ASHLEY TERRY
Santo J. Forte Junior High School’s Annie Pinion may have accepted a new job, but she won’t be straying too far from the Hornets’ nest.
Pinion — who served as the seventh-grade assistant principal at Forte for the last three years — has officially started her new role as principal of Silver Creek Elementary School.
“I knew that I was ready to move up into a principal job,” Pinion told The Azle News. “I love being AP, but I just wanted to make more of an impact. I wanted to be able to support a campus.”
While Pinion had initially applied for the principal position at Forte, she said she later started to feel a tug toward elementary — a feeling that became even more clear when another candidate was picked for the Forte role.
“I say all the time that I’m very grateful for that, because the person they hired there is perfect for that job. God really knows what he’s doing, and he had this perfectly planned,” she said. “I really wanted to go to elementary. I had applied for junior high because that’s where I was most comfortable with, but elementary, just the dynamics of it, is like a breath of fresh air … They’re still excited about education and they still want to be there. You can do fun things and do dress up days at the junior high — and they’re OK — but dress up days here (at Silver Creek) are fun and people participate.”
THE CALIFORNIA ‘REFUGE’
Before embracing the Texan way of life, Pinion grew up in a small town in California — jokingly describing herself as a “refugee” since most Texans don’t take too kindly to Californian folk.
During her time in California, Pinion went on to earn both her bachelor’s in liberal arts and her teaching certification from Pepperdine University before adding a master’s degree in educational administration from National University to her list of accomplishments. She then got married to her husband, Matt, and the duo moved to Lake Isabella — a small, rural mountain community in California.
Pinion spent the next 11 years teaching middle school math — that is, until the community started to feel a bit too unsafe for her family.
“We were just looking for a change of pace, just a different environment than where we were in California,” she said. “My mom, she was out there by herself at that point, and we needed to get her out. It just so happened that her cousin who lived in Nashville, just moved to Weatherford and my husband’s dad had a friend who just moved to Granbury. We checked it out and God was like, ‘Yup, here ya go.’ We ended up moving to Springtown and we’ve been here almost five years.”
After becoming an official Texan, Pinion began teaching at Hall Middle School in Weatherford, where she taught for a year before stepping into an assistant principal role. When the Hall Middle School principal left, Pinion began looking for something new — leading to her three-year role as assistant principal at Forte.
NEW BEGINNINGS
While Pinion’s official first day as Silver Creek principal was March 25, Pinion explained that she’s been visiting the campus since January to learn more about her responsibilities and to help ease her into the role — especially due to the upcoming campus realignment when all eight elementary campuses will expand to serve students in fifth grade.
“We’re pulling fifth grade in and we’re making lots of changes for next year, so they wanted me to be a part of that, which is an amazing opportunity,” Pinion said.
Since Principal Keri Dorris isn’t moving to Wichita Falls until next year, Pinion said she is currently serving as the incoming principal to meet the teachers and get a better feel for Silver Creek until she assumes the role full time.
“It’s truly an amazing campus,” Pinion said. “I've heard great things about it, and I knew that, but when you really see it, it's different. You can really feel how much these teachers care about their campus and this whole staff. Just the way that they've welcomed me and welcomed the change — it's not easy, but they've been very welcoming. You can tell they love their campus and that they have lots of things in place that are rock solid.”
Pinion said she’s enjoyed getting to work closely with Dorris and is excited to follow in the footsteps of a leader whom she describes as being “amazing” and “loved.”
“We’ve worked together before, but being able to learn from her about the school has been really cool,” she said. “I'm just excited to get to know the kids more, get to know the teachers more, and to truly immerse myself in the situation and really get myself into the role here. The Silver Creek family, it's a beautiful family, and they've welcomed me.”
‘MY HAPPY PLACE’
Pinion knew from a young age that she wanted to become a teacher, adding how blessed she is to know that everything in her life has led up to this moment in her career.
“Education, I really feel like it’s my calling,” she said. “I had a third-grade teacher who worked with special education before us and that teacher was so amazing to be able to work and help those students. It made my heart happy, like that was my happy place.”
While she did have a few individuals in her life try to dissuade her from becoming an educator, she never strayed from her passion.
“God was telling me, ‘Nope. This is where you’re supposed to be,’” Pinion said. “It just felt right, like everything just became easy. I love being with the students, being able to show them love, to educate them, to be able to set them up for their future, to teach them — not only math, science and reading, which are all very important — but also being able to teach them how to be human, how to deal with conflict and how to learn and grow. You’re watching the students make those changes and it’s a beautiful thing; it really is.”
As Pinion makes her new transition at Silver Creek — what will hopefully become her new happy place — she said her goal for her first year as principal is to support the staff and ensure families feel welcome on campus.
“I want to get to know the community better and the parents and the families so that we can continue to keep Silver Creek as strong as it is — especially with getting new teachers for fifth grade,” she said. “(I want to make sure) that everybody is still cohesive and we can really work as a team to continue the Silver Creek way.”
FAITH, FAMILY AND FUTURE
When she’s not busy educating, Pinion spends her time going on adventures with her husband of 17 years, Matt, attending Hilltop Family Church in Springtown and watching crime shows like “NCIS.”
While the Pinions are unable to have children of their own, they make up for the absence with their “bougiest dog ever,” their French bulldog, Tucker.
“He is spoiled rotten and has kind of rocked our world,” she said. “We thought that we would have kids and all of that, but God just had different plans for us.”
Beyond her personal life, Pinion said she is eager to immerse herself in Silver Creek, adding that she fully intends to break the campus’ streak of playing principal carousel.
“I know that (Silver Creek) has had a lot of principals in the past, and I’m hoping that I can be here for a long time to be able to build, see the kids, grow the school and keep it steady,” she said. “I really am excited to be a part of the Silver Creek family. I fully believe that this is where God wants me, and I am just excited to be here.”
