Principal Jessica Haddox was awarded the honor of Secondary Principal of the Year for the district. This award is voted on by the administrators of the district and is a very high honor.

“I didn’t always know I wanted to be a principal,” Haddox said.  “I was a teacher and I worked with student leaders. I was the student council sponsor. Doing all the leadership stuff with them instilled the leadership in me and it made me want to be a better leader and grow my leadership.”

Then Haddox decided to go back and get her masters and applied for assistant principal in the summer of 2010.

“Honestly I did it so I could prepare my resume and my cover letter,” Haddox said.  “Larry Whitehead called me and asked if I could come in for an interview. This was literally two hours before I was flying to Europe. And I said ‘yea I’ll be right there.’ And he hired me on the spot. I was an assistant principal for three and a half years with him.  The opportunity arose when Kleb opened up and I applied and got that job. It was more about the opportunity and wanting to make a bigger impact on a campus. A lot of that had to do with Mr. Whitehead and him saying, ‘you gotta do it, you’re ready.’”

A normal day in the life of Jessica Haddox is first getting up and driving from Downtown Houston.

“Fingers crossed that there’s no accidents on the way, delaying my arrival,” Haddox said. “I go out to Mainstreet and say ‘Hi’ to kids, and get the day started.  It really depends on the day, a lot of times I have meetings and things scheduled. The middle of the day is always lunch duty. The end of the day is always dismissal.”

There are many things that motivated Haddox to be the best principal she can be.

“What motivates me is seeing the results of leadership,” Haddox said. “So for example, Klein 5. We had this idea of it and we knew we wanted to do character education but we didn’t know we were going to call it Klein 5. We didn’t know what words we would have and so seeing that seed grow into something, that’s motivating. When my teachers are happy and the kids are happy and they enjoy school, that motivates me to keep doing the best job I can.  [My favorite part of the job is] the kids. Sometimes I have to go to meetings two times in a row and by the end of that, I just need to see kids. I just go and walk the hallways and see kids and they’re always smiling and nice. We’ve got great kids here. The students, for sure, are my favorite part.”

It was a thrilling moment caught on camera when Haddox discovered that she was awarded this honor.

“It was really cool for me because Mr. Whitehead announced he was leaving in March and so it was like a proud kid moment for him to see me get that; it made me proud,” Haddox said.