Unlike students and teachers, the new principal of the county's largest high school isn't getting a long summer break.
Since he moved up from assistant principal to the top job at Old Mill High School last month, Arlen Liverman, 45, said he has been designing a new in-school suspension program, planning how to ease ninth-graders' transition to high school and brainstorming ways to encourage staff and students to take educational risks.
In an office plastered with nature posters, Liverman said he is more comfortable sitting around the coffee table in his office than behind his imposing desk.
A self-described "firm, fair and consistent" disciplinarian who is working on being more patient, he said he has created a relaxing office atmosphere for himself, and for anxious students and parents who come in to see him.
Sought challenge
Craving new challenges after teaching for 17 years at Glen Burnie High School, Liverman served as an administrative intern at Northeast High School for two years before becoming assistant principal at Old Mill in 1995.
As principal, he wants to improve classroom instruction, focus on student safety, prepare students better for life after graduation, improve test scores and attendance and reduce the dropout rate.
Liverman talked about his "combination for success: caring, nurturing, and having high expectations."
"If we want to raise the expectations of students, we have to raise expectations of faculty as well," he said. "Teachers are a lifeline, as far as I'm concerned."
Young people are faced with more information than ever before, with access to technological learning tools, he said.
However, they also are vulnerable to new dangers, including exposure to violence, pornography on the Internet, foul language on television and drugs.
"Society has relaxed its position on some of these issues," Liverman said.
"When I grew up, it was just my community, and that was it. Families took care of families. Now, a young person's world is not restricted to the neighbors down the street."
Education 'a way out'
Liverman said his mother single-handedly raised him and seven siblings in rural North Carolina while juggling domestic jobs to feed them.
She emphasized that "education is a way out," he said, and he and his brothers and sisters have college degrees.
Along the way, Liverman, who considers himself "a pretty good student," learned the hard way that having ability is not the same as using it.
While he was 15 and in high school, he and a friend were suspended for going to a mom-and-pop store to buy Fireballs at lunchtime.
It wasn't the suspension that "cut deeply into my heart," he said, as much as it was his friend's report that the principal had told him, "Don't hang around with Liverman; he's not going to amount to anything."
English teacher's wisdom
Liverman said that an English teacher's comment -- "The world is not going to recognize you by your potential, but by what you produce" -- turned his life around.
"We as adults must always be careful about what we say, because we never know what young people will remember," he said. "And kids do remember."
Liverman and his wife Helen have a son, Arlen, 5.
He said he hopes that someday someone will do for Arlen what he does for students.
"I treat every kid as if he or she were my own," he said.
Parent impressed
Diane Osborne was impressed with how the principal dealt with her when she telephoned and met with him about her son's health problems at school.
"He was very reassuring that matters would be taken care of," Osborne said. "I felt very comfortable when I went in there.
"He leaves me with a feeling of optimism that good things will be coming out of the school."
Pub Date: 7/24/97
