Avent Comes Back to BCHS

It’s nice when someone comes back home to take up the family business.

For new Bolivar Central High School Principal Brittney Avent, whose father taught at BCHS for many years, it took fifteen and a half years as the 2008 BCHS graduate began again at her alma mater this month.

“The support has been absolutely unparalleled to anywhere else,” she began. “It’s nice coming into a building even though I haven’t seen people in ten years, I know who they are, I know who their family is. I can make connections with many students because I graduated with family members or I grew up with.”

Her journey after Bolivar took her to UT-Martin where she graduated with an Agriculture Education degree in 2012. And then she hit a wall, sort of.

“I had a hard time finding a job in Ag Education, but (BCHS Principal) Jeff Barnes offered me a job teaching math and I ended up doing that for two years.”

When a job in her field opened up, she took it, at Ripley High School for four years, when connections she made at Ripley took her to Haywood County, as Director of Secondary and CTE for the Haywood County Schools. Two years later, she was the principal at Haywood County High School.

“I did that for three years, but when a new superintendent came in, I was moved back to CTE.”

But when she was offered the chance to come back to Hardeman County, with the added bonus of being in a position she wanted to be in, she jumped at it.

“I’m a school-level person,” she said, adding that she had a butterfly or two. “Change is hard. I was nervous to make this change. Just leaving a district where I built a community and had a home there. Coming home, I didn’t expect to have the feel of nostalgia that I have or have the support to be as grand as it is. That lets me know that this was definitely the right move and I am excited to move closer to home eventually and to be back here full time,” adding that she bought a house in Haywood County two years ago.

On day one, she said, it hit her.

“Coming back home, it’s very surreal. Walking into classrooms I haven’t been in in ten years knowing I sat as a student there.”

Coming in mid-year though, it gives her a chance to get acclimated.

“I’ve never transtioned in the middle of a year,” she said. “But I’m excited to do that, right now. Especially getting this year to learn the ins and the outs of everything and how it operates. It leaves me time to come in and observe without making a whole lot of changes at first.”

And with Haywood County being in the same basketball district and scheduled to play Bolivar this week (since postponed by snow) she was very clear where she would stand.

“I’ll be wearing green,” she said with a smile.