The past few years have been filled with changes in the administration staff, particularly the changing of the principal. Barely noticed, Ethan Dolleman has quietly stepped into the role of vice principal, eager to get to know and help people.

“I’m really looking forward to learning about everything,” Dolleman said. “I’m looking forward to meeting people and learning what people are interested in.”

Right now, Dolleman’s goal is to acquaint himself with students and faculty members.

“I think it’s easy to get to know people in this size of a school,” Dolleman said. “It’s not so large that there are a lot of anonymous faces that you see, and I think the community is an amazing community that really supports education.”

The WHS community was a large draw to Dolleman. He had originally planned on getting a master’s degree in order to keep teaching, but as he learned more of the position, he realized that he was really interested in it.

“It was one of those things when you look on job postings, and you see the schools that are offering positions, you get excited about the possibility,” Dolleman said. “That certainly was the way that it was with Wayland.”

Dolleman has previous experience as a high school and middle school history teacher, which he hopes now to use to help teachers.

“I think the perspective of a teacher is that certainly you’re interested in making things run smoothly for classes,” Dolleman said. “The biggest thing is that teachers need to have time to learn how to be able to teach, to have time to be able to prepare, and they’re not overloaded with lots of things that are going to take away from how much effort they’re putting into their students.”

While Dolleman wants to adjust to WHS, he is helping with some of the small changes happening with faculty members, such as streamlining communication by making it more electronic and cutting down on meetings to save time.

Dolleman’s also assisting in launching a new professional development for teachers with the goal of helping deal with state and district policies.

“For students, I know I haven’t gotten a chance to get out and talk to students much, which is something that I really look forward to doing and hearing what they think needs to be changed,” Dolleman said.

Dolleman just plans on hearing what students think needs to be changed around school, if anything.

“Certainly I didn’t come in with an agenda about the ways that students’ lives should be run, or anything like that,” Dolleman said. “I really just kind of hear from people and work within that, so I don’t think there’s any reason to make changes for change’s sake.”