HEBRON – The new principal of Hebron Academy’s middle school, a former rock n’ roller, although you would never guess it when he’s wearing his vest and tie, remembers touring with The Cranberries when they were getting hot.
“We toured with them twice,” Paul Brouwer said, speaking about the Irish band that was more popular a few years ago with hits like “Zombie” and “Linger.”
“The first time (on tour) they were nobodys, then their album took off,” he said.
And in the beginning, Dolores O’Riordan, the lead singer, was friendly with Brouwer’s band, the Gigolo Aunts, but when she became big, she barely acknowledged Brouwer and his band mates, he said.
That attitude of elitism Brouwer couldn’t stand then in the music business, and in many ways he can’t now as he takes over directorship of the private middle school.
“It’s a pretty neat place,” Brouwer said, sitting in his third-floor office in the clock-tower building, which offers views over the green fields of the campus. “I just wish there was some way we could do it for free.”
In an interview Thursday morning, Brouwer said he hopes to reach out to the community in his new position, and to encourage more local students and their parents to look into enrolling at the school.
There’s a good amount of financial aid available, he said.
The middle school has 35 students in sixth, seventh and eighth grades. Before Brouwer became principal, he taught science, math, music and outdoor skills to middle schoolers, starting with the school in 1998. He also runs the outdoor education program at the academy’s high school.
About six years ago, Brouwer obtained his Maine guide license, and he uses the wilderness skills with his students, which helps nurture the values he supports most as a teacher and principal.
“I want to help the kids become lifelong learners, self-motivated and self-reliant,” he said.
John King, the academy’s headmaster, said by phone Thursday, “He’s one of those renaissance people who connects with kids on many levels.”
Bouwer’s degree, from the Crane School of Music at State University of New York at Potsdam, which is the town he grew up in, is in music education. After graduating, Brouwer moved to Boston in 1987, staying for eight years while trying to make a go at it with his rock band, which named itself after a Pink Floyd song. But in his early 30s, he told himself that he was getting older and needed to find a steady job.
His first teaching gig was in Turner at the Tripp Middle School. He and his wife, who has Maine roots, moved to Maine then. They live in Hebron with their two daughters, ages 8 and 6.
The glamorous, or semi-glamorous, days of being a rock star are mostly over, although Brouwer said he plays guitar, piano and drums with the middle school rock band.
And his band’s first major album, Flippin’ Out, can still be found if you look for it.
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