Mrs. Lorri Stivers

School Phone: (502) 633-4869

Office Hours: 7:45 am-5:00 pm

About The Principal: Extremely honored and very humbled, I began my principalship in the summer of 2009.  As the building leader, I hope to carry on the time-honored traditions of West Middle School as well as start a few new ones! 

A current focus of this year prinicpal is increasing parent and community involvement. Specifically, growing the membership and activity of the Parent Teacher Student Organization (PTSO) is imperative to whole school success.  A new chapter of the WMS PTSO began in August of 2010 as a result of the restructuring of the Shelby County middle schools to a 6-7 configuration.  Membership continues to grow and the WMS PTSO is focused on supporting students and teachers in the classroom!  My vision includes every parent, student and teacher becoming an active member to this very important support structure as I believe quality education requires involvement, input, and insight by all stakeholders.

In addition to building parent and community support for WMS, the faculty and I are engaged in the development of both personal and professional BIG GOALS.  By now, each teacher has shared his/her big goals with the students and has developed a plan to reach those goals.  In addition, each student is actively creating big goals with respect to their performance in and out of the classroom.  What's the value of a big goal you might ask? 

As opposed to a typical goal, our BIG GOALS are driven by a clear vision with student success in mind.  At first glance some may say the goals are crazy, unattainable, or out-right ludicrous and question the reason for setting the bar so high.  I ask you, might we be lowering our expectations if we do anything but set big goals for our students and ourselves?  When it comes to student achievement, we should do nothing less than shoot for the moon.  Our students deserve it.  Our community needs it.  Our nation depends upon it.

Even this principal has both personal and professional BIG GOALS!  I will save the personal goals for another day, but for now let me share my student-centered BIG GOAL for the students of Shelby County West Middle School!

• EVERY student will exit the 6th and 7th grades at or above grade level in both reading and math by 2011.

Please don't misunderstand the message.  This is one goal; one BIG, HAIRY, AUDACIOUS GOAL!  At first glance, this may seem to be almost easy. It is far from it! Every student comes to us at a variety of achievement levels and I feel it is my duty and the obligation of every teacher to make sure every student is challenged, that he/she grows in his/her abilities and that we make every decision based on what's best for our students!

I hope that this write up gives you a glimpse of what this proud principal is all about!  Furthermore, I hope my discussion gives you an idea of how you can further support the West Middle School Warriors in our journey toward our school-wide BIG GOAL!