There is more to teaching than being in front of a group of students in a classroom. For Robin Harden-Daniels, it is about understanding students on various levels and forming productive relationships with them.
The new principal at Millstone River School, approved by the school board on June 29, has employed this approach throughout her career, an unusual path that led to WW-P.
Harden-Daniels grew up in Syracuse, NY. Her mother grew up in Biloxi, Mississippi, amid segregation, and graduated from Biloxi Colored School. “At the time, educational advancement for African Americans was not as plentiful,” she said. Her mother got married and had children, but Harden-Daniels’s father died when her mother was pregnant with her.
From an early age, Harden-Daniels exhibited the makings of a future educator. “I had to find my gift as a teacher,” she said. “As a kid, I taught other kids my age. We were playing, but I always played the role of teachers. On a rainy day, when no one was out playing, I’d teach my toys.”
“The desire to learn, and not just the desire to learn to accumulate it for yourself, but the desire to learn to share it with other people so they can have those ‘Aha!’ moments” is indicative of the nature of a teacher, she added. “That’s your playtime. Other kids are playing kick ball, and you’re reading a book.”
Harden-Daniels attended Hamilton College in upstate New York, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in cultural anthropology, a path she followed based on her interest in studying the global society. “Knowing about those things helps us to be more responsive to people, to embrace folks where we are,” she said. “I always found that fascinating.”
Harden-Daniels also earned a master’s degree from Harvard University in divinity, a three-year full-time master’s program where she studied theology, ethics, and counseling. “My background is very much toward understanding people on different levels.”
She also earned a master’s degree from the University of Scranton in educational administration, and she is currently working on a doctoral program at Rowan University in educational leadership. She has just completed her first year.
Through all of her educational pursuits and her varied background, Harden-Daniels learned that everything is based on relationships. “A majority of students are affect learners,” she said. “If they can personally relate to the teacher, if they like the teacher, they generally tend to perform better. They will come in and spend extra time after school. If they don’t like you, they are going to stay away from you.”
Naturally, her emphasis in coming in as a new principal is to “really put a lot of emphasis and a lot of energy into building relationships with the students, our community, our teachers, other colleagues, and other administrators.”
Throughout her career, she as always been involved in teaching in some capacity, she said, even though some of it did not take place in the traditional classroom.
After attending Hamilton and then Harvard, she moved to western Massachusetts, where she worked at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She got married and had children, and ended up leaving Massachusetts for New Jersey. She took a little bit of time to stay at home with her children. After three years, she went back to work, this time as a counselor. She first worked at Ford Motor Company, where she counseled employees and their families, including instructing families how to handle different types of behaviors in children. She has also worked with churches, where she went into prisons and counseled inmates.
“As a counselor, you’re teaching people how to see a different perspective,” she explained. “If a student is suicidal, you want them to see a different perspective. There are solutions to the pain they’re feeling without entertaining the thoughts they have about suicide.”
From counseling, she switched into education in the 1990, where she began a strong college preparatory background. She worked for 12 years in a college preparatory school in northern New Jersey. “It was really helpful in understanding communities that are really geared toward excellence, and that’s what I see in WW-P,” said Harden-Daniels, currently director of instruction for the humanities at the Northern Burlington district.
At WW-P, she said, she wants to get to know the culture of the school. “I call this building emotional infrastructure,” she said. This involves taking the time to learn what’s important to people and the values of the school community — from parents, to teachers to janitors and bus drivers.
“My initial focus is going to be developing those kinds of relationships,” she said. “In the future, as new initiatives come forward and there is a need to move the community in a direction of support, it is easier to do if people see you care about students and care about doing the right thing and care about being inclusive.”
In addition, “I’m sensitive to the fact that there’s a beloved principal who is retiring,” she said. “I’m sensitive to the fact that there are some strong relationships there. We’re going to have supportive and strong relationships. They may be different because I’m a different person, but the priorities are still the same. The priorities of the students are still the same. I would hope that would be the case with anyone who comes in.”
Harden-Daniels will earn a salary of $122,361.
Temporary South Principal Named
While the search continues for a permanent replacement for former South Principal Charles Rudnick, the WW-P school board has assigned one of its central office staff to take on the responsibilities.
At its June 29 meeting, the board approved David Aderhold, the assistant superintendent for planning and pupil services, as the acting principal until a permanent appointment is made.
According to officials, he will be paid a stipend of $2,000 in addition to his current salary of $144,000 as assistant superintendent. School board president Hemant Marathe said this move saves the district money in the meantime, while the search continues.
“It could save a significant amount of money,” said school board president Hemant Marathe. “The total salary plus benefits for a South principal is about $150,000 a year.”
Marathe said the board is not planning to keep him as the acting principal for a year. For the time being, Superintendent Victoria Kniewel has redistributed some of his duties to other central office staff. “Whatever needs to be done will be done by someone,” he said. “It requires a lot of extra effort in the central office.”
Marathe said the board has advertised for the position nationally. “It’s a very demanding and very public position, and we will be looking carefully at that choice,” he said. “We still hope to have someone in place as soon as possible.”
Aderhold served as the principal at New Brunswick High School before being hired by WW-P last year. He has previously served as vice principal at North Brunswick High School and vice principal at Linwood Middle School.
Aderhold, who lives in Hamilton with his wife, Tara, has an undergraduate degree in history education from Rider University and a doctorate in educational leadership from Nova Southeastern University.
