Skip to content
EdNC. Essential education news. Important stories. Your voice.

Search ednc.org

Join us on a virtual tour of the school led by the new principal of the year

Share this story

Our republishing policy

EdNC is a nonprofit, online, daily, independent newspaper. All of EdNC’s content is open source and free to republish. Please use the following guidelines when republishing our content.
  • Our content must be republished in full. If your organization uses a paywall, the content must be provided in full for free.
  • Credit our team by including both the author name and EdNC.org in the byline. Example: Alex Granados, EdNC.org.
  • If republishing the story online, please provide a link to EdNC.org or a link to the original article in either the byline or credit line.
  • The original headline of the article must be used. Allowable edits to the content of the piece include changes to meet your publication’s style guide and references to dates (i.e. this week changed to last week). Other edits must be approved by emailing Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected].
  • Photos and other multimedia elements (audio, video, etc.) may not be republished without prior permission. Please email Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected] if you are interested in sharing a multimedia element.
  • If you republish a story, please let us know by emailing Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected].

Please email Hannah Vinueza McClellan at [email protected] if you have any questions. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Canonical tag

Please include the following canonical tag in the <head> of the republished story.

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.ednc.org/virtual-tour-school-led-by-principal-of-the-year/">

HTML content

This includes the title, byline, content, and tracking pixel required for republishing this story.

This story is tagged:
Caroline Parker/EducationNC

Welcome to Greene Central High School in Snow Hill. This is the school led by the 2022 Wells Fargo Principal of the Year Patrick Greene.

Mebane Rash/EducationNC

Meet Principal Greene. Here he is in a classroom observing a teacher.

Mebane Rash/EducationNC

He had just earned his Ph.D., and there were congratulations signs all over the school. Everyone in the building was really proud of him.

Mebane Rash/EducationNC

The first thing you notice as you walk in the school is the art. It is everywhere — including the ceiling — and it is amazing. EdNC’s Caroline Parker deemed this school the holy grail of ceiling tiles.

Caroline Parker/EducationNC

Blending the standards about mosaics, and teaching about the use of modern day pixel, the Rubik’s cube project is popular every year in art class. “Honestly [the Rubik’s cube project], it’s success for them. That’s the biggest thing for me, is that they’re able to get a problem that they don’t know what to do and within a very short amount of time have huge success,” said Ashley Shiosaky, art teacher, in her interview with EdNC.

The horticulture class holds community plant sales throughout the year and nets over $20,000 from sales. The sale and greenhouse is student-run with instructor Henry Pasour, a twice-retired educator.

Students learn to build arcade games from scratch.

David Ginn, the automotive instructor, wears the shirt pictured every day to school and approaches every interaction with love, peace, hope, and joy. His campaign has grown throughout the district. “My idea behind it is just, you know, we don’t have to all agree, but if we can at least agree on these four things and engage, have a conversation with these four things in our head when we try to talk, we’re going to have better outcomes,” he said. 

Caroline Parker/EducationNC

Greene Central High School is an N.C. STEM School of Distinction.

It’s a school where STEM stands for strategies that engage minds.

Learn more about all things STEM at Greene Central here.

It is such a cool place there are even rabbits and pigs.

Greene told EdNC’s Liz Bell the school is seeing the results of removing the traditional curriculum restrictions and creating a place where students are genuinely interested in school activities.

“The old model of school doesn’t necessarily fit with where we’re going,” Greene said. 

Congrats Principal Greene!

You can follow him on Twitter @DrPatrickGreene.