Edwin “Ed” Butterworth said he feels “right at home” as the new Midland High School principal.
“I want to promote this school,” he said, adding that the students call him Mr. B.
Butterworth, 50, who began his job in July, said he is working with Midland School District Superintendent Dewayne Wammack and Midland Elementary School Principal Bani Meharg to promote a strategic plan for the district — The Mustang Advantage.
“It’s based on the characteristics of a mustang,” he said, referring to the horse, which is the mascot for the district. “A mustang is highly intelligent, supportive and works in a group independently.
“The Mustang Advantage focuses on the principle of spirit, which is an acronym for service, passion, integrity, respect, innovation and teamwork.”
“We as educators have to have that spirit, too,” he said. “I tell my staff, ‘If you don’t have passion for your job, you need to find somewhere else to work.’ Parents are sending their children — the best they have — to us. The diploma they earn here is just the first stepping stone of things to come.
“We want to provide our students with not only the tools they need to fulfill this educational requirement but also with tools they will need after high school, whether it’s college or work or the military,” he said. “If we don’t do that, then we have failed these kids.”
Butterworth said he has a great staff.
“I have told them I am new, and I will make mistakes,” he said. “I told them we will learn together. The first thing we need to ask ourselves before we do anything is, ‘Is this best for the kids?’ We all will be held accountable. Our goal this year, and every year, will be ‘Do what’s best for the kids.’”
Butterworth said the high school, which has 238 students in grades seven through 12, will add six classrooms this year, which will be in a new building — a “tax-free building,” he said.
“The school district is paying for it,” he said, adding that the 9,000-square-foot, freestanding building should be ready for occupancy by the spring semester.
“We are also providing new Chromebooks for students down to second grade. We are incorporating more technology with the use of Google Classroom. I have access to it, the kids have access to it, and the kids’ parents will have access to it,” he said.
“The students can download lessons, video links, book links. The student can type in a question; the teacher will see it and respond. You still have a teacher in the classroom, but this opens up a lot of avenues to the students,” Butterworth said.
“This helps the student become more of a self-learner, and the teacher becomes more of a facilitator,” he said. “I love it. It makes education fun again.
“I believe in my staff and the passion they have for the work they do. We don’t teach for the money, as you know. We teach because we want to make a difference in Midland’s future.”
Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, Butterworth is the son of Chris Butterworth of Lockhart, Louisiana, who will be 80 this month and is a secretary at an elementary school, and the late Earl Butterworth. He has one sister, Lori Viner of Benton.
When asked about his unusual last name — Butterworth — he answered, smiling, “My mom always says we’re not as rich as the [Mrs. Butterworth’s]-syrup people, but we’re just as sweet.
“It’s an interesting name,” he said. “It’s a Nordic name. Both my son and I have tattoos reflecting the Nordic hammer that the mythological god, Thor, carried.”
Butterworth said his dad was a Church of Christ preacher, and the family moved around a lot when he was growing up.
“With Daddy being a preacher, we moved about every four to five years,” he said. “I grew up in Spearsville, Louisiana, until fifth grade. We moved to Calhoun, Louisiana, and then to Arkadelphia when I was going into 10th grade. I graduated [from high school] in Arkadelphia in 1984.
Butterworth said he didn’t take the traditional pathway into his college career.
“I was a 22-year college sophomore,” he said. “I attended five semesters at Henderson State University [after high school graduation], but I decided not to go back. I had a .5 GPA.”
Butterworth said he left college and did other things before he finally returned to college and received a degree.
“After 20 years, I returned home to Arkansas from Texas and finally went back to college full time,” he said. “I was going to go into nursing and ended up being a pediatric nursing assistant for several years.”
Butterworth said he graduated from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in health science with an emphasis in health promotion.
“Then I went to work for Aramark Uniform Services as a district manager. I was stationed in Pine Bluff, but my kids were in Benton and I missed them, so I was absolutely miserable,” he said.
“On a whim, I took the Praxis [teacher-certification exam] one afternoon and passed. Then I had to ask myself, ‘Now what am I going to do?’” he said.
“I found a teaching job at Bauxite and started right after Labor Day in 2007,” he said, noting that he taught fifth and sixth grades there for seven years, specializing in science, math and social studies.
“It was on-the-job training,” Butterworth said, laughing. “I could not have asked for a better group of kids for my first year as a teacher. I had about 125 kids, and 50 of them were in the National Honor Society. That was an exceptionally intelligent group of kids.
“They had never heard Red Skelton’s Pledge of Allegiance presentation,” Butterworth said. Skelton, a comedian, recites the pledge, explaining it word by word, then adds that since he learned the pledge as a small boy, two states had been added to the United States — Alaska and Hawaii — and two words, ‘under God’ — had been added.
“That led to a debate about why those two words — under God — were added,” Butterworth said. “I thought, ‘This is teaching. That year was a great first experience.”
Butterworth said he had four “divas,” or teachers, at Bauxite — Jeanne Dale, Margee Taylor, Melissa Van Cleve and Vanessa Stephens — who “took me under their wing and convinced me teaching was the right career for me. Without them, I would not still be teaching.”
Butterworth continued his college education while he taught at Bauxite, earning a master’s degree in middle childhood education in 2010 from UALR and a master’s degree in educational leadership and administration in 2015 from Henderson State University.
Butterworth left the Bauxite School District in June 2015 and accepted the position of assistant principal at Clinton Primary School in the Hope School District.
“I was assistant principal of 500 kindergartners and first-graders. You can’t be in a bad mood when you’ve got 500 smiling faces greeting you each morning,” he said.
“That was a challenge. My principal, Ashlea Stewart, taught me so much. That was her first year as a principal. We worked great together. I spent a year in Hope, and then this position at Midland came open. I was kind of looking [for another job], but I was at a conference with Lindsey Frazier, who is principal at Concord Elementary School and went to Midland High School, and she told me about the opening here,” Butterworth said.
“I called, got an application, filled it out, and here I am,” he said.
“This is the first place I’ve felt like I could put down roots in the past six years.”
Butterworth is a single parent with two adult children — a son, Davis, 23, and a daughter, Madison, 22, who both graduated from Benton High School.
Davis Butterworth is a graduate of UALR.
“He planned to go to law school, but when he walked off the stage [at UALR graduation], he said, ‘I’ll just follow in your footsteps and go into education,’” Ed Butterworth said of his son. “This past January, he went to Henderson and obtained his Master of Arts in Teaching degree and is now teaching fourth grade at Clinton Primary in Hope. He loves it.”
Madison Butterworth is a student at UALR but is undecided on her major.
In his spare time, Ed Butterworth enjoys cooking, especially barbecuing, as well as gardening and landscaping. He is also a self-proclaimed “water junkie.”
“Give me lake water, river water and my favorite, salt water,” he said. “I am hoping to learn to fly-fish since I’ve heard it’s very good in this area.”
Butterworth said he plans to be in Pleasant Plains a long time.
“This is just like the community I grew up in. I felt right at home immediately,” he said.