TOLONO — Bill Behrends remembers an obvious question during his interview to be Unity High’s next principal.
“You’re coming in after a guy that’s been here 21 years. What do you see as being your biggest challenge?”
The question referred to Phil Morrison, the longtime Unity principal who’s retiring in May. Behrends’ response led to some laughs, he said, but he was serious.
“That I’m not him,” said Behrends, assistant principal at Centennial High. “People are used to looking for Mr. Morrison when they’ve got a question. Parents are going to call the school and want to talk to Mr. Morrison.”
Clearly, it went over well: This week, the Unit 7 board of education named Behrends the next principal of Unity High, effective July 1, 2023. The 15-year educator has more to add to his answer.
“More than anything, it’s going to be establishing who I am and getting to know me. That’s going to take time, but that’s OK,” he said. “(Morrison has) been there for a long time and done a great job, so I hope I can follow in his footsteps.”
Behrends got to meet the man himself for the first time at this week’s board meeting and expects plenty of conversations to come.
So, who is Bill Behrends? In his own words: a passionate educator, a teacher at heart. An approachable, service-minded leader.
And for the Centennial crowd who’s gotten to know him for the last six years and counting, he’s going to “miss everybody,” and he’ll be back to visit.
“As I told some other people here, I wasn’t just going to walk away for anything,” he said. “Unity seemed like a great opportunity for me, and I’m thrilled about the way it’s working out.”
‘It just felt natural’
Behrends grew up in Havana, a west central Illinois town of 3,000 with a high school of 300 students.
Education wasn’t his prescribed path. At first, it was the “last thing I wanted to do,” he said.
His mom and dad both taught for more than three decades. His next door neighbor was the middle school principal. All of his parents’ friends were educators, too.
“That’s what I’ve been around, that’s what I knew, and from that I just always thought I wanted to blaze my own trail and do something different — out of stubbornness if nothing else,” he said.
Yet shortly after getting his undergrad degree in history at Bradley University, Behrends decided to try his hand at substitute teaching in search of some extra cash.
“The first day I walked in, I was like, ‘wow, this is it,’” he said. “It just felt natural.”
Seventeen years and three master’s degrees later — from Southern Illinois-Edwardsville, Eastern Illinois and the University of Illinois — Behrends hasn’t left the education track and has “loved every day” of it.
He got his full-time start teaching social sciences at Mattoon High for 10 years and coached a smattering of sports teams. He joined the Centennial faculty in 2016, worked as a Mattoon instructional coach in the 2020-’21 school year, then returned to become Centennial’s assistant principal in November 2021.
“We’re still dealing with the fallout from COVID, as much as people don’t want to talk about that,” he said. “There’s social-emotional needs for kids coming out of a year-and-a-half of isolation, we’re trying to get kids to understand how to do school again, to make some of those gaps.”
‘I love Champaign’
Particularly troubling, he said, is how remote learning has exacerbated deficits between children of different socioeconomic backgrounds.
To determine the right interventions, “I just try to listen,” he said. “There’s no set formula; there’s no one prescribed way. It’s understanding a student for who he or she is and doing the best to meet their needs based on where they want to go — whether that’s getting on track for graduation or making sure they have the requirements to go to the college they want to.”
Behrends has always held a positive impression of Unity High, he said. During Mattoon’s team trips to compete at the school, the facilities and student body stuck out.
A friend encouraged Behrends to apply for Unity’s principal opening when Morrison announced his retirement in September.
“I decided to give it a shot and just see,” Behrends said. “I love it here in Centennial High School; I love Champaign. But in my heart, I’m a small-town guy, and I think in the long run I’ve wanted to go back when the right opportunity came up. This one felt like one I really needed to explore.”
When he set foot in Unity High for the interview process, things “clicked” again for Behrends. The environment made sense and fit his aspirations.
“I’ll be honest, I don’t know if anybody really wants to sign up to be an assistant principal forever — you do this job so you can learn how to be a principal,” he said. “I feel like in the last year-and-a-half, I’ve learned a lot of things and I have the skill set to do that job.”
Next semester, he’ll have his work cut out for him as he closes his role at Centennial. There will be a few transition days to meet staff and Superintendent Andy Larson, and he’ll shadow Morrison on the job.
Unity is a new journey for Behrends, but he’ll find solace in at least one old tradition. The school happens to share the same colors as his hometown Havana Ducks.
“I think it’s kind of cool to go back to maroon and white again,” he said. “It felt real natural to put some of that gear on.”