Meet Blake’s New Dean of Students

In news you may have missed, Jason Miller is now Blake’s Dean of Students! We sat with Mr. Miller and others to find out about his position and why he is a great fit for it!

According to Mr. Miller, a Dean of Students is an administrative position that places their main focus on supporting the students above all else. His role is to help students with whatever they have trouble with. He is there to be a trusted adult for students to go to if they ever need help with getting back on track with their academics, assistance with any attendance issues, and many other things that involve helping students in whatever way he can. 

Mr. Adelekan said he added this position because he felt like “there was a disconnect between what students and what students need,” so he added a staff position to help fill those needs. To give students someone they know for sure they can go to if they need anything. 

Before coming to Blake, Mr. Miller worked at Benjamin Benneker Middle School for six years. While working there, he was involved in many different roles such as: math teacher, athletic trainer, boys basketball coach, and a director for the Excel Beyond the Bell program, a Montgomery Country Rec program that “collaborates with schools to bring four to five different programs after school for several hours for students, and these activities range from anywhere from sports to art to you know just a wide range of different activities,” as stated by Mr. Miller. His gentle and open personality would translate well to his new student-based position. 

Mr. Miller’s former students at Benneker held him in high regard their teacher. One of his students, Senior Tahir Abdullah-Raheem, noted that Mr. Miller was “really understanding” and  “really easy to talk to, if you need anything.” His teaching style was said to be enjoyable and engaging, making students like Sophomore Jasmin Price feel that “it was fun being in that class.”

He was said to be a pretty popular teacher back at Benneker. Talk of him was able to reach students like Maren Emerson who never had him as a math teacher, but had friends who were in his class. She remembers her friends telling her that they liked the class since they had “other math teachers and they were a bit more strict than he was.” And that he was “definitely more like chill and…easier to work with.”

Mr. Miller applied for the position of Dean of Students, after our current Principal, Mr.  Adelekan approached him about the position once Mr. Adelekan had begun working on adding this position. When talking with Mr. Adelekan, he told us that while working with Mr. Miller, he saw all the  mentoring positions Mr. Miller took part in, he figured that “his life’s work is really mentoring and supporting kids,” so he said he hired him because, “he had a very clear plan for how we could make that happen.”

Overall, Mr. Miller is a great guy to talk to if you need help with anything or need support of any kind. He is a sweet person who will understand whatever situation you’re in and do his best to help you out!