Danielle Agugiliaro, Staff Editor
This year Newtown High School is excited to welcome a new assistant principal into our community, David Roach. Mr. Roach was born and raised in Middlebury where he attended Pomperaug High School, the same school in which he ended up teaching. He will be working alongside our new principal and his past colleague, Dr. Rodrigue, as well as NHS’s other assistant principals.
After, Mr. Roach continued on to Western New England College where he majored in History with a minor in Spanish. After college he got a job at Pomperaug High School where he taught history for 13 years. He had also continued to play football throughout college and brought that passion into a job as a varsity football coach at PHS.
Throughout his years teaching he was also a driver’s education instructor, a dean, a football coach, and many other roles. Roach is not all work and school though, five years ago he married his wife, Jessica, and the couple has a six month old son named Dylan at home. Roach has a diverse background in a number of administrative positions; with this experience he brings a new and refreshing point of view to NHS.
“I came to Newtown not only to further my career but to do something I found a passion for in the past three or four years,” Roach said. He got his first taste of this passion when he was a dean at Pomperaug which he really enjoyed because he could talk to kids about making better choices.
“People look at my job and say that we just hand out detentions, that’s not what we do,” explained Roach.
Roach continued to say that he believes students in high school are at an age where they are going to make bad choices, but that does not mean it’s over, it just means they need to talk about it and hopefully they will not make those mistakes again.
Roach was also inspired by Newtown’s performance when he applied for the job here,“The Newtown athletes, the people, the drama the band it was always top notch, so I figured if they’re like that in the field then they’ve got to be like that in the classroom and so far you guys haven’t let me down,” Roach said. He continued on to say that in the short time he has been here he already sees a high level of respect between the students and teachers which he finds impressive.
Assistant Principal Roach is also excited for what this year will bring. “So my reputation for the first few weeks was I was the guy who’s kicking people off the benches, and that’s not the guy I want to be known as around here, I want to be the person people can come chat with and understand that they can come to me with their problems,” Roach explained.
NHS teachers are also excited about our new AP addition,“Mr. Roach and I have a lot in common, we’ve both been varsity sports captains in the past and it seems like he has a lot to bring to the table,” History teacher Gary Franklin said, “I think he has high standards of conduct and also a high respect for the students, I believe he will do a great job here.”
So next time you see Mr. Roach in the hallway go and introduce yourself, and you can usually find him in his office in F Wing if you want to make an appointment and talk with him. Our school community is always happy to welcome new staff so let’s show him how we do it Nighthawk style.
Photo Credit; Danielle Agugiliaro
