Torrence Rothmiller is one of seven winners of the 2024 Lindback Award for Principal Leadership.
This homegrown West Philly educator never imagined leading a school. Now he is one of the city’s best principals.
He quickly found out something surprising about himself — the stopgap teaching position he got immediately after graduating from Temple University was actually his dream.“I started to fall in love with teaching, seeing the light go off with children, building relationships with them,” Rothmiller said. After a time working days in the classroom and nights at the studio, he quit the radio gig and never looked back.
McMichael was a great fit, and eventually, Rothmiller’s principal told him he’d be a good fit for a principal’s position himself. Rothmiller kept saying no, and Brian Wallace — now principal at Meredith Elementary, then at McMichael — kept asking why not. When Rothmiller decided to make the leap to become a principal, he went through two rounds of rejection. But early in the pandemic, an email popped up: He was in. He interviewed for several schools, including Andrew Hamilton, at 56th and Spruce, close to where he spent a lot of time as a child, visiting his grandmother at 59th and Irving.Becoming a principal in a pandemic was a challenge, to say the least. The school had been without a permanent principal for more than a year.
Progress was slow, but steady, and Rothmiller’s staff knows he won’t ask them to do anything he’s not willing to do himself.
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