GREELEY, Colo.—Bryan Wright could have stayed in law enforcement.
The size of most NFL tackles, Wright’s outward presence can be a bit intimidating at first glance. It wasn’t that his beat along North 25th Street in Milwaukee was boring. He drove past Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment every day during the same time Dahmer was raping and murdering young men.
“It’s hard to believe I never knew what was going on in that apartment,” he said about the one year he spent on the Milwaukee police force in the 1980s.
But something didn’t feel right.
“I got tired of arresting students after they made the crime,” he said. “I wanted to get to them before. I was on the wrong side of the ledger.”
So, for more than two decades, Wright has been living that dream in middle and high schools from Colorado to Wisconsin. He’s known as a “clean-up” man. He’s usually hired by a district to clean up schools that are having problems.
He’ll spend a couple years at the school, turns things around and then move on to the next “challenge.” He does it because he believes all children deserve a shot at success, regardless of their background.
His three-year tenure as principal at Greeley West High School has been a bit different, however. He’s not ready to leave. But not because the school needs help. In fact, he said when he first came here, there were rumors about gang problems, but they were rumors he quickly laughed off when he got to know the kids.
“There were no gangs,” he said. “People were afraid the school was out of control. I don’t think it was out of control at all. (The previous principal) left with a fine foundation in place. We just refined some things.”
A look around his office at the school is testament to what students mean to him.
The autographed picture of Wright with recent West graduate and Boettcher Scholarship winner Heidi Hurst stands near his picture with West Class 5A state golf champion David Oraee. They both sit alongside a framed story a newspaper in Milwaukee did on Wright when he was in his first year of teaching at a local school.
“He’s a loud teacher,” the story quotes the school’s principal as saying. “He’s a large presence in the classroom.”
The story, then, was similar to what it is now—not his physical size, but the size of his heart.
“He is a kid-first kind of person,” said Ranelle Lang, superintendent of Greeley-Evans School District 6. “He really connects with the kids. He is an advocate for kids. And the kids know that about him. They know he is on their side and that he wants them to be successful.”
Lang was deputy superintendent in the district and on the interview team when District 6 hired Wright.
“He could use (his size) to intimidate people but he chooses not to,” she said. “He makes a difference in student learning.”
Wright’s learning style has always been about whatever he needs to do to motivate a student. He made the Milwaukee paper because he promised a student that if he got an A on a history test, he would stand on his desk and sing, “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.”
Needless to say, Wright put his vocal cords to work.
A “Heroes” program designed to get high school students into elementary classrooms and be role models for younger students has sparked several other programs at West, such as No Place for Hate and Advancement Via Individual Achievement. All the programs focus on fighting hate and being leaders in the community.
“Our elementary school kids need someone they can see, touch and talk to, to be their heroes,” Wright said. “They don’t need Charles Barkley. Anything we can do to make our kids heroes in the community we’re going to continue to do. I want them to be leaders. If you don’t teach them now, when are they going to learn to give back.”
Earlier this year, Centennial BOCES, a cooperative education service, honored Wright as “Outstanding Educator” for District 6. But he doesn’t see it as anything special he did. He gives all the credit to his teachers, support staff and students at the school.
“It’s just one more award this building has,” he said. “In three years, we’ve also had teacher of the year, custodian of the year and business partner of the year. I have been fortunate to work with excellent professionals. That makes my job easy. I can’t do it if I don’t have staff members who are willing to buy into the program.”
For the more than 20 years Wright has been in education, he has seen it all. He’s had students die in gang shootings. He’s had shootings on school campuses. He’s had students sentenced to prison.
As he prepares to start his fourth year at West, Wright has no intention of leaving any time soon.
“Any place you can go where a guy who grew up in inner-city Chicago can win an FFA award and have no idea what agriculture even is, is the place to be,” he said with his trademark barrel laugh about an award he received last year for his support of the club. “Only in America, baby. Only in America. This year they made me a member. I’m hot right now. What are they going to do next year?”
He said he’s sticking around Greeley because it’s a district he can buy into.
“When I was being interviewed for this job, I asked Dr. Lang, ‘Why do you want to hire an African-American man to be a principal in a district that’s only 3 percent African-Americans?’ … he recalled. “She told me she wanted change. And she’s kept her word. Every change we’ve made has been with the students in mind. I work for people, not places. The people here have the right heart, which makes me want to stay longer.”
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Information from: Greeley Daily Tribune,
