During National Principals Month, AFSA highlights the achievements of individual school principals who make us proud each and every day of the year.
Carla McNeal, principal of Hallie Wells Middle School, Clarksburg, MD., says that moving from the classroom to administrative positions gave her a jolt. She relished her job as a high school English teacher: “And I loved teaching books such as Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe,” which won the Man Booker Prize for International Fiction.
To rouse the students’ interest, she asked them to create a Facebook page or Twitter posting as if they were Okonkwo, Nwoye, Ojiugo or one of the other characters, and update the pages to mimic the various plot developments in the novel.
“They loved that,” she remembers. “They also loved when I asked them to make a case for rap music being or not being literature. This made some kids like English and literature for the first time.”
They got into reading The Awakening by Kate Chopin and Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. To her surprise, they liked Shakespeare and adored “Macbeth.”
After having taught for 9 years in Alabama and Maryland high schools, and holding 2 assistant principal positions in Maryland, she was named principal of Hallie Wells in May 2023, and she totally found her footing.
“I love the middle school age,” she says. “The empathetic part of me wants to make the middle school experience great because mine was not. Being in the middle is hard.”
The product of a spiritually grounded family of five in the small Alabama town of Jackson, Carla Morris was a good if unassuming student, long before the days of “inclusion.” She recalls that all the “gifted and talented” students were white and all the students receiving special services were Black. She now questions whether they all belonged where they were.
“Because of that, I consider myself an advocate for all children,” she says. “My desire is for every child to reach their fullest potential, whatever that might be. For as long as I remember, I’ve had a very strong sense of justice and right and wrong.”
In 1970, Carla’s father Walter Morris, a 43-year veteran of the BASF Chemical Company and National Guard veteran, was part of the first integrated class graduating from Leroy High School in Leroy, Alabama, a late beneficiary of Brown vs. Board of Education. Today, as that landmark Supreme Court decision is being eroded, Carla is even more aware of her dad’s story than he is.
Being the oldest grandchild in her family, she was encouraged to attend college, but there was another adult in her life who helped her make her final decision on where to attend. When Mrs. Beverly, the librarian at Jackson High School, suggested she apply to The University of Montevallo in Montevallo, Alabama, she applied and won a scholarship for education majors, intending to become a teacher. A few years later, when she fell behind in acquiring the required number of prerequisite to graduate on time, she changed her major to English.
Immediately after graduation, she went to work as a mortgage processor at AmSouth Bank, a bad fit, and then for Central Paper, where the lovely Italian owners, the Ross family, practically adopted her. But that didn’t feel right either. She found her way to Birmingham City Schools and immediately found a job teaching English at Huffman High School.
Hallie Wells Middle School in Clarksburg is extremely diverse. Nearly half of the students are Asian and the rest are white, Black, and Latino students.
“Being a Black woman, diversity is incredibly important to me,” she says. “My doctoral dissertation was about Black women school leaders and intersectionality. I feel that I am uniquely positioned to support and celebrate diversity.”
Being a principal is increasingly challenging, she notes. “Principals are expected to be the developers of the panacea for all the ills of society.” Among other things, she points out, they are instructional leaders, financial managers, directors of school climate safety and operations, and liaisons to the community, “I’m the mayor of a small town.”
She says, “Even in all of this, I’m totally committed because who else would be left to advocate for the babies? If not me, then who?”
Considering a school leader’s staggering array of responsibilities, she is a staunch member of AFSA Local 146, the Montgomery County Association of Administrators and Principals, and serves on its board of directors. She says, “Our local union and AFSA give me my inspiration to develop creative solutions to the challenges we face. . .. My dad was an avid member of International Union Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW), so I come by it naturally.”
Today, Dr. Carla McNeal is profoundly affected by writer, director, and producer Ava DuVernay, especially her Emmy Award-winning documentary film 13th, about how the 13th Amendment led to the mass incarceration of mostly Black Americans.
“The film deconstructed long-held assumptions that I had,” she explains. “When I showed a clip to my leadership team, which is almost all white, they were initially shocked. It was a bold move, but after I explained the clip’s relevance to our work, and they got it.”
Married to US Navy Captain Cedric McNeal and the mother of 6-year-old Carter, she finds genuine relaxation far out of reach, but she reads as much as possible, currently The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. She says, “Reading allows me to get out of my head.”
Carla is a singer, and she believes her only true relaxation comes from being a worship leader and singer at the Church of the Redeemer. She says, “When I’m singing on Sunday, I’m the most free I ever feel.” Some of the families from her school worship there and are surprised to see her on the platform at first, but then they come to appreciate the connection outside of the schoolhouse.
