It is the day before teachers report back to work after a two-week holiday break. But, instead of savoring the last few minutes of the break, Luis Varela is spending this frigidly cold afternoon answering endless questions from a reporter.

Varela says he doesn’t mind all the questions. He is already getting ready for the teacher work day in the morning, and is just getting back from Sam’s Club where he bought some breakfast goodies for his school staff.

“I am already busy because tomorrow morning,” Varela says, “we will hit the ground running.”

Varela, who is the interim principal at North Oconee High School, will greet his staff Monday after an autumn full of tumult and turmoil. He has come to the helm of NOHS after the resignation of former principal John Osborne. The events that led up to Osborne’s resignation have been hard on North Oconee’s students, staff and parents.

With a new calendar year and a new school semester, the interim principal sees smoother seas ahead.

“Now that we have some closure, we are all going to pull together for our number one responsibility,” Varela says. “And, our number one responsibility is our students.”

Varela says Osborne is not the first principal to leave Oconee County’s newest public high school. If you do the math of adding up interims and principals, NOHS has had five top administrators in the last five years.

“The thing about this school is we keep striking along,” he says. “And, as we strike along, we keep the focus on our kids and on our responsibility to those kids.”

 

When the school system asked Varela to step into the role of interim principal, he says he discussed the matter with his wife, Nannette, who is also a school principal in the Oconee school system. When she gave him her support, he knew stepping into the role was the right thing to do.

“I think the main thing is the faculty at North Oconee wanted someone from the inside, not the outside, to be the interim principal,” Varela explains. “We are a very close faculty, like a family, and we always pull together.”

Varela, who will continue in his role as NOHS athletic director as he takes over the interim principal job, admits the coming year will be beyond busy. He doesn’t think, however, that two principals in the same family will be a bad thing.

“My wife and I always make time to eat together in the evening, but we do talk about school a lot,” he says.

Varela says although education now consumes his life, he did not set out to be an educator. Tennis was originally his calling, and was the sport that brought Varela to this country.

He came to the United States from Chile at age 16. Varela had a full tennis scholarship to Northwestern State University in Louisiana. He met his future wife at the school, and played tennis professionally for two years after earning his undergraduate degree.

Varela was married and teaching tennis at a country club in Shreveport, Louisiana when he met a high school principal who belonged to his club. She convinced him to take the necessary courses to get his teaching certification, and to teach Spanish.

“I taught tennis in the morning at the county club and taught Spanish at the high school in the afternoon,” he recalls.

It wasn’t long before Varela began to rethink his future.

“I told Nannette, ‘I really love teaching. I think this is what I want to do,’” he says.

He started looking for a teaching job, and when his sister and brother-in-law moved to Georgia, the Varela family followed suit. Nannette took a position as assistant principal at Clarke Central High School and Varela was hired, over the phone, for a job teaching Spanish at Loganville High.

Later, he took a job at Barnett Shoals Elementary in Clarke County, teaching Spanish at a time when there was a big push in Georgia to teach foreign languages at the elementary level. He then went to Clarke Central, teaching and coaching the tennis team for seven years.

He came to Oconee County as a teacher at Malcom Bridge Middle, then moved to Oconee County High and later to North Oconee when it opened in 2004. By the time he arrived at NOHS, he was an assistant principal and had earned Masters and Specialist degrees in educational leadership.

Now, after 21 years in education, Varela is seeing first-hand what it is like to be a high school principal. As for whether or not he would like to become the school’s permanent principal, Varela says the next few months will make up his mind on that matter.

“In the past, I always wanted to be a principal, so now I will get a taste of what that is really like,” he says.

With a school just settling down from turmoil and with a new semester starting, Varela says he knows the next few months will be busy. And, with the youngest of his three sons ending his senior year at OCHS, Varela says he also knows the coming months will fly by and graduation will be here before he knows it.

Before his son and his NOHS students walk across the stage to get diplomas, Varela says he will do his best to squeeze in time for his family. Once again, however, he admits that much of his conversation at home will focus on school.

“We talk a lot about our schools and about education,” he says. “Really, my wife and I live and breathe education.”

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