Niu Valley’s Mew Is Top ‘10 Principal
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Niu Valley Middle School’s Justin Mew is 2010 Hawaii Middle School Principal of the Year, as announced by the MetLife/National Association of Secondary School Principals and honored last month with other outstanding colleagues.
Mew, who has headed the East Oahu school since February 2006, was stunned. “Initially, it was a reaction of disbelief,” he recalled of the Hale Koa Hotel awards ceremony. “I said a prayer of thanks to all who have touched my life. My peers in the public and private sectors deemed our work as worthy of recognition.”
He had to meet criteria of personal excellence, collaborative leadership, curriculum, instruction and assessment and more, and it’s clear that he did. Within four years of his arrival, Niu Valley became the first middle school in Hawaii authorized to offer the accelerated International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme. It offers a framework of academic challenge for students to embrace and understand the connections between traditional subjects and the real world and to become critical and reflective thinkers.
The number of students in co-curricular and extracurricular activities also increased, as did the number of faculty trained and certified by the International Baccalaureate.
“My personal mission is for students and their families to feel proud about Niu Valley Middle and themselves, and not embarrassed about learning in a public school,” Mew stated.
Mew has three degrees in education from UH Manoa, including two master’s - in educational administration and curriculum and instruction. And he has high ambitions for the next school year in terms of meeting baccalaureate standards. It also is his goal to determine how his students measure up against the world.
In October, Mew will go to Washington, D.C., to be recognized with other state principals of the year, before participating in the February 2011 NASSP convention in San Francisco.
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