Get to Know Your District: Meet Principal Gary McAdam

Gary McAdam is Principal of Concord High School in Mt. Diablo Unified School District. He kindly took the time to tell us about himself and his work.

Briefly describe to us your job and responsibilities as a Principal of Concord High School: My core responsibility is to provide leadership for Concord High, ensuring that teachers, coaches, and staff have the necessary equipment, training, and shared approach to serve our students. My day to day responsibilities include: organizing extra-curricular programs, ensuring the maintenance of a safe environment for teaching and learning, ensuring that our educational offerings and measurements of success are consistent with district and state standards, and supervising and evaluating the work of teachers, staff, and coaches.

What inspired you to enter into this profession? I was inspired to enter this profession because of my belief that strong leadership and teamwork can create an environment safe for and conducive to learning. Every student deserves this and it is what I work to provide.

What is your professional goal? My goal this year is to implement, with Concord High’s teachers, coaches, and staff, the concept of Professional Learning Communities. With this approach, teachers work together to develop innovative and shared methods of assessment to see if our students are learning what they need to. Through this collaboration, the high school community learns more about various ways to present information to ensure that all of our students have the opportunity to learn in a format that makes sense for them and to be engaged in classrooms every day.

What do you like best about your job? The best part of my job is the teamwork among administration, teachers, coaches, staff, and students that can make learning and the high school experience so fun and defining.

If you could change anything about your job/services you provide, what would it be? I wish that as a high school principal I had the power to ensure that our school and schools throughout California are properly funded by the state. Unfortunately, because this is not the case, my goal is to use the resources we have to maximize opportunities for our students at Concord High.