After a long career as a teacher and principal, Patricia Conant had spent a couple years in retirement before she took the position of guidance counselor at Scarborough High School three years ago. With the school’s principal, Andrew Dolloff, promoted to assistant superintendent, Conant, 55, was hired this summer as his replacement. She sat for an interview with the Current just as school was about to start for the year:

What are your plans for the first day of school?

Conant: I think that the most important thing for the staff and I to do is to provide clear and positive instruction for the students – both where to go and what the goals for the year will be, so they will be excited and engaged from day one.

What are your hopes for the freshmen on their first day?

Conant: To let them know that those older kids are the same ones they knew as seventh- and eighth-graders, and that though the facility is large, the teachers make it feel like a small community.

What are your goals for the year?

Conant: To continue to foster the wonderful enthusiasm I’ve seen here for the past three years.

Any jitters about moving from the guidance office to the principal’s office?

Conant: No, I’ve been a principal for a dozen years or so and have been in this building for three. I already have relationships with the staff since I once shared with them as peers.

What is something you like about Scarborough High School?

Conant: The incredible and engaging personality of the kids. They’re all over the map as individuals, but they all have respect in common. They do such a good job of being respectful of each other.

What is something unique to you that you’ll bring to Scarborough High School as principal?

Conant: To have students see this office as another resource, someplace they can seek out rather than just an office to be sent to.

What is a difference between Scarborough and the other schools you’ve worked in?

Conant: The size. It’s much bigger, both the number of people and the building, but the building is really divided into smaller areas.

Why do you enjoy being a principal?

Conant: I love providing opportunities for students to identify and take advantage of.

Why did you come out of retirement and return to working in a school?

Conant: I just really missed the opportunity to work with kids. My energy and focus when I get out of bed in the morning is the chance to have a positive impact on kids. That’s why working in guidance was great. Now I have a bigger opportunity to do that from the principal’s chair.