On Nov. 19, WHHS welcomed Sabrina Washington to the staff. She will be filling the role of front desk representative and office support.
Although Washington is new to WHHS, she is no stranger to high school life. She previously served as the school secretary at Rufus King High School in Milwaukee, Wis., where she handled enrollments as well as the traditional responsibilities of a school secretary. However, her experience in education dates back much further.
“I had a friend who started an agency and [its purpose] was to fill in for child care and daycare centers,” Washington said. “That was about 20 to 23 years ago; that was my initial step into education.”
Decades after that initial step, Washington applied for her current position at WHHS. Her first impression of WHHS came during her interview and immediately impacted her,
“I was excited just from visiting and seeing the school,” Washington said. “[I was impressed by] how huge and how impressive it was, that it looked like a college campus. The level of students that they allowed into the school was also exciting to me.”
Washington explains that while her role as the school secretary is similar to her previous position at Rufus King High School, the main difference is the larger student population.
“I guess the difference would be the enrollment,” Washington said. “Rufus King High School is also considered a large school in Wisconsin, but it doesn’t have as many students as we do here.”
So far, Washington has enjoyed her time on the job and is taking pleasure in growing into this new role.
“I love it here,” Washington said. “[Everybody’s] so welcoming and very helpful. I’m getting really into my role in understanding what it is [I am] expected to do. I’m learning where everyone is and I’m retaining everyone’s name a lot better.”
In a school with a total enrollment near 2,500, learning students’ names can be quite a tall task. However, Washington found a unique way to commit names to memory while carrying out an important part of her job.
“[The Yondr pouch system] helped me learn a lot of the students’ names,” Washington said. “I’ve met a lot of the students by collecting their phones in the morning when they forgot their pouch.”
Yondr pouch collection in the morning is one of the various tasks that Washington performs throughout the day.
“I open the phone lines for the day; there are tons of calls daily,” Washington said. “I also assist the 504 coordinator, Ms. Melissa Bohmer, [and] I complete the work she delegates to me throughout the day. Then, at the end of the day, I help distribute the phones back to students.”
While Washington’s schedule includes some routine, much of her daily duties require her to deal with spur-of-the-moment dilemmas that arise throughout the school day.
“Unexpected things come up throughout the day,” Washington said. “Just now I got a call that there was a spill in the 1600s hallway and I had to go find someone to clean it up. There are lots of things [that] pop up like that every day, so you’ve got to be able to react very quickly.”
Overall, Washington has enjoyed being able to learn more about WHHS and the city it’s home to, and she hopes to further her knowledge throughout the remainder of her time here.
“My sister-in-law took me downtown to see the bridge and all of the lights at night and it was so beautiful,” Washington said. “I’ve really started to discover all of the fantastic things [that] I have yet to experience in the city. It’s a lot bigger than the city that I just moved from, so I’m really excited to learn all about it.”