Follow This!: New #Avon High Principal Joins Twitterverse

Within about a week of sending his first tweet, Avon High School's new principal already had 51 followers.

"Thanks for following me! Avon High School is an amazing place that is worth celebrating. This space is to recognize our outstanding school!," Principal Christopher Tranberg tweeted under his new @PrincipalAHS Twitter handle on Sept. 6.

Twitter is just one way that Tranberg is meeting the community's desire for stronger communication between the school and the parents. It's a vehicle to share "the good that's happening" at Avon High School, he said. 

"It's me being as current as I can with technology," Tranberg said. 

So far, he's sent out three tweets. The latter two reminded parents about Avon's opening football game last Thursday and Open House. 

Tranberg has also launched The Friday Falcon, a weekly newsletter sent to parents to update them about happenings and news at Avon High School. 

Before coming to Avon, Tranberg was assistant principal at Simsbury High School for three years. Most public high schools in the Farmington Valley and West Hartford have new principals this year, which Tranberg said is a first for the area and an opportunity for a new network of sharing "the good work happening" at each school. 

He first was a music teacher in Simsbury, where he currently resides, for six years and then director of performing arts for two before becoming an administrator.

Tranberg was a voice major and piano minor at Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory in Cleveland, Ohio and got his master's degree in music education at The Hartt School in West Hartford. He got his degree in education leadership at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield and is working on getting a doctorate's degree in educational leadership and policy at UMass Amherst. 

At some point in Simsbury, he said that "there were leaders along the way" who urged him to consider administrative work. Avon was the right fit for him, he said, and he was ready to become a principal. The biggest adjustment is the new faces. 

"The standards are high just like they are across the boarder," he said.

The opening of school in Avon went smoothly.

"We eased in nicely," he said.

His goal as a principal is "to make people feel great about being a part of this community and proud of this school."

Tranberg's 140 character tweets are a start at that mission. 

When asked if he planned to start a Facebook page, he said Avon High School students aren't on Facebook as much.

Twitter is where the teenagers are flocking. 

Do you follow Avon High School's new principal on Twitter? What do you think about the high school going social?