When someone tells you they have the best job in the world, you might be skeptical. Sit down and speak with Watertown High School Principal Joel Giacobozzi for a few minutes, however, and it quickly becomes clear that he truly has deep passion and love for WHS and the whole community. So much so he said he wished he grew up here.
These days, the high school is just half of his job. Giacobozzi has served as the interim principal at Watertown Middle School for a year and half, while in the meantime leading WHS at the temporary campus, and being part of the team overseeing the construction of the new high school building.
He spends many hours each day, and often nights, at the high school, middle school, or school related events, and enjoys being part of students’ accomplishments, large and small.
Watertown News Editor Charlie Breitrose recently spoke with Giacobozzi in his office at the Watertown High School at PFC Richard Moxley Field, also known as the temporary high school. See Q&A below:
WN: We’ve obviously talked formally, informally, but not really ever sat down too much. And you were telling me you’ve been here, what, six years?
JG: No, this is my fifth year, and it will be a year-and-a-half at the middle school, as well. So I feel like it’s a bit of an expedited learning curve because of the double duty recently. But yeah, this is the end of my fifth year at the high school.
WN: It seems like you’ve gone through a lot of different things, a lot of different phases, lot of even different campuses.
JG: Yeah. No year has been just a straight up normal year. I won’t have one of those for another two years. So my first year, I was hired during COVID, so COVID years one and two, essentially. Then it went into a year of planning and packing the building, so the whole year was spent, obviously still hitting our educational goals and still planning ahead. That was the third year. The fourth year I was in the temporary building, and then took over the middle school. And now my fifth year has been in the middle school and at the high school.
So, I have yet to have one where it’s just a regular old principal year. Looking back, what’s crazy is my first year with COVID actually doesn’t feel as though it was the craziest year to be a principal in Watertown Public Schools. I feel like this year has been the craziest, and I’ve loved every minute of it, the best job in the world.
WN: This is your first principal job, right?
JG: Yeah. I was assistant headmaster at Boston Latin before this, and Assistant Principal in Scituate. And before that, I was an intern principal. This is my first time having my own show.
WN: Like you said, you love every minute, but what was it what you expected?
JG: It’s what I expected in a lot of ways, and completely different in other ways. What I wanted was I wanted a community that felt like home, and I wanted to be, this sounds crazy, but I wanted a job where any night of the week I could say, “OK, I want to go do something with the high school, and there’s something to do.” So tonight, for example, Friday night, I got nothing to do. I’m like, Man, I wish I had something to do. And there’s a game tonight that I’ll go to. Last night I was here till eight o’clock going to student events. There’s always something. There’s never a shortage of stuff to do and work to be done, which is exactly what I expected and what I wanted.
I love — I know some people don’t like this — but there’s nothing I love more than running into students and families at the grocery store or going to grab a cup of coffee. Even though I don’t live in the community, being able to just bump into people while I’m heading to a game, or I’m here on a Saturday, coming in, doing work, and I see people at the donut shop, like that. I just live for that. So I expected all that, and I wanted all that. I think, I don’t know, I had a pretty good vision of what I thought it would be.
I’ll tell you the biggest difference. When I was an assistant principal in any capacity, I knew that I cared deeply for my staff and my families. I didn’t take those feelings home as much as I do as a principal. My heart aches for families, students and teachers that are in need, in a way that it didn’t as an assistant principal, and that’s been really difficult to shut off in a way that I didn’t expect. And I don’t regret that at all. Actually that is a blessing to me. I feel like I am part of everyone’s family now, like it or not.
WN: Why do you think Watertown is special or different? What keeps you here and motivated?
JG: I was trying to describe it to somebody the other day, it is such a rich community, obviously, I don’t mean monetarily. I mean it is such a richly diverse community that just has something for everybody. I think my family history here lends itself to loving the community. It’s why I wanted the job in the first place. It’s why I fought tooth and nail to get the job, and it’s why I’ve stayed, or it’s why I initially was excited about it. But now it has felt like part of me is here. So my mother, my mother’s family is from here. So there were six of them. All six went through the schools, public schools here. My church home was here, Watertown Evangelical on the other side of town, on Arlington Street. So I was here every weekend. And yeah, I just, I always, always loved Watertown.
WN: Where did you grow up?
JG: I grew up in Needham, yeah. I don’t know why, but my folks decided to land in Needham. And yeah, I wish I was raised in Watertown.
WN: You knew coming in that the high school is gonna be rebuilt. Has that been interesting for a principal?
JG: It’s a hand in glove for me, because I love construction. I’m obsessed with construction. I have been since I was a little little kid. So I have been watching, like a child watches an excavator on a job site. I’ve been watching that new building in awe. I try to get in there when I can to see the things. I dug deeper than probably most principals when it came to the construction side of it, not because I felt I had to, but because I love it. I’m passionate about it, deeply, deeply passionate about it. But also, the taxpayers are paying me … We have amazing owners, project managers, we have an amazing superintendent, we have amazing builders, we have amazing architects, but I did feel in part that the taxpayers are paying me as one more set of eyes to make sure that it’s the right building for our kids, and I’ve taken that task very seriously, and
I think we knocked it out of the park. If you walk through that building, it’s just lights out.
WN: What do you think the kids are gonna think?
JG: It is hard not to love. Just the natural light, the spaces, the way they’re designed, the flow of the building, the how it lends itself to modern learning in terms of collaboration and integration with technology, the way it allows low tech solutions to be reinvigorated, where students are sitting in natural light on natural surfaces, working pen to paper even, but in a really beautiful space. The way it allows us to let kids flow to and from, and in and out of the building in a socially encouraging way. It just hits all the marks. It really does.
And I don’t say that about every building I’ve seen. I think this is a very different space, and (City Council) President (Mark) Sideris has worked with the Building Committee to just do incredible work. And I think one of the things I have envied about that Building Committee, and the hard work of the women and men on it, is that they won’t settle for anything less than what our community deserves, whether it’s the environmental aspects of it, whether it’s the educational aspects.
WN: There must have been some worrying times when the budget was creeping up.
JG: Yeah. It was. I think when we worried, when I worried, it was reassuring to have people that are longer standing in the community than me say, “Don’t worry. We’re not going to compromise for what our kids and community deserves.”
WN: You mentioned being principal at the middle school, too. When they came to you with that, what was your reaction? And how’s that gone?
JG: My reaction when I was asked was, when do I start? And (Superintendent) Dr. (Dede) Galdtson, can attest to this, My immediate reaction was, “Yes, absolutely. When can you put me in front of the staff?” I’ve said this countless times, but students’ educational lives hang in the balance. Our kids deserve to have competent leadership, and I felt like when I was asked to do that, I’d like to think of myself as moderately competent at the job, and I was being asked for a reason. I reassured myself that it wasn’t just happenstance, and I’m here at the right time with the skills to do it. So there was never a question whether or not I was going to do it. There was never a question whether I was going to do it for the extended period either.
I have loved it, because everybody gets what they need in the situation we have right now. The City gets a leader that is dedicated to the schools. The City gets somebody that is going to work 100 hours a week to make sure that everybody is taken care of as best I can, and I get to learn on light speed, because when you’re running two buildings it exposes any inefficiencies you have in your personal or professional life. I’ve really enjoyed learning. I cannot thank the City enough for entrusting me with two schools worth of their kids. That is what has weighed on me heavily, in a really good way. I don’t take it for granted.
WN: And now you’ll know them for a long time.
JG: That’s the best part. So this year, actually, I’m leaving all of the Senior Week to my assistant principal. So sadly, I won’t be at prom, I won’t be at the barbecue, I won’t be at Kimball’s, I won’t be at any of that stuff. But what I do gain is that I’m going to Washington, D.C., with our eighth graders. So that will forge, hopefully continue to forge, that relationship I have with those students, and as they come into the ninth grade, they’ll have a recognizable face that knows them. They know that I love them, that I care deeply for their development. And just like this year, we had kids that walked up the front stairs and were nervous — the first day of school is always nerve wracking. In high school, they see me. They light up, not because I’m the most amazing person, but because they recognize at least one face, and they know the leader of this building is for them and knows their stories. So that’s been really powerful.
WN: How’s it gone in the temporary high school?
JG: The modulars have been amazing. I appreciate the City giving them to us. I think probably at the end of next year, we’re going to be leaving at the right time. I think we’re really starting to show a little fatigue with kind of the free flowing nature of the buildings, because you can’t have this without having a level of kind of flow and freedom with the students and their movements. So, if a student isn’t where they’re supposed to be in the new building, we know right away you’re outside the building. You can’t be here. But here, our students are always honest with us, but you know, they could probably shoot the gap a little bit and say, “I’m supposed to be at the Boys and Girls Club (for physical education), and that’s where I’m heading,” or “I’m supposed to be at the middle school, that’s where I’m heading.” So we just, I just can’t wait for everyone to be on the same site, doing the same things at the same time. It’ll be lovely.
WN: I definitely see them around Main Street, around town.
JG: And for me, every story I hear about our kids and in the community is a positive one. You know, we have, we have strangers that were very hesitant about our kids being in the community, and they’ve come to us and told us the opposite. I mean, at the beginning of this year, we had a family come to us and let us know that one of their family members, an elderly man, had fallen, and it was a pretty bad fall. And the first people to be there with that man, until the ambulance showed up and encouraged him and try to clean him up, were Watertown High School students. And so we have proven to the community time and time again that our kids are the best kids in the state, and I know that for a fact.
WN: I appreciate you sitting down. But do you have a favorite memory? There’s so many things you must see things every day, but is there something, looking back, or a few things?
JG: Oh, man, yeah, it makes me sentimental. I think I could call on the unbelievable musicals that I’ve been a part of, playing trumpet in the pit and watching kids make magic happen on stage. I could talk about the state championships that we’ve won and being able to run on the field and celebrate our kids and the amazing achievements that they have. I could talk about the academics and walking into a room that’s trying something innovative that I haven’t seen in a classroom before, and our teachers just crush it.
But I think, to me, the most memorable moments are the little quiet moments that students let me in on that they tell me about what this staff or what I have meant to them. I mean, this morning I walked in to a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie from one of my students, and a note that just said what having me in the building has meant to them every day, and how they feel safe and welcomed and loved, and how they’re looking forward to that happening for many years. No one sees those things. That kid’s not doing it for show. That kid’s doing it because they’re an amazing human being that is being raised by an amazing community and so those are the moments for me that just make me go home and say “I have the best job in the world.” I really do.
I would hope in the future Joel would say yes not yeah when answering someone. A principal should use better grammar.
Watertown is blessed to have Mr. G. I’ve known him for decades, since he was a child. He is true, honest, and open. You are a huge asset to each student and faculty member. Thank you Mr. G!