Balancing a large family with a successful career takes grace, patience, and passion. Brian Jones, Assistant Principal of Portage High School and father to seven children, makes the balancing act look easy, all while finding opportunities to give back to the community. Through his continuous efforts to raise a beautiful family, to help foster the development of countless students, and to create meaningful and lasting change in the community, Jones exemplifies what it means to be a true role model for children.
Growing up in Lowell, Jones’ appreciation for the Region began at a young age. After completing his undergraduate at Ball State, Jones followed his passion and began teaching and coaching at Lake Central for six years. Jones spent the next four years teaching and coaching at Crown Point before becoming the Assistant Principal of Portage High School in 2018. Looking back, Jones can see how he was always destined for the education field.
“I had a few significant mentors that had an immense influence on making me accountable and responsible at a pivotal point in my life. Because of them and events that I went through in my life, I felt that education would be a great fit for me to teach and mentor kids,” Jones said. “It turned out to be true. Because of all my experiences, I’ve been able to empathize and relate to a lot of varied situations we have at Portage. It makes me a greater asset to be able to give advice, guidance, and direction.”
As the Assistant Principal, Jones works hard to connect with each student on a personal level, using his personal and professional life experiences to relate to the students to help them become the best versions of themselves.
“For every kid that sits down in a chair across from me, my goal is that I want to treat them as if they were my own kid,” Jones said. “In retrospect, I treat them the way that I hope an adult would treat my own kid if they were sitting across from them.”
Jones has had his fair share of parenting experience, as he and his wife have seven children. Having both biological children and adopted children and with his children varying greatly in age from one another, Jones uses his experiences as a father in his role as Assistant Principal.
“Working with the foster care system and DCS really opened up my eyes to what some children have to go through,” Jones said. “I feel like I want to save everyone. My wife is the same way. At the end of the day, we just do what we feel like is the right thing to do. We try to lead by example and hope that our children grow up to be good, caring, empathetic people as well. I sincerely believe that we exist to create teachable moments.”
This philosophy helps guide Jones through his day-to-day interactions and decision-making.
In addition to being a leader at Portage High School and an outstanding father, Jones extends his caring heart to the community through outreach programs. Jones’ involvement with fostering children highlighted the struggles that many foster children experience. To help ease the transition between foster homes for children, Jones coordinated and created “Bags of Hope,” a community-outreach program that delivers care bags to children in foster care.
“Sometimes, we would have foster kids come to the house, and they’d have one, maybe two, changes of clothes, and that was it,” Jones said. “Everything they had was left at their house. That broke my heart. These kids were going from home to home and didn’t have something that was their own. They were scared and sometimes struggled to have their own identity.”
The bags contained age-appropriate items to help children in foster care. Items included homemade fleece blankets, nightlights, flashlights, journals or diaries, writing and coloring supplies, educational card games, stuffed animals, outdoor toys, books, and more. Jones was floored at the student and community response to “Bags of Hope.”
“It caught on like wildfire,” Jones said. “Just trying to create that empathic 'a-ha' moment for middle-school-aged students was amazing and fulfilling. The outreach program became something the students talked about all year long. I had parents working to get donations of fleece, kids that asked for toys for ‘Bags of Hope’ instead of Easter gifts, and kids that were using their birthday money and allowances to give. It was very empowering to see that from the kids. Doing things for others becomes infectious and contagious, and I wanted our students to feel that.”
The program has found success and continues to grow each year. The first year, Jones’ students participated, making 65 care bags for foster children. The second year, 180 bags were assembled. In the third year of “Bags of Hope,” Jones extended the program as a school-wide initiative, creating friendly competition between students that yielded an impressive 380 care bags which were handed off to the Lake County DCS in a school-wide gathering.
While the impact that Jones has had on his family, his schools, and his community have been remarkable, Jones still recognizes that he could not have done it without the help of others.
“My wife is an absolute saint,” Jones said. “Sometimes, I had to be gone for long hours, and she supported the raising of our children and home while I was in grad school, teaching, or coaching varsity football and wrestling. She’s a saint, and I don’t know how she does it. She pushes me, tests me, and makes me become a better person each day. I am also very appreciative and will forever be grateful of Mr. Max Gill, Portage High School principal, for taking a chance on me, allowing me to foster and build upon my leadership skills.”
Jones has found a home in the Portage School System, creating a deep appreciation for the work environment, the personnel, the students, and the values of the school community.
“The administrative team at the high school as well as Dr. Amanda Alaniz, Dr. Michael Stephens, and Mr. Rob Wilson, are making decisions that are incredibly student-centered, and their vision aligns with my own,” Jones said. “There are so many incredible things happening at Portage that don’t get the press they deserve. On a day-to-day basis, I am amazed by the things that I see in our building. From our students, teachers, support staff, and other personnel, something exceptional and meaningful is happening daily. Portage really is a pretty special place, and with the current leadership and ‘buy-in’ from the school and the community, it’s somewhere that I plan on staying. Students, teachers, staff members, parents, and community members really do have reasons to say that they are 'proud to be an Indian,' including myself."
With an open heart and a drive to succeed, Brian Jones is an outstanding role model for his children, for the students, and for the community.