After leaving Diamond Bar High School for a year, Matt Brummett has returned to become the interim assistant principal, replacing  David Hong until the position is filled permanently.

“[DBHS] is a place I enjoy coming to work every day because the students and staff are so great,” Brummett said. “It’s a special place and it will always be home to me.”

During his previous DBHS career, which lasted for eight years, he taught social science and served as the varsity girls soccer coach for five years. For the next three years, he was the instructional dean of Health and Humanities. In 2018, Brummett was offered the position of vice principal at Suzanne Middle School, which gave him an opportunity to experience working at a middle school.

“I wanted to diversify myself as an administrator a little more,” he said. “I think that there’s value to understanding what different levels are like as you go through your administrative career.”

Brummett hopes to make his position as assistant principal at DBHS a permanent one and is prepared to go through the interviewing process once it begins. As the current interim assistant principal, he hopes to connect and build relationships with the staff and students at Diamond Bar.

“I don’t know if I would have accepted the opportunity to serve as the interim if I didn’t have the intention to stay,” he said. “I’m not sure that would be fair to both DBHS and Suzanne.”

During his time as one of the deans at DBHS, Brummett focused on the curriculum. When he transferred to Suzanne, he was in charge of conducting discipline. Now, as interim assistant principal, everything is on a larger scale with more students, a larger staff and a bigger environment.

In the year he was away from DBHS, Brummett has missed working on the high school campus. He has mainly missed the students and working with them in events such as football games, orchestra concerts and choir performances. To Brummett, high school students are different from middle school students because they become more serious as they prepare for college, and at high school, the stakes are much higher than they are in middle school.

“I really liked the middle school, and those kids were great, but I think high school kids are at a unique point in their life where they’re leaving their immaturity behind and [becoming] more relatable per say,” he said.

Brummett is excited for all of the events that DBHS has to offer. According to him, the events was one of the elements that was missing at the middle school. Other than the events, Brummett is happy to have the opportunity to work closely with the DBHS staff and students.