EAST WENATCHEE — Eastmont High School students and parents aren’t happy with Principal Lance Noell right now. He says it’s a great compliment.
“I think a lot of times sitting in these jobs, you can make a lot of enemies,” a teary-eyed Noell said. “People may not always like your decisions or when you hold people accountable, but overwhelmingly, it’s been ‘we’re not happy you’re leaving.’ That’s amazing.”
The longtime educator will step down as principal at the end of the school year to return to teaching. He’s set to lead and improve the alternative Eastmont Opportunities Program, possibly for the next eight to ten years, he thinks.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time. I love it. But, it’s time,” he said about stepping down.
To finish his career in a classroom has always been the plan for Noell, who first began as a business teacher at EHS in 1996. It was his journey to becoming principal that wasn’t planned at all.
Noell’s own educational experience was, as he described it, “fine.” His GPA “wasn’t great.” He was an “average” athlete. School was just “eh.”
He wasn’t sure what he wanted to study when he went to college, but he eventually landed on business. While in college, he became a counselor at a church summer camp, and he remembered telling his future mother-in-law about how much he enjoyed the work. It would be the first time someone encouraged him to pursue teaching.
“I’m like, ‘no, if you knew me as a student, that’s not a good thing, you know, what can I teach?’” he told her. “I was never great at any subject or whatever. And she said, ‘well, you you’re looking at business. Why don’t you be a business teacher?’”
And a business teacher he was, until Eastmont leadership saw other things for him.
Noell had all the credentials for an administrator role. He earned a master’s degree with an emphasis in leadership, did his principal credentials, and filled in for administrators while they were out. Before Noell entered his current role, he first became an assistant principal in 2007, after being tapped for the role by then-principal Mark Marney.
“Mr. Marney came by and said, ‘hey, we’re posting a new assistant principal at the high school,’” Noell recalled. “I remember telling him, ‘hey, good for you.’ And that’s when he said, ‘well, no, you’re applying for that job.”
After six years as an assistant principal, he’d have a similar experience with former Superintendent Garn Christensen after Marney was appointed to the district level. Christensen asked Noell personally if he’d like to be the principal at Eastmont, which “completely shocked” him.
“I’d never applied for a principal job or even asked about a principal job,” Noell said. “And so there I was.”
Noell has been the principal of EHS since 2013. It was quite a transition, he said, noting that he had to learn a lot and worked way too much when he first started. He recalled a time when Christensen spoke with his wife, which led to him being “chewed out” for not being home enough.
“The transition, I think, was easier because I knew the building, but yet harder because I knew everyone so well,” he said. “I didn’t want to fail, you know?”
Initially, Noell worried that becoming an administrator would make him lose contact with students, who were the whole reason he became an educator in first place. It would actually be the opposite for him, as he says his greatest accomplishments are the relationships he’s made along the way.
“It’s always those conversations I have every day, everywhere I go that our parents, grandparents, ex-students, current students, younger students coming up and they talk to me and tell me their stories,” he said. “And it’s cool. It’s really cool. And I think the human accomplishments would be by far the number one.”
The sense of community at Eastmont is what Noell thinks makes the next EHS principal a “lucky” person.
“If you’re coming here, I’d say you’re fortunate,” Noell said when asked what advice he has for the next principal. “However, if you’re coming here, I hope you care about the people first.
“The logistical stuff, yeah, you’ve got to deal with. You’ve got to deal with the graduation requirements, the credits, the discipline, you know, all those things. But you need to form relationships. That’s what makes Eastmont special.”
