Clint Williams grew up in a family of educators; however, he wanted to cut his own path, which eventually took a detour into teaching.
Williams, 35, was recently hired as the new principal at Bald Knob High School. He has been the principal at Hazen High School the past two years.
“My dad, [Jeff Williams], has 35-plus years in education,” Williams said. “He coached at McRae and was superintendent at McRae and Rose Bud, and now he’s director of the Wilbur D. Mills Co-op in Beebe. My brother [Geral Williams] is in his 12th year of education, coaching and teaching PE at Beebe. My aunt [Terry Williams] retired from Cabot as volleyball coach.
“With her and my dad being in education for so long, everyone thought I was going to be a coach, just like my dad. I said, ‘I’m not going to do that. I’m going to do my own thing.’ Come to find out, I went into education.”
Williams graduated from McRae High School in 2002. He played baseball at North Arkansas Community College in Harrison. He transferred to Harding University in Searcy, where he played one season for the Bisons baseball team and graduated in 2007 with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree.
“I graduated and worked at Regions Bank for five years,” he said. “I said it wasn’t for me.”
Williams said he was good at math, and that is why he went into business.
“I’ve always been good with numbers,” he said. “From early on, I was good at math. I took a lot of accounting classes. It was easy for me to do that. I always knew in the back of my mind that I probably should be teaching math. I went against everyone telling me that I should be a teacher. It really took two or three years of not teaching to realize that is where I needed to be.”
Williams decided to take advantage of getting a Master of Arts in Teaching degree from the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. That allowed him to become a nontraditional teacher.
“A math job opened up at Hazen, and I loved it,” he said.
Williams taught seventh-grade math at Hazen High School for three years, starting during the 2011-12 school year. He then went to White County Central High School in Judsonia for two years while earning his certification to become an administrator.
“The kids and the community drew me back to Hazen,” he said. “I hated to leave at the time. My son had severe health conditions. When I had to leave Hazen, I got a little bit of a pay raise. It allowed my wife to stay home. I had already started on getting my principal stuff. When I finished it, in my second year at White County Central, the assistant principal’s job at Hazen came open, and I put in for it.
“I guess I had done a good enough job at both places that they hired me.”
Following the 2016-17 school year, Hazen Principal Roxanne Bradow retired.
“It allowed me to become high school principal,” Williams said. “Then the Bald Knob job opened up. I really didn’t think about applying for it.”
Wes Roberts, the current Bald Knob principal, will leave the district at the end of the school year to work for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
“I’ve known him probably since I was 12 years old,” Williams said. “I saw he was leaving, and I asked him how good of a place it was. I talked to my wife and put in for it. I prayed about it: ‘If the good Lord wants me there, then that’s where I’ll go. If not, I’m happy where I am.’”
Williams said God gave him the opportunity.
“I’m sad to be leaving Hazen but excited, at the same time, to be going to Bald Knob,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. I love Hazen. I love the community. There are wonderful people here. But to be closer to home and to be educating kids in the county where I’m from — it’s special.”
Williams said he knew many Bald Knob people when he was growing up playing summer baseball.
“I’m still in touch with a lot of them,” he said. “When I told them I was coming to their alma mater, they were excited. That makes me feel special.
“I’m going to have their kids in school one day when they come up. My kids will be with theirs, too.”
Beth Robinson, who serves as an elementary math teacher, as well as the girls basketball and softball coach at Hazen High School, said she considers Williams to be a good friend.
“As a fellow teacher, he was very open to suggestions,” Robinson said. “He was a very good math teacher, in my opinion. My son Hunter had him [during Williams’ first year at Hazen]. He learned a lot from Clint.”
Robinson said Williams being a first-year teacher may have been hard for him, but being male was a plus.
“Kids respond better to male teachers than they do female teachers anyway,” Robinson said. “I think he did a really good job as a teacher.”
Robinson said Williams is good with discipline.
“I thoroughly enjoyed working with him,” she said. “I’ll miss working with him. I consider him a friend, too.”
This year is Williams’ eighth in education.
“The good Lord has blessed me to move up so quickly in education,” he said. “He’s given me opportunities that I never thought would have happened so quickly.”
Williams said Hazen and Bald Knob are comparable to his own alma mater of McRae.
“I’ve always said this: ‘I love small schools,’” he said, “because to me, I get to build relationships, not just with the kids that I teach but all the kids. As a teacher, there are kids you don’t have in class, but you know who they are, and you can start building that relationship ahead of time before they get in your class or continue that after they leave your class.”
Williams said he has been interested in teaching at bigger schools because of the money they pay.
“Then you start reflecting on some things you’d missed out on in this life,” he said. “That’s not everything. You might miss some things. To be honest, I put in for jobs at bigger schools, but the good Lord never said, ‘That’s where you need to be.’
“I’m a firm believer in that the good Lord is going to put me where I’m supposed to be. He never afforded me that opportunity, so I never questioned it and went on.”
Williams said he wants the people of Bald Knob to know that he cares for kids.
“If you ask around, my stamp is, I care for kids,” he said. “I’m going to do what’s best for the kids and Bald Knob High School and the Bald Knob School District. I’m looking forward to telling the kids, ‘We want you to do the best you can. You may not see it here, but what we’re doing is going to be getting you ready to be successful in life.’
“I’m looking forward to putting that in their heads, if it’s not already there, but it probably is. Maybe it will just grow on them.”
Williams said he looks forward to being Roberts’ successor at Bald Knob.
“He said he’s excited for me to be his successor, and I’m excited to be that,” Williams said. “He’s a good Christian man. He’s done good things. He’s got a chance to further his ministry through something else.
“I’m excited to be following in his footsteps and leading Bald Knob High School in the right direction.”
During his time at Hazen, Williams has seen his ups and downs, he said.
Williams said one of the toughest things he dealt with at school was the drowning death of junior Drake Jones, who died while playing on an icy pond in January 2018.
“I still see him in my classroom rocking back and forth, doing math,” Williams said, referring to Jones when he was in the seventh grade. “That was probably the toughest time for me, professionally, dealing with that tragedy.”
Williams said counselors were brought to the school for a couple of days following Jones’ death.
“We really worked with the family on the funeral arrangements, if they needed the school or something like that,” he said. “We were letting the kids heal, letting them take time to talk to someone. So local preachers were available if the students wanted to talk to them instead of counselors.”
Williams said the student body bounced back, but it was difficult.
“It’s a great community here. … They still miss him,” Williams said of Jones. “They bounced back and made their faith stronger.”
One of his biggest thrills while at the school was seeing the Hazen Hornets football team play for the Class 2A state championship last December.
“This year, our run to War Memorial Stadium was magical, but we came up a little short,” he said. “Those student-athletes played their hearts out.”
He also said the students worked hard in his seventh-grade math class.
“They knew time and place,” he said. “We were going to learn some stuff. Every so often, they’d get me off track and get me going on some stories about my baseball days. Those are probably some of the best days because they learned more from that than from my teaching.
“They were good kids and still did their work. Hopefully, they learned something mathwise in my class.”
Staff writer Mark Buffalo can be reached at (501) 399-3676 or mbuffalo@arkansasonline.com.