Miller excited after first week as NV's middle school principal, activities director

GREENFIELD — Creston native Gerry Miller began as middle school principal and activities director for the Nodaway Valley Community School District at the start of the month.

Miller steps in for Michael Dale who accepted a position to be associate principal at Marshalltown High School.

Miller most recently served as associate principal of Xavier High School in Cedar Rapids.

Miller describes that after he decided he wanted to be a school leader in a lead principal role late last fall, he and his wife, Nicole, who have three young children, began looking for opportunities in the Cedar Rapids metro or Creston areas, and that led them to finding the NV position.

"The most intriguing part of it for me is that it works with both middle school students and the student athlete side, which brings both of my passions together, working with our young 12 to 14-year-olds in the education field and then working with 7-12 in team activities," Miller said.

In the classroom

Miller explained that because his first love in the classroom was teaching middle school students, he's excited to be principal of a building at that age level. He feels middle school is a pivotal age for students. In his opinion, middle school is where students begin to think more independently and start to build character traits such as perseverance, resiliency, grit, and more.

"I am huge on empowering our teachers to let our students embrace the struggle. The key to lifting weights is you break down the old muscle to build new muscle. In learning, when we have impressionable young kids we have to be able to break down a mindset that they can't do something and show them that they have the capacity to do it, or we have to challenge their status quo that they 'already know this' and say 'let's take it a step further'," Miller said.

In activities

Miller began his journey in leading extracurricular activities soon after high school as an assistant baseball coach under Steve Birchard at Creston.

An athlete in high school, Miller said he is well aware of the life lessons that can be learned and translate well into further growth in the classroom and in life though participation in activities of many kinds.

"It's not just about sports specific or skills specific things, it's about developing the kid wholly. That means teaching them skills of resiliency, grit and being able to overcome adversity. When you put those things together with the skills that are taught to you by your coach those translate to wins and those translate into a culture that says we're going to outwork you and then we're going to outperform you," Miller said. "That starts with me at the top in bringing work ethic and being able to face adversity myself."