Even a brief meeting with Portage resident Shaunna Finley is enough to ascertain that she glows with energy and passion for helping others, being a leader and educating students.
Finley has found a position that combines all of those loves as the new principal of New Vistas High School in Portage. Transitioning from her post as a business teacher to her new role as principal was a natural fit when the job opened up.
“The transition has been easy,” Finley said. “Number one, because I already have established relationships with all of the students. With our population being so small, we served 136 students last year and we’re going to service 175 next year, you have the opportunity to get to know all of the students and probably teach all of them at some point.”
New Vistas High School is a free, public high school that is open to any high school student who is an Indiana resident. It offers students an alternative route to a high school diploma.
“We’re able to help any student,” Finley said. “If you want a small classroom learning environment, we can help with that. If you have dropped out of high school and you realize that you really need a high school diploma or if you’ve had some issues with expulsions, we’re able to provide some help with that. Even though you’ve had a past, we still have to move forward and focus on the future.”
Finley wasted no time in making improvements to New Vistas High School after taking over earlier this summer. She has already added a lunch program, hired teachers certified to instruct A.P. Environmental Science and A.P. Calculus and incorporated Accelerated Reader into the curriculum.
“Adding the lunch program has been the biggest component,” she said. “Last year, we had an open campus lunch and it just didn’t work for what we were trying to accomplish with our students. The biggest change and transition is going to be having breakfast and lunch on campus for next school year.”
Although she has already accomplished a lot in a short period of time, Finley is powering forward with several goals in mind for her first school year as principal.
“I want to get our students focused on their careers,” she said. “You have to start thinking about life after the high school diploma. One of the things that I’d like to do is build a career component into our curriculum.”
Finley listed seeing an improvement in students’ End of Course Assessment scores and students actively pursuing community service opportunities as other goals for the 2013-2014 school year.
Finley is no stranger to helping people through difficult times in their lives. After graduating from Purdue University with a bachelor’s in sociology and psychology, her first job was working as a case manager at the Department of Children and Family Services in Chicago. While there, her duties included taking children from their parents, putting them in foster homes and going to the hospital to pick up babies with HIV. As a young adult in her early 20s, Finley had to bury a 17-year-old on her caseload who was shot on a street corner selling drugs.
“That was the most stressful job I have ever had in my entire life,” Finley said. “I started to second guess whether or not I was in the right profession.”
From there, she began working at a homeless shelter in Chicago before finding a job at a company that is now called Northwest Indiana Community Action Corp as a case manager.
Despite the stress and emotional strain that came with her job at the Department of Children and Family Services, it helped her develop her love for helping children. She returned to those roots when she was hired by EdisonLearning, the organization that recently assisted in the takeover of Roosevelt High School in Gary. Finley managed tutoring programs in eight states and traveled all over the country doing what she loved.
“I knew I wanted to work with kids, so I was happy again,” she said. “Then, life happened and the recession hit. I had to make some tough decisions, so I ended up staying home after they started to make some cuts.”
The next stop on Finley’s journey was a two-year stint at Center Workforce Innovation before she once again returned to education by taking a job at K12, which is an online curriculum.
Finley ended up coming back home again and found her peace at School City of East Chicago, where she oversaw the Career Technical Education and Adult Basic Education programs. Her former principal, D.J. Knotts, was hired as the first principal of New Vistas and brought the Portage resident with him.
Outside of the school building, Finley can often be found spending time with her husband James and her three sons. She is a sports fanatic and her family’s dinner table discussion often circles around sports-related debates. She also juggles classes of her own as she is working toward a Ph.D in education from Indiana State University.
Faith also plays an important role in Finley’s life.
“I’m a Christian before I’m anything,” she said. “My family and I are members of Real Life Community Church and we love it. I really believe in my heart that God has taken me in all those directions on those paths to get me where I am. Every one of these kids that comes my way, I can honestly say, I know someone that can help you. It’s not that I’m just a teacher; I have an abundance of tools and resources in my box that I could pull out to help these kids. That’s why this is a natural fit for me.”