Dartmouth High is a big part of Ryan Shea's past. Now, he's leading DHS into the future.

DARTMOUTH — "There was something Coach (Carlin) Lynch, who was my coach, always said when someone would ask him who he thought his best players were," said former Dartmouth High School student, longtime teacher and current Assistant Principal Michael Martin. "He'd say, I can't tell you that now. Let's see what type of fathers, what type of husbands, employees and bosses they are first."

Martin — who joined the Dartmouth High staff in 1994 and went on to become a football coach there himself — has been getting to see that trajectory play out through a unique dynamic, as one of his own former student-athletes, Ryan Shea, takes the helm as principal of the school.

For Shea, Dartmouth is steeped in memory

"I was actually the student rep to the School Committee when this building was going through the approval process," said Shea, who graduated Dartmouth High in 2001 before the current building opened in 2003. "It is kind of a trip."

The short walk from the school's entrance to his office is full of reminders to Shea of the shoes he's filling.

"You see Don King over there — he was my principal," Shea said, motioning toward a lone gold plaque across the lobby before turning his gaze up to a row of portraits above the school's main office. "I see the pictures of all the former principals hanging up there and it's like, I know these people who have been stewards of this amazing town that I now have this big responsibility for.

"It's a lot, but at the same time, it's encouraging."

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The road back home

Shea, 40, is about to start his first school year as principal of his alma mater after serving as its assistant principal the previous year. Prior to reuniting with Dartmouth Public Schools, he graduated from UConn and started his education career in Connecticut before returning to Massachusetts to work at Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School as a special education teacher, where he also got on course to become a school administrator through a leadership program offered there.

"When my son was born in November of 2017, we were in the hospital ... and I saw there was a leadership position at Dighton-Rehoboth. So I said let me give it a try," Shea said. "I was assistant principal at the middle school there until March 2 of 2020 and then everything shuts down 11 days later. So that’s when I became principal of the middle school.

"Luckily I had an amazing support team there that really guided us through some turbulent waters."

Shea says while he'll always recall his time in Dighton-Rehoboth fondly, he couldn't resist a chance to "come home" to Dartmouth when the opportunity arose in time for last school year.

"I really wanted to be a part of this community, the community I know," Shea said, noting he currently resides in Mattapoisett with his wife Sarah — also from Dartmouth — and their four-year-old son, Clayton. Despite some time away, Shea says he'll always feel at home in Dartmouth, where he attended Gidley Elementary School, now the site of the town's police station; Dartmouth Middle School, current site of Quinn Elementary School; and the former Dartmouth High building, now home to the middle school. "I can talk about things like Apponagansett Beach vs. Round Hill, where the Freetown line is in Dartmouth.... So you know aspects of the community."

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Taking the lead

During his time as an assistant principal at Dartmouth High, one thing Shea focused on was trying to promote student participation in clubs and activities during a time when that was proving to be a challenge.

"This studio space is incredible, and our students have done a lot of the design of it," Shea said as he entered the high school's television studio where he filmed segments of "Shea Talk" to promote clubs and activities available at the school. "One of my big pushes is student involvement, and we were having a hard time getting numbers for these clubs especially coming out of COVID and people being settled into their habits and routines, so we did a TV show where I’d talk to kids who were involved in different activities and I’d just say, tell me about this; why is this important to you?"

Shea's time as assistant principal would be brief with the transition of former Principal Ross Thibault to Dartmouth Public Schools' central office as Director of Teaching and Learning for Secondary, opening up the principal position.

"There were lots of conversations with my wife about, is this something we want to do for our family?" Shea said. "I’m lucky that this year we got to experience what it was like to be here with me in the assistant principal role, but it was still a big decision."

Teaching them young

One factor that made the right choice apparent for the Sheas was their son, who Shea says has become enamored with Dartmouth High, and with whom the school community appears to be mutually charmed.

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"My son Clayton is one of the more well-known four-year-olds in the building. He goes to a lot of the sporting events, he goes to the National Honor Society volleyball game, he goes to a lot of the events and the kids just know him. He wears his Dartmouth clothes with pride," he said. "My wife understands how important it is to me to have them here, and I love that Clayton is exposed to so many things, whether it's our athletics, our plays, our art show....

"I mean, how many people get to see a five-time world champion band? That's an incredible sentence to say, and he gets to see them every Friday night."

Shea says he knows firsthand how impactful experiences like the ones his son enjoys in Dartmouth can be, his own father being Michael Shea, current GNB Voc-Tech School Committee member as well as former principal and superintendent. "I grew up at Voc. My dad was principal there forever so I have fond memories of that as a kid, and that's the kind of memories I want our staff kids to grow up with."

What's to come

As he prepares for the upcoming school year, Shea says he's excited to see what progress it will bring as schools move further out from the chaos that came with the onset, and later resurgence, of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I’d see emails from teachers at like two in the morning because they were trying to get a student to respond and they knew that student was up. That was important as an empathetic approach during that time but now we’re bringing that foundation back where our kids are not working at two in the morning and they understand the value of sleep, which we need as well," he said. Shea says the pandemic also acted as a boon to educators' tech savviness, spurring on a wave of Dartmouth teachers becoming Google-certified. "So I guess I’m excited about the new opportunities to go back to the way some things were, while also benefiting from the things we learned."

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As fall approaches, Shea says Dartmouth High staff have been meeting regularly over the summer during sessions dubbed "Tuesday Topics" to address areas in need of improvement and brainstorm new ideas. It was these sessions that brought about the change in cell phone policy that will have students depositing their phones in "cell hotels" at the start of each class in the coming school year — an idea that has garnered a lot of attention since plans were revealed in July.

"I’m not the smartest person at the table — together we are way smarter. So that’s why we have the staff in for these Tuesday conversations," Shea said. "I keep saying to everyone: we’re one Dartmouth. This isn’t Ryan’s vision, this is not the admin team’s vision, this is not even (Superintendent) Dr. Gifford’s vision — this is all of our vision. That’s how we’re trying to approach everything."

A working relationship

Shea says that while he doesn't expect any unearned confidence in his leadership, he plans on working hard to establish a healthy relationship between himself and the town's stakeholders while enjoying some of the benefit that comes with his deep Dartmouth roots.

"We're really excited about Ryan leading our building because he just bled green," said Martin. "In football, he wasn't the biggest or the fastest, but he worked hard and just wanted it; and with the leadership and dedication he showed on the field, those are the people you want to get into education."

"I feel fortunate that there is some intrinsic trust between the community and myself," Shea said. "I know I have to build that more, but it’s nice that there are some people who can say, well I haven’t seen enough yet to say anything about him as an administrator, but at least I know him as a person.

"If we know each other as persons, and we can all tell our stories, you’re going to be a lot more successful because we all are just people with a story."

This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: New Dartmouth High Principal Ryan Shea is a homegrown leader