Mr. Andrew Kibler, the third person to assume the captain’s chair at Tuscarora High School, was borne in Wilmington Delaware, though his closest connection to a place he calls home is North Tonawanda New York. When most people are asked a very basic question such as ‘where are you from’ the answer is as easy as the time of day, but this is not so for Mr. Kibler. After a long pause, he explained that the reason for the difficulty finding the answer is because he was moved around a lot as a child. In fact, by the time he landed at North Tonawanda High school as a freshman, Mr. Kibler had already attended fourteen different schools in several different states. Mr. Kibler goes on to explain that as a child he grew up in extreme poverty and he was in a very transient situation due to this fact.

Mr. Kibler called many places home. He admits that, at one point, his ‘home’ was in the back of a van as his family was enduring a period of homelessness. When asked what effect this had on him, Mr. Kibler relates in an unflinching manner that his struggles growing up helped him to become the man he is today. “I learned adaptability, I learned to be focused and I learned how to survive” he says. By the time he was a freshman, he had moved in with his grandparents in North Tonawanda NY. This was his first real experience with stability and it couldn’t have come at a better time, or in a better place. “Tonawanda was a blue collar working class community, they were passionate about their town and the school was the anchor of our community”. It was in this school where Mr. Kibler was inspired to go into education. His teachers and his athletics coaches saw potential in him and they pushed him to realize that potential. “They kept me on the right track” he says.

As early as 9^th or 10^th grade Mr. Kibler had already made up his mind to become a teacher. “They didn’t have a job, they had a calling and they were passionate about the work they did, I wanted to feel that, I wanted to be a part of it”. Upon graduation from high school, Mr. Kibler attended Canisius College where he double majored in education and history. His early professional work in the field of education was primarily as a substitute teacher and as a coordinator for an evening high school program he himself created that served students with disciplinary issues. During this time, he would spend his days subbing and his evenings working with at-risk students.

In 1998 Mr. Kibler moved to Maryland and took a job in PG County. In 2000, He moved to Howard County to work at River Hill. It was during this timeframe that he earned his Master’s Degree in Administration from McDaniel College. Mr. Kibler explains that his goal early on was to become an administrator. “My life is all about goal setting and I break things into 3, 5, and 10 year plans. Becoming a Principal was a ten year plan when I was in my early twenties.” While he may have missed the mark of becoming a head principal by the time he turned thirty, he was well on his way when he took a job as an assistant principal at Thomas Johnson high in the fall of 2005. Mr. Kibler moved from TJ to Frederick High in 2013 and then to THS in the fall of 2014. In January of 2015, Mr. Kibler assumed the role of head principal. When asked what his goals are for our school he is quick to answer “I want Tuscarora to be a Blue Ribbon award winning school and I want to see us build our THS family and community, I want Tuscarora to be more than a school, I want it to be home.”

Mr. Kibler goes on to explain that one of the things that struck him immediately upon arriving in Titan country, was our school spirit. He was ‘blown away’ by our student section and felt an immediate connection to our school through our strong showing of support at our football games. Another thing that struck Mr. Kibler, though not in such a positive way, was the number of Ds and Fs in our building and what he describes as a lack of urgency by both students and staff to change that situation. “When I look at those numbers, I don’t see numbers, these aren’t data points to me, these are people, these are young people who don’t understand that those Ds and Fs, every one of them, is shutting doors of opportunity.”

In an average week, the job of head principal in a school our size is roughly a 60+ hour commitment; though Mr. Kibler admits that he is basically on call 24/7. If something were to happen in the middle of the night, it is an expectation that the principal will be on site to deal with things and so his commitment to our school and community is incredibly time consuming. When he is not at work, however, Mr. Kibler enjoys reading current events and admits to having a huge interest in politics. He also believes strongly in a mind/body connection and so he enjoys exercise but he also enjoys physical activities that are more spiritual in nature than simply going to a gym; kayaking, trail running, hiking are just a few examples of the types of things he enjoys in his spare moments.

In closing, we asked Mr. Kibler to impart some wisdoms based on his own personal experiences to which he responded “We live in a remarkable nation; we have the freedom to dream and we have the ability to follow those dreams. Opportunities are endless and it doesn’t matter where you came from because you yourself can choose where you end up. So set your dreams, and then go make them into a reality.”