Caryn Boyd is the associate principal at Orono High School (OHS). She has been at Orono for ten years.

Boyd graduated high school from Minneapolis Roosevelt in Minneapolis. At the time, there were 2,500 students in the high school.

“Back then, you went to school with your neighborhood. I graduated high school with kids I started kindergarten with,” Boyd said.

Boyd graduated right before Title IX went into action therefore there weren’t the athletic opportunities for girls at the time.

“Since then I have been a strong opponent of that because it was an opportunity that I didn’t have.”

Outside of school, Boyd has a family with a grandson. She enjoys attending baseball games, spending time with friends and reading.

Something that not most people would know about Ms. Boyd is that she is addicted to the TV shows Scandal and House of Cards on Netflix like most of the students at OHS.

“The thing I enjoy most about Orono High School are the students. 95% of my career has been spent working with high school kids,” Boyd said.

Another thing that most people don’t know about Ms. Boyd is that she played the accordion when she was younger. At first she really wanted to play the piano, however her father was a huge accordion player. Her father was a first generation Dane, his parents came over to America as adults from Denmark.

“My father insisted that if I was going to play an instrument, one of them had to be the accordion,” said Boyd. She then spent six years taking accordion lessons and playing classical music on the accordion. “It gave my dad a great deal of pleasure,” Boyd said.

There are positive and negatives to every career. The thing Ms. Boyd dislikes the most is cleaning up in the cafeteria during lunch. The best thing about her job, she stated, is being apart of the Character Counts program and putting together a student leadership program at Orono.

“One of the things I firmly believe that it is important to stay consistent and that we are fair. When kids make mistakes, they ought to know to make wise choices,” Boyd said.

“I’d rather have a kid screw up here and have a consequence when they are at a place with their family and us to be looking out for them instead of making a mistake out in the world when it’s a bigger deal and they are on their own,” Boyd said.

Ms. Boyd is not only a strong associate principle, but also a kind and intelligent woman.

“For me it’s so fun to watch these ninth graders come over and they are just so ninth grade. And then to watch them grow up over the course of four years and all the neat things they achieve and do is really fun to see,” Boyd said.