal, as he had gotten his administrative certificate through the University of Dayton, taking evening classes at Southern State. He took the West Union assistant’s job for the 2007-08 school year.

“I knew Tim Davis, who was the WUHS principal at the time, so I thought it might just be a good fit for me,” said King. “If you don’t make that move early, it doesn’t make sense to do it later. You see the way things are done and you think you can make a difference in the role. It was a good opportunity for me to learn and I stayed as the assistant principal for five years.”

Davis eventually left for Peebles and that gave King the opportunity to move up to the head principal’s position, a spot he held for three school years.

“it was a different challenge for me,” King says. “I liked the idea of seeing high school graduates move on to live out their dreams, which is not something you see in elementary but instead you see how much they have changed from kindergarten through sixth grade. But the basic is the same- just giving kids the attention that sometimes makes their day.”

Explaining how he decided to move to the principal’s job at West Union Elementary, King explains, “My teaching had almost always been at the elementary level and the position came up and I thought I might be interested. Just the time constraints of being a high school principal with my kids being in another attendance area was difficult. I still have a few conflicts but not near as many as at the high school level. You see these kids come in here as innocent little kids and it’s always a pleasure to watch them grow over their years here.”

King is now in his ninth year as the principal at West Union Elementary, though it seems like just yesterday that he took the job. As far as what he thinks makes West Union Elementary special, he says, “One, our staff is so caring and compassionate and that and the kids together makes what I do not a job, but something I look forward to each day. As a whole, our staff is very kid-focused and that’s the biggest compliment that we hear.”

“I thought my career might be going in a different direction last year so I got more familiar with career-oriented material and I took some of that information and on the suggestion of a board member, we began our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) and (STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) programs. One of our staff members, Tim Brown, was working on his administrative degree and he agreed to start the programs and I wasn’t real sure how many kids would stick with it. We have kids who are tough to handle sometimes and all we have heard is how well-behaved they are in this program. April Baldwin, our second grade teacher, began STEM Fridays and it really improved some of our attendance issues. On the suggestion of Superintendent Wallace, we have worked on becoming a STEM school.”

“Our fourth through sixth graders now have an elective schedule, ” King continued. “They will take anything from crochet to Intro to Ag, theater, dance, I- Movies, volleyball, golf, basketball, baseball, every day from 11 a.m. – 1 p.m. We go to a high school schedule and the kids can choose recess as their elective, and most do, but they can also choose the other electives. It provides different opportunities and its non-graded and geared to student interests. We’ve seen our attendance increase and our behavior problems decrease with these programs. Kids are thinking on their own and at the end of the day we want to provide kids with experiences and exposure. The whole STEM approach focuses on collaboration and teaching that to our kids.”

“Last year in our after school STEM program we had 26 kids. This year we have a consistent 41 fifth graders and over 80 first through fourth graders who are staying after school. The kids explore a situation and come up with their own solutions with our regular teachers handing the supervision duties. We don’t ever want kids to lose the curiosity that bring in here as kindergarteners.”

Away from the school, King and his wife Carissa have a sixth grade daughter, Harper, who attends Peebles Elementary, and two grown stepsons. When he and his family have spare time, they enjoy motorcycling, hiking and ball games, being big baseball and Cincinnati Reds fans.