Assistant Principal enjoys new role

By Brooke Stevenson
brooke@seymourherald.com
After the first two weeks at his new position at Seymour Middle School, Assistant Principal David Loy has no complaints.
Loy recently made the switch from teaching to administration, and said he has no regrets.
“Absolutely, 120 percent, I have no regrets,” he said. “I think that beyond a shadow of a doubt that I made the right decision.
“I’m very excited to be here.”
This is Loy’s sixteenth year with the Sevier County School System. He has taught fifth, sixth and seventh grade at Sevierville Intermediate before transferring to Northview Middle School where he also coached basketball and football.
“I decided to try my luck with administration and it has been going really well so far,” he said. “This is a really great school and I felt very welcomed by all the faculty and staff here. “
Loy’s job is split up into two different parts, half of the time he is an instructional coach and the other half of the time he is assistant principal.
With the new Race to the Top funds that Sevier County received, every school in the county must have a dedicated instructional coach for three and a half hours a day.
“Basically what (the instructional coach) job entails is that I analyze data and help the teachers to be able to use the results of the data we get to make instructional decisions,” he said.
He added that he has been learning new things every day.
“It is really different on this side of the fence,” he said. “All of my responsibilities are totally different than what I had in the classroom.”
“It has taken a little bit of adjustment, but everything I have to say about the job is positive.”
Loy’s wife, Gina, a medical social worker for Covenant Home Health, made an insightful observation after his first week of class.
“She said, ‘You know, you have not complained about anything at all,” Loy said. “I thought about it and she was right, which means it must be going pretty well.
Loy and his wife have two children, Andy, 11, and Emma, 10, who both attend school in Jefferson County where the family lives, but Loy would like to see his children attend school in Seymour in the near future.
“The community is so tight knit out here in Seymour,” he said. “I think that once you’re a Seymour Eagle it is a lifetime commitment, which is a good thing.”