Growing up, all Christianne May ever wanted to be was a teacher.
“My Cabbage Patch dolls learned a lot. Let me tell you, and my mom was a Sunday school teacher, so I brought all of her Sunday school stuff home,” she said.
May has been the principal of Castle Hayne for the past four years. Her path to being named the southeastern principal of the year started with her principal peers nominating her.
Her staff recognizes her leadership, too. Kelly Carr is the data manager at Castle Hayne.
“She always puts it back on the school, so at our staff meeting, as soon as she was awarded this, she came and she said, ‘This is not about me. This is about you guys. And this is a reflection of what you've done in the school.’ And it just empowers the teachers, because teaching can be a thankless job, and so she gives it right back to the teachers,” Carr said.
May said out of all of her accomplishments — she’s most proud of the culture at her school.
“I think you can have really great teachers, right? Like, you can have really, really great teachers and not have a good culture. But when you have a good culture and [it’s] solid, and there’s a foundation and trust, and people genuinely get along, and they genuinely want to be here, and they genuinely want to work together, and there is collaboration and teamwork, then the instruction piece, that just all falls in line,” May said.
She also said she has grown as a leader in her time at Castle Hayne.
“I look at all the mistakes that I've made and try to learn from [them]. [...] I think when I came, I was very much of like, ‘I need to have control of everything that's happening.’ And over the past four years, there has been a lot of release of control as trust has been built among the staff and getting people in the right positions to do all the things that need to be done here,” she said.
As for the maturity of her decision-making, she said she tries to think of how those affect parents, too.
“I am a parent, so I kind of view everything through that lens; it's hard to take my parent hat off, and so a lot of decisions that I've made here, certainly during the pandemic, and ever since, has been like, ‘As the parent, how does this feel?’” she said.
Leslie Hobbs is a fourth-grade teacher at Castle Hayne. She said she’s grateful for the positive working environment May has created.
“I know in my classroom that my students know that there's a relationship, there's trust. And then I have that same with her. And so that's why it works because I see it work in my classroom because my kids know they're valued. And then when it comes to our staff, we know we're valued by her,” Hobbs said.
Students in the building also have a good relationship with their principal, said second-grade teacher Trevor Todd.
“If you talk to many children in this building, they would feel that they could come to Mrs. May with any of their problems and concerns, and she would meet them with an opening heart and listening ear,” Todd said.
May said she and her staff have challenges, too — and that school climate allows them to take them on.
“I think the mental health of society has changed. [...] We have a full-time school-based mental health therapist who has a waiting list because there's that much need for mental health support for children. But then it's also for the parents, too. I mean, parents struggled through a really difficult time, some of them didn't have a job, and were struggling with just all the economic challenges that happened during COVID. I think we're just in this recovery period,” she said.
And that recovery is showing already. For the past two years, a school where 57% of its student population is economically disadvantaged, has exceeded growth on end-of-year tests. And Castle Hayne went from a school report card rating of a ‘C’ to a ‘B’ just last year.
And while May is thankful for the work of her staff, students, and school families, she wants the community to support them, too.
“I think people who are critical of what they think is happening in our schools, I would encourage them to come and volunteer; we are always looking for volunteers, and we need people to partner with us to help our students. And so, I think that that would be my one thing, is I would love for the community to rally around our children and rally around public education.”
May said it’s easy to focus on the negative — but in the long run, that won’t help the children in New Hanover County.
May is now in the running for North Carolina's Principal of the Year; they’ll announce this selection later this spring.
