Supervisor of Humanities Stephanie Greenberg, who became a staff member of the Princeton Public School in 2018, was recently appointed as Assistant Principal at PHS for students. While she is relatively new to this district, her career is far from brief. Starting in 2006, she has been working as an educator and, more recently, took on a role as an administrator.

She began her 14-year-long career in education as an English teacher at West Windsor-Plainsboro South. After a couple years, she traveled to the other side of the globe to South Korea and Taipei to experience studying and teaching abroad. Greenberg decided to returned to the tri-state area and taught in Brooklyn, New York, and Millburn, New Jersey.

Although Greenberg has been in the education field for many years, she didn’t realize her passion for teaching until the middle of college.

“I did some volunteer teaching of an adult [English as a Second Language] class … I just fell in love with it. It was a highlight of my week, every week to spend two hours with these folks. Designing the lessons was really fun. For me, it was like, ‘Okay, let me find an article that would be relevant to people’s lives, and develop it into a lesson.’ So I fell in love with that,” Greenberg said.

After working in so many places with so many different cultures, environments, leaders, and leadership styles, Greenberg decided to try administration herself. As Supervisor of Humanities, Greenberg did a lot of curriculum work, including reviews and updates. One topic Greenberg focused on during her tenure was equity in classes.

“So when it comes to representation in our curriculum … both in terms of the books that we teach in English class [and in terms of] the historical narratives that we present in our history classes we’ve really been working hard to make sure that we are providing multiple perspectives on historical events, [and updated and diverse] themes,” Greenberg said.

Curricular reform or implementing a relatively new idea doesn’t come easily. For example, during the pandemic, teachers had to learn a new method of digital teaching quickly and effectively. Some teachers, not used to the wave of technology, were confused and intimidated by different apps and websites such as Nearpod and Padlet. In response, Greenberg introduced the Tech in Humanity Showcase, where teachers shared their success with particular technologies.

“That’s a little bit what happens with curriculum reform, that some folks are sort of the more experimental leaders. Other folks are like, ‘Okay, cool. You first. And then you let me know what worked and what didn’t work,’” Greenberg said.

Despite having enjoyed her work with teachers as Supervisor of Humanities, Greenberg reminisces about her time teaching students. Luckily, serving as Assistant Principal allows her to return to the student interactions she misses.

“The thing that I am the most excited about in the new role is working more directly with kids. Supervisors don’t on a daily basis; you’re not constantly interacting with kids,” Greenberg said.

Greenberg is also open to listening and working with students to improve the district and students' learning experience. She previously worked with a group of kids at PPS to diversify their curriculum.

“I love teenagers. I think you guys are smart and daring. Intellectually, you have ideas, you have a view on the world that I want to hear. And I’m just optimistic and I’m excited about the potential for there being more of that in this new job,” Greenberg said.

Outside of school, Greenberg enjoys running to clear her head and decompress. She has run two marathons and several half-marathons in the past.

She also encourages students who are avid readers like herself to stop by to talk about books.

Going forward, Greenberg looks forward to building deeper and longer-lasting relationships with the student body as an assistant principal.

photo: [credit name="JuIie Liu"]

“One of the things that I’m really excited about for being an assistant principal is that we get assigned part of the alphabet, so any student whose last name is P through Z, I’m their assistant principal, which I really hope means that we’ll get to know each other,” Greenberg said. “Hopefully in four years, I’ll be seeing you graduate, and I’ll be able to see you a million times in between. I like that sort of long term connection with students.”