According to cliché, a school's assistant principal is the enforcer. The principal can be a nice guy or gal, but the assistant principal is the mean disciplinarian students are sent to see when they get in trouble.
Jean Cerisier isn't that kind of assistant principal.
For one thing, her office at Ascension Catholic School in Minneapolis has Christmas lights hanging above her desk because the kids like to look at them. She has an open-door policy and normally keeps the ceiling light off, letting sunshine pour in through the big window.
"I want it to be a welcoming spot," Cerisier said. When students are sent to see her for disciplinary reasons, she'll talk to them conversationally "until they just relax," she said. "Then I say, 'Let's talk about what you did.'"
Cerisier, 68, is retiring after 43 years on the Ascension staff, most of them as a gym teacher and coach, the past two years as assistant principal. Widely known as "Ms. Jean," she is beloved and respected in the school community for her positivity, for the kind ways in which she interacts with students — at Ascension they call them "scholars" — while still holding them accountable.
"She doesn't want kids to equate seeing her with being in trouble,'' said Principal Benito Matias. "She's gentle yet firm. The kids know Ms. Jean as someone who cares about them and someone who is a no-nonsense type of person and doesn't really take a bunch of stuff, if you will — from scholars, from parents, from teachers. She's very candid, she's not abrasive. She's able to be very direct with folks."
Adding the nine years she attended as a student, from kindergarten through eighth grade, to her four decades on the staff, Cerisier has been part of the school for well over a third of its 125-year history. She has coached multiple sports and also refereed — she reffed at the initial Minnesota State High School League girls' state basketball tournament and was the first woman in Minnesota to ref a boys' high school basketball game.
Her career will be celebrated at a public retirement party Saturday from noon to 3 p.m. at the school. There's likely to be plenty of praise for her, because people speaking of Cerisier tend to use glowing terms.