By Sharron Luttrell
If you’re looking for Liz Garden, you won’t find her behind a desk. She doesn’t believe in them. In fact, Garden didn’t have a desk until she became principal of Clough Elementary School four years ago.
“Desks create a barrier,” she said, explaining that she spends her days outside her office with students and staff. Garden’s hands-on approach is one of the many qualities cited by the Massachusetts School Administrators’ Association when they named her 2026 Thomas C. Passios MSAA Massachusetts Elementary School Principal of the Year.
“Over the last four years, she has stayed true to being that ‘personable, kid-oriented, and collaborative’ leader who understands the value of inclusion and the power of a positive school culture,” Mendon-Upton Regional School Superintendent Maureen Cohen wrote in announcing the award to Clough families and staff.
An accidental career
Garden didn’t start out wanting to be a school principal – or even a teacher for that matter. But fresh out of college with an English degree and no clear career path, she took a job working with children with severe autism and traumatic brain injuries. Garden discovered a knack for teaching, but while she loved the job, the pay was low and the schedule grueling. To make ends meet, she rose early each morning to coach swimming in Northern Virginia where she lived, drove to her teaching job in Rockville, Maryland, then back across the state line in time for her evening shift as assistant manager at a Williams & Sonoma store.
Eventually Garden left for another position in a private school, then, after moving to Massachusetts, found work as a language teacher at the Boston Higashi School, a residential program in Randolph for children on the autism spectrum.
That’s where much of her educational philosophy – and her aversion to desks – took root.
The school kept the teachers’ desks in a separate room to encourage interaction with students and collaboration with each other. It also had a daily staff debriefing where teachers would talk about their day and plan lessons together. The school set high expectations for their students, aiming for 100% success on their individual goals.
“I take so much of what I learned in those three years and apply it to the rest of my career,” Garden said.
From private to public, teacher to administrator
Garden made the switch to public schools after earning her master’s degree in child development from Wheelock College. Eventually, she received a certificate of advanced graduate study in educational leadership and management from Fitchburg State University and spent a month in Japan studying the educational system as a Fullbright fellow.
She was on a summer cross-country road trip with her mother when the Leominster school system interviewed her by phone for an opening there. By the time the pair had traveled from New Mexico to Arizona, Garden was the early childhood program’s brand-new assistant principal.
Garden became active in education organizations, serving as a board member then president of the MSAA. She coaches other administrators, has served as editorial adviser to the National Association of Elementary School Principals and was named to the National Coronavirus Task Force. Her most recent project is helping to shape an early childhood education guidebook for principals.
“I’m really impressed by Liz’s capacity to spread her leadership and experience in coaching and mentoring other leaders in Massachusetts,” Cohen said. “She contributes beyond what she’s doing here. She just gives of herself internally and externally as a leader.”
Making a mark on Clough
As family demands and career considerations evolved, Garden left Leominster to become a principal in the Groton-Dunstable district, then later, in the Wachusett school district. Her daughter was born while she was at Groton-Dunstable, and she and her husband adopted their foster child while Garden was working in the Wachusett system. Both children are 11 and the couple, who live in Shrewsbury, also have a stepson, 27.
When former Clough principal Janice Gallagher announced her retirement, Garden applied for the position. She was familiar with Cohen’s leadership style and knew Nipmuc co-principals Mary Anne Moran and John Clements.
“The leadership team is very collaborative. We all have the same philosophy,” Garden said. For her part, Cohen said she was drawn to Garden’s “student-focused” leadership.
“We were looking for someone who could continue leading the positive school culture that we had at Clough Elementary at the time, but also bring it to the next level, which is something she absolutely has done,” Cohen said.
Garden has established new traditions at the school, each designed to inspire a collaborative spirit and excitement about learning and teaching.
One of Garden’s first official acts as principal was to place a “Parking for rockstar Clough educator” cover over the “Principal Parking” sign in the small lot outside of her office.
“When I came here there was a principal parking spot. I said, ‘Why do I need a parking spot?’” Garden said. Now, each week, teachers nominate a deserving staff member for the prime spot. Garden notifies the winner along with the reason for the nomination.
Garden has also introduced school-wide book swaps, and the “birthday book,” program, in which each student gets to choose a new book from the birthday-book shelf on their birthday.
Another tradition Garden created is “Cardboard Creation Day,” which she debuted after noticing cardboard boxes accumulate over the summer. Students prepare by reading books about making things out of cardboard, then are set loose in a gym filled with cardboard — and rolls and rolls of duct tape. The students fashion whatever their imaginations can conjure: furniture, cars, buildings, clothing — one group made an arcade game with working parts. Cardboard Creation Day has since expanded to Memorial School in Upton.
Then there are the “play days,” usually held on half days. Lessons are put aside for unstructured play. Students can build with Legos, play board games, make art, or immerse themselves in any other type of play, as long as it doesn’t involve electronics. Ironically, the students’ favorite thing to play is school, Garden said.
“They’ll do a full-on phonics lessons,” she said. “You see kids collaborating, shy kids come out of their shell.”
Where everyone knows her name
Garden remembers years ago when the school principal visited her second-grade classroom. When she left, a student asked who she was. Garden was taken aback.
“I’d be mortified if there was a kid who didn’t know my name,” she said. She knows the names of each of Clough’s 438 students — and their stories. Cohen jokes that students flock to Garden like she’s a celebrity, wanting a hug or to tell her what’s on their minds.
Garden wouldn’t have it any other way.
“As a mother, I want my kids to have amazing experiences in school and if I can do that for other people’s kids, well then I’m doing my job.”
Photos below courtesy of Clough Elementary School: Principal Liz Garden snuggles a baby goat outside of the school last month; posing with Spanish immersion kindergartener Skylar who won a chance to put a Scholastic Book Fair book on the principal’s tab; with author John Schu, who visited Clough at the beginning of the school year; and with Clough administrative assistants Tracee Perkins and Julia Busby.
