“If you asked me five years before I went to the Peace Corps if I was going to go live in a foreign country, I would have told you that you were crazy,” Coppell ISD coordinator of student services Marcy Walters said. “If you asked me five years ago, if I was going to come here and be a principal of an alternative school, I would have told you that you were crazy.”
On March 26, the CISD Board of Trustees approved Marcy Walters as the new Victory Place @ Coppell principal beginning in the 2024-25 school year. Walters replaces Cindi Osborne, who is retiring.
“From the first day that I came here, I just knew that it was different,” Walters said. “It feels different, the culture is different.When I heard that Osborne was retiring, I couldn’t help but picture myself here.”
Walters will transition from her current position as the CISD coordinator of student and staff services where she works to provide aid to students and families within the district who may not have all the materials they need to succeed in an academic setting.
“One of the strengths that I have seen with Walters is her ability to build relationships with the students and the families that she supports,” CISD assistant superintendent for administrative services Kristen Eichel said. “She is always looking for the root cause of what’s going on to be able to provide support to students so that they can make better choices or the best choices moving forward.”
Eichel credits Walters’s success, in part, to her bilingual proficiency in both English and Spanish.
While she studied Spanish during her childhood in Pennsylvania, Walters was able to effectively apply her skillset after moving to Texas to study at the University of North Texas where she worked as a bilingual teacher in nearby schools.
“My Spanish was always good, but not great because I’m a second language learner,” Walters said.
Even with her vast experience and fluency, Walters was not able to earn her bilingual certification, so she started to search for ways to improve her Spanish.
“It took me about two years of praying and searching, and I ended up going to the Peace Corps,” Walters said.
From a connection made through her college roommate, Heidi Hughes, Walters joined the Peace Corps and spent 27 months in Nicaragua where she worked as an Environmental Education Promoter to teach a hands-on learning model in schools.
During her time there, Walters ended up working with the Ministry of Education to train all the teachers in her area.
“That’s when I realized when I came back to the United States that I might want to pursue a degree in administration so that I could have more of a leadership role, and maybe impact change at a greater level,” Walters said.
Upon returning to the United States, Walters attended the University of Texas at Austin where she pursued a degree in education administration.
Prior to accepting her current position in October 2023, Walters worked as an assistant principal in various school districts as well as a principal in Ginnings Elementary School in Denton ISD.
Walters looks to use her past experiences and the foundation set forth by Osborne to guide her as she steps into the new role.
“I want to make sure that I continue the positive pieces that are already happening here,” Walters said. “There is more to do and to grow and I don’t know exactly what it is yet, but I feel like when I get here and I’m in the seat, I will know.”
One concept Walters hopes to implement is a mentorship program which will introduce students to the various careers and opportunities available. This could entail college mentors, career-based opportunities or classes teaching an entrepreneurial mindset.
Victory Place @ Coppell and Pinkerton Elementary School assistant principal Juli Springer think Walters’s plans for the school will help the students to progress in the right direction as they graduate from high school.
“The more people that we can get involved in our students’ lives and the more options that we show them that are available out there, the more successful they end up being,” Springer said.
Through her time, Walters hopes to build lasting connections and serve as a positive influence in her students’ lives.
“I see the kids here and maybe they’re not following a traditional high school path or maybe they’ve had some hiccups along the way, but that does not mean they’re not going to be amazing adults, and I think that they deserve somebody here who honestly believes that for them,” Walters said.
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