PROFILE: Chattahoochee Principal Tim Duncan

By Tim Altork / STAFF

If you Google “Tim Duncan” you might have to dig for awhile before you get a whole lot of results that feature the principal of Chattahoochee High School. Sharing a name with one of the most famous basketball players in the world tends to put you a little further down on the hit list of the high traffic Internet search engine.

But other than the name, the head honcho at the ‘Hooch has very little in common with the San Antonio Spurs’ power forward. One is about 11 inches taller than the other. One went to Wake Forest while the other dabbles in wake boarding. And one famously returned to school for his senior year and earned a psychology degree while the other went back to school to earn a masters and, in a way, has hardly left school his entire life.

NO STOMACH FOR SURGERY

Tim Duncan the educator has been around longer than Tim Duncan the basketball player, so he has firsts on the name.
And if things had gone according to the plans of the local Duncan’s parents he may have become Doctor Tim Duncan, DDS.

Chattahoochee principal Tim Duncan (right) sits in the stands at a Cougar sporting event with his family (from left) daughter Abby, son Alex and wife Jennifer. (SPECIAL)

“My parents did not want me to go into education,” he said. “They wanted me to make money.”

Duncan’s deductive thought process told him that a) doctors make money, b) he doesn’t have the stomach to handle a full visual of people’s innards, therefore c) he’d go into dentistry.

“I think I just wanted to be a dentist because everybody wants you to be a doctor, and I figured I wouldn’t have to see a whole lot of surgeries or something of that nature,” he said. “I’m horrible in a hospital. I think I just liked the title.” 

But tiny motorized chisels and tongue-numbing anesthesia were not in Duncan’s future. Fortunately he didn’t get any further than his first collegiate chemistry class before he figured that out. Ironically it was an educator – in this case the chemistry professor – that suggested that a career that relies heavily on a science-oriented education may not be the best pursuit for Duncan.

“He pointed out that he’s not sure that he sees a doctor with my proficiency in chemistry – or lack thereof,” Duncan recalled. “He was straightforward, and that was a nice, honest assessment.”

So the vocational pendulum swung back to where Duncan hoped it would end up all along.

NO TOWN TOO SMALL

He had discovered the joys of teaching and youth mentoring as a camp counselor at one of the largest day camps in the state. By the age of 21 he was named director of that same camp, which incidentally was called Camp Chattahoochee.

After a brief venture into the world of sales and marketing (to make use of the marketing degree he had earned at the University of Georgia) he got married. He and his wife Jennifer then made a mutual decision to pursue careers as educators.

“We decided that that was the environment that we wanted to raise our family in,” he said. “We really liked the schedule of us both being educators, and we actually took our first job. We decided to try small town living.”

They packed up their belongings and headed to the South Georgia town of Cordele, the self-proclaimed Watermelon Capital of the World. (You may know Cordele better as the town on I-75 with the iconic Titan ICBM missile erected next to the Krystal just off of the exit ramp.)

Duncan said he adapted a little more easily to his new rural environment than his wife did, thanks to the plethora of male bonding activities – such as hunting, fishing and golf – available in the area.

“It was a little more challenging for my wife,” he said. “They had no tennis courts.”

“That’s a rough transition to make for suburbanites from up here,” he said. “Particularly because everybody’s family down there and everyone knows everyone. It was a tremendous transition for us.”

Unable to crack the good ol’ boy network, the Duncans high-tailed it back to the suburbs after just one year in Cordele.

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

While that phrase – no child left behind – has become clichéd and almost trite thanks to the national educational program, people like Duncan were demonstrating that concept on a grass-roots level over a decade ago.

After his brief stint in Cordele Duncan returned to North Fulton County and took a job at North Springs High School working with at-risk students who were at least two years behind the normal graduation pace.

“They had challenges communicating with their teachers,” he said. “Therefore since they wouldn’t communicate in a way the teacher expected, the teacher would have a hard time treating that student with respect, and you had a lot of walls that were going up.”

That’s Duncan’s diplomatic way of saying that the teachers had given up on some of the more trouble-making students and vice versa. His job was to step in, mediate some sort of peace and renew a sense that the student’s continued education was a good choice.

“In trying to advocate for a student, I would try to butter up the teacher a little bit,” he said, “and express some of the challenges that the student may be having in the home. I’d just show them the potential that I saw in that student and get them to believe in that child. And I’d try to serve as a bridge to that student being successful.”

In doing so Duncan created an entire program, which he called Excel (“Which at that time was not a software application,” he said). In it, he would assign mentors, visit the troubled students’ homes, track grades weekly and set up conferences with students and teachers to keep tabs on some of the strained relationships. The program was eventually standardized and picked up by all of Fulton County. (It has since been shelved in favor of the County’s graduation coaching program.)

Success in this case was measured by whether the student stayed in school long enough to earn their high school diploma. Duncan admits that this objective was not always realized, but working with those students taught him a valuable lesson about creating opportunities for students from all walks of life.

NO REST FOR THE WEARY

Duncan took an assistant principal position at Chattahoochee in 1997. He maintained that role for the next seven years before being given the principal position in 2004 when Dr. Robert Burke left to open up Alpharetta High School.

He now oversees one of the gems among the North Fulton County schools, and is very proud to do so. And he’s trying to ensure that that pride flows into his student body as well.

“I don’t want anyone wishing they were anywhere else,” he said. “I wish all the best for all the students and parents at the other schools, but I don’t want anyone here to ever have the thought, ‘Oh, I wish I was across the street at that other school. Look at their spirit or how much fun they have. Or look what they offer.’ And I think we’ve got that.”

Duncan generally arrives at the school around 5:45 a.m. to get in his morning jog. He’s usually in his office by 7:00 and sometimes stays as late as 10 p.m. In the course of those many hours he has been diligent to make sure that all of his 2,185 students have the opportunity to do more than just sit in a classroom and endure lectures from teachers.

“We have a belief that we really want to see all our students heavily involved and experience all our school offers,” he said.
And when that is not happening, particularly among a specific group of students, he sees the opportunity for action that helped him years ago at North Springs.

For example: “At Chattahoochee we have a high Asian population, and years ago we had a concern about a lot of the students not being very involved in activities,” Duncan explained. “So we would have some meetings with some Asian students and their parents about how we could increase their involvement in the school. I think what we learned in those meetings is to quit trying to make them adjust to our expectation of athletics and things, and instead ask them what they would like to see at Chattahoochee. From that I started the table tennis club. The very first meeting we had 90 students.”

Duncan says that it’s situations like that – where the school, the parents and the students are cooperatively working toward the solution to a particular problem – that have made Chattahoochee the top-notch school that it is.

“I’ve never seen anything like I’ve seen at Chattahoochee High School,” he said, “with the parent involvement and the willingness to fight for the school to make sure that we have everything to provide for the best educational setting for their child.”

The Chattahoochee parents have already filled the entire year’s need for volunteers in the school’s front office, guidance office, library and tutoring program.

“We can’t take any more volunteers…because every day is already reserved for the entire year,” said Duncan.

Duncan’s commitment to the school is evident, and it has even overshadowed his commitment to his beloved Georgia Bulldogs. The GHSA mandates that every extra-curricular student event has a school administrator in attendance. That can make for some long hours, particularly in the spring when he counted over 190 events over a 90-day period.

“My peers don’t understand why I’m so into high school sports,” said Duncan. “And I tell them, I love how pure it is. There’s no contract negotiations. You get to know the kids. And being the principal, I get in free and always have a good seat.”

Those aren’t quite the perks that the life of an NBA superstar can bring, but for this Tim Duncan it’s plenty to keep him happy.