Administrators are frequently the unspoken and unseen heroes of high schools, managing much of the school’s operation as they work hours in their small offices huddled over a glowing computer monitor.

One of these administrators is assistant principal Duncan Jackson, who came last year to Watkins Mill High School from Briggs Chaney Middle School in Silver Spring after being an assistant principal there for seven years. Before that he worked at Francis Scott Key Middle School and Paint Branch High School in Burtonsville.

But before he began his career, he was attending university in North Carolina. “I went to University of North Carolina graduate school of education to work on my masters of educational administration,” Jackson said.

His first job in the education field was teaching in Raleigh, North Carolina. However this wasn’t enough for him. “At the end of four years of teaching in Raleigh, NC, I  was only making $20k [$40k adjusted for inflation] a year, which wasn’t enough for retirement,” Jackson said.

So he moved to Maryland in 1991. “I decided I needed to go to a school system where the payment package was a little more ‘sophisticated,’” Jackson said. Montgomery County Public Schools felt like a good fit for him.

Jackson spent eight years teaching physical education and coaching a variety of sports including basketball, track, football and even lacrosse.

“I wanted to coach the [North Carolina] Tar Heels [basketball team],” Jackson said, so naturally he decided to start by becoming a physical education teacher.  “I figured I would major in P.E. and then become a high school basketball teacher and I would be so good [that] the University of North Carolina would come calling,” Jackson said, “It hasn’t happened yet but it could happen.”

Aside from being a teacher, coach, and educational administrator, Jackson served in the Army Reserve from 1982 to 1988. He went to basic training at Fort McClellan in Alabama with the eventual dream of becoming an army officer, however he gave up when he realized that he couldn’t read a map.

Jackson just goes to show the interesting lives that many of our administrators have led and the even more interesting paths that took them here.