Having begun her career there in 1995, stepping through Cherry Hill High School East’s halls in October – this time as the school’s premier female principal – was, to Mrs. Leslie Walker, a quite literal walk down memory lane. A truly full-circle moment, she expressed how wonderful it was to experience the school from all lenses: as a young woman first beginning her administrative career, a mother of three children who proudly call East their alma mater and a principal during a time of immense change as both a community and a country.
“It was nice to come back and see some familiar things and some new things – to have people I remembered from before and new people to welcome and help me learn,” she said. “When we were left without a principal in September and I offered to help, I just thought, ‘Oh my God… it’s East. I can’t pass that up.’”
Walker cites “incredible student leadership” as her most cherished aspect of re-experiencing East. Demonstrated through the Feb. 6 ICE walkout — the most memorable part of her time here — Walker was proud to facilitate the demonstration of a cause students were so passionate about.
“When I talked to the kids who were planning it, I told them I didn’t care what their cause was,” she told Eastside. “Whether you believed in the walkout or not, the leadership succeeded, and my goal was to make it work and to… meet the needs of the students who came to me with something they wanted to do within safe parameters.”
Meeting with the heads of culture clubs, SGA and DECA, Walker said she was “blown away” by the ambition and leadership of students pursuing state roles in their areas of interest. The biggest thing she would’ve done differently, thus, would’ve been going out more to interact with students.
“It’s really important for a principal to be visible to the students,” Walker said. “I’ve never worked in a school this big, and it’s pretty unrealistic to think that a principal would know everyone’s name. But, after four years, you get to know them well and you should. I didn’t have the opportunity for that [though] because my learning curve was so vertical.”
She told a story about her time doing interim work at Camden County Technical School three years ago, when her former teaching partner, Mrs. Picardo — whom she worked with 20 years prior — called her about one of their assistant principals having a stroke. Walker seized the opportunity to help where she could, temporarily assuming the role as an assistant principal, and cited logging 12,000 steps daily on her walking watch. When Mrs. Picardo then fell ill, leaving Walker to step in as interim principal there, her walking steps went down to 2,000 — illustrating the stark difference in the expectations between being a principal and any other administrator.
“I didn’t like that I couldn’t get around as much,” she said. “I had so many meetings, and at the time, many were virtual. With so many people coming into my office – kids, parents, teachers here… I was so busy, but I truly would’ve liked to get to know you guys a bit more.”
Walker also discussed how enlightening East’s cultural diversity was for her. Having grown up in an 100% white Pennsylvanian town – where everyone was either Catholic or Protestant, with the exception of only seven Jewish families – attending Penn State in 1978 marked a period of cultural illumination for her. It opened her up to the importance of diversity – having met one of her best friends to this day there, who exposed her to Jewish culture – influencing her decision to raise her children in Cherry Hill specifically for the educational environments fostered in the district.
“All of my children’s best friends were Jewish,” Walker said. “One of their friends was Asian, and now they’re my grandchildren’s godparents. So, those kids are now adults and they’re still a part of my life. This diversity is something my children grew up with from the very beginning, and I value that so much. It was an exciting thing I hadn’t lived with before… I was still learning while my kids grew up with it as part of who they were.”
It was incredible to come back to East 25 years later, she said, and see how diversified it had become. With 52-56 languages spoken between students and staff, Walker said that although such cultural heterogeneity will always come with “growing pains,” it’s immensely important to keep pushing through it together. It’s the most important facet of East, according to her, because such diversity models the real world.
Walker hopes her resignation doesn’t lend itself to a permanent return to retirement. In the meantime, however, she hopes to properly and wholly return to her lifelong passion for art. Having identified as an “art kid” in high school and obtained a degree in art education, she always identified as an artist but never felt as if she truly mastered any particular medium. An art education degree involves a semester each for everything from sculpture to charcoal, so Walker felt as if she left some potential untapped and an artistic identity undeveloped.
“Art has always been at my heart and soul, and I’ve always said that when I retire, that’s when I’m going to go back to my art.”
This past September, she enrolled in a drawing class and was left surprised at how much there was left to learn, even after studying art all throughout college. She initially began attending workshops in May but quit a few times throughout the summer due to feelings of profound inadequacy.
“Art was a part of my identity, and then I went to this class and found out I suck. I thought I was really bad, and my ego took a huge dip. I went home thinking ‘I’m going to quit; I can’t do this. Who was I to think I was an artist?’ But then I got myself together, and when I did, my teacher said, ‘I knew you’d be back… I gave you such a hard project to get you to see what you didn’t see.’”
Since then, she has reignited her desire to consistently improve, remembering her high school art teacher whom she’d once asked, “How did you get so good?” to which he responded, “You have to do it everyday.” Hence, Walker has since begun the process of creating an at-home art studio, planned a trip to Ireland in July with her art class and recently finished the “best drawing she’s ever done” in her entire life.
Her final goodbye to East is a bittersweet farewell to 25 years of memories. As East’s first female principal, she hopes she “brought a sense of warmth [and] a connection to parents on a maternal level,” leaving with the assurance that her successors will bring long-term leadership and stability to the community.
