WARDEN — Chris Lupo said his new job brings him back to the place where he started.

“I started my teaching career in Warden in 1994,” Lupo said. He was a teacher in Warden for six years.

Lupo has seen a lot of familiar faces, he said. “There are many staff members that were here, either as students or staff members, and many of the parents that we’re working with now were former students. And actually, many of the teachers here now were former students,” he said.

And yet it’s a new experience too. “It’s exciting to be at a new position with new challenges and new opportunities to learn things,” he said.

Warden, like all other schools in the state, closed in March due to the COVID-19 outbreak, and stayed closed for the rest of the school year. Warden will start the year with all instruction online, at least for the first four weeks. The biggest immediate challenge is making sure WHS students are getting the instruction they need, Lupo said.

“I think the challenge is keeping kids progressing in this new reality. It’s making sure we can serve the community and keep our kids progressing towards graduation, given the challenges that we’re facing this year,” he said.

“I think they (previous Warden administrators) have done a good job. Our goal is to try to take the good job they’ve been doing and keep raising the bar,” Lupo said.

He became a teacher, he said, because he liked working with kids, and was good at motivating them. “I think the move to administration was to try to have a broader relationship-building with more kids than just your own classroom,” he said.

After six years in Warden, Lupo spent three years as a teacher at Chief Moses Middle School in Moses Lake. He spent two years as principal at Royal Middle School, and then seven years in Moses Lake as principal at Frontier Middle School. From 2012 to 2020, he was a principal in the Riverview School District in Carnation and Duvall.

After being a principal at the high school, middle school and elementary school levels, Lupo said each has its own challenges. “I think there are different challenges at all three levels, and it’s just embracing those different challenges. None of the jobs are easy – they have similarities, but they also have different challenges.”

Cheryl Schweizer can be reahced via email at [email protected].