Meet Urbana's ‘Fresh Principal Nance’

Taren Nance is loud in every sense.

Whether the second-year Urbana High School principal is wearing one of his brightly colored shirts with a matching fedora and complementary button-up vest, unleashing his cackling laugh as he interacts with students, or shouting “It’s the U, baby” as he livestreams from various school events, his high energy is generally matched by his wardrobe and the volume of his voice.

It was an absence of noise, though, that struck him to his core in December as he walked through the doors of a funeral home, where one of his students lay in a casket.

Nance tried to prepare himself for that moment when he moved to town after spending his first 34 years of life in and around his hometown of Pocomoke City, a small town on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. During his first 10 years in education, he had never experienced the loss of a student to gun violence.

He quickly realized, though, that nothing could have prepared him for it.

“It was nothing like I actually thought it was going to be like,” he said. “Because when you’re actually in the moment and you hear the stillness and you hear the silence, it’s a moment I can’t really describe.

“It was very somber. I saw some of my kids were grieving, some looked confused — a lot of our Black males, we’re taught to keep that tough posture, so they were trying to keep that up.

“But when they walked up to that casket, there were like 10 Champaign-Urbana kids that walked up in unity.

“I was thinking, ‘How do I create this unity without having this moment happen? How do I establish these types of moments without the death?’ So, it was personal,” he said.

Nance knew this moment would come when he accepted the job last summer. Champaign-Urbana’s qualities drew him to the Midwest, but the community’s problems related to gun violence attracted him equally.

“I took this job not just to be principal, but to save lives, because I knew that gun violence was prevalent out here,” he said. “I lost my first student in October, and that’s the first time I’ve been to a student’s funeral in my 10-year career. So, I knew that I wasn’t just coming out here to be Fresh Principal Nance and this flashy, energetic guy. I was really coming to make an impact for generations, even after I’m gone.”

After that funeral, Nance moved into action, eventually creating an organization that he hopes defines his legacy here.

“For generations, we’ve lived under the same systematic way of dealing with the community and our kids,” said Maurice Hayes, a community activist who founded HV Neighborhood Transformation. “His way is totally different.”

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Some of Nance’s differences were plain to see right away. Each day, he’d come to school with one of the dozens of brightly colored hats that fill his closet, along with some sort of flashy attire. More recently, he’s added Mardi Gras beads to his outfits, which he repurposed as “Anti-Violence Beads” that he hands out to students when they complete certain tasks.

“Some kids came up to me and said, ‘This is how you dress every day? Dripped out every day? You’re the freshest principal we’ve ever seen,’” Nance said. “And then I’m like, ‘So, I’m Fresh Principal Nance?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah.’”

Soon, he became known as Fresh Principal Nance around the halls of the school and in the district office. He printed off business cards and changed his email signature to reflect his new title.

His relationships at the school, though, went deeper. Nance let staff and students know he has an open-door policy. If they have a crisis that needs immediate attention, he’ll usually meet with them right away, said his secretary, Setha Kim. Otherwise, he generally meets them later that day.

“He’s so easygoing,” Kim said. “The students love him because he’s down to earth, and he doesn’t hold that authoritative type of attitude. The kids love that he’s down to earth, that he can converse with them on their level, not as someone who’s above them. Every day, he comes in with a smile regardless of what the situation might look like.”

After the funeral, an idea began to form in Nance’s mind as he became acquainted with community leaders. The community had plenty of capable leaders, he found, but they weren’t acting in unison.

“I had clergy people that I met, business people, politicians and law enforcement, government and mental health” advocates, he said. “I said, ‘Let me put everyone in one place, because I know collective intelligence is a science. You can’t solve all of society’s issues by yourself.’ We have great individual programming out here, but we don’t have a framework or a system or a network in place. So, that was the initial goal.”

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So in April, Nance brought some of those leaders together as part of what he called the Anti-Violence Collective. Among those who have played active roles in at least some of the weekly meetings since then are:

• Urbana Superintendent Jennifer Ivory-Tatum.
• CU Trauma and Resilience Initiative Director Karen Simms.
• The Rev. Robert Freeman of First United Methodist Church of Urbana.
• Champaign Community Relations Manager Tracy Parsons.
• Champaign County Judge Sam Limentato.
• Champaign Mayor Deb Feinen.
• Urbana Community Engagement coordinator Lemond Peppers.
• DREAAM founder and CEO Tracy Dace.
• Sam Smith, director of civic engagement and social practice at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.
• University of Illinois Professor and Hip Hop Xpress founder Will Patterson.

Hayes, who spent 17 years in prison after he was convicted of first-degree murder at the age of 17, was skeptical when he first attended a meeting. During his six years in C-U, he’s worked with teenage boys and young adults, helping them develop skills to keep them out of the situation he found himself in as a teenager.

Throughout the years, though, he’s grown wary of community meetings where too often, he said, leaders speak about their own organizations and don’t listen to voices like his, which he sees as a “voice that connects to the streets and to the people.”

Nance, he quickly realized, was different.

“When I saw the presentation, my reaction was, ‘That’s a hit,’” Hayes said. “What attracted me to it is that it was really different. It really wasn’t about him, it was really, ‘What can we do with all of the resources we have in this place?’ And he’s new here, so for me, it was figuring out who this dude is.”

“I went on his social media and saw what he was doing and spoke to a few people who knew him, and integrity is what I saw, genuineness is what I saw. His mission is what it is, and nothing else.”

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The group’s discussions are based around the Socratic Method for Civil Discourse, which focuses conversations around relevant, focused thoughts, questions and responses, along with his own guidelines regarding mutual respect and trust, regardless of the titles of the people in the room.

“I think that there’s an openness and earnestness to hear from a whole spectrum of individuals,” Limentato said, “rather than just each individual saying, ‘I’m going to bring my agenda or my program only,’ to say, ‘How can everyone work together?’”

Each meeting, specific topics and programs are presented. With Nance leading the discussion, the group systematically discusses how to turn its desired outcome into reality. All the while, Nance draws a flow chart with different colored markers on a whiteboard.

“Let’s say I presented a topic of, ‘We want to do a men’s group,’” Nance said. “I’ll say, ‘OK, group, this is the concept, let’s have an AVC discussion.’ Their conversation and thoughts are, ‘How do we layer it, what’s the foundation, how do we add value, how do we take the concept from a concept to something that’s an action?’

“What I do is, I go to the whiteboard and start writing down conversations. And when I finish, we have the end result, which is an action or a working concept. Versus sitting for two hours and debating back and forth about a men’s group, and how to do this and how to do that. No, we know we want a men’s group. The question is, how do we add value from our own backgrounds to help create it?”

Thus far, the group has secured a few grants, including one for freedom schools and another that will pay for Simms to conduct youth mental-health first-aid training.

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The ideas the group has suggested are broad. For example, the group has proposed a possible plan to provide students alternatives to suspensions.

“One of the thoughts of the AVC is to take kids who are fighting (who) would (normally) get a three-day suspension,” Nance said. “Well, instead of serving that at home, if we get the funding through the AVC, I’d take those kids on a two-day trip. I will take you, get you dressed, you may go to dinner, you may go to a show in Chicago, then write a three-page essay for English credit.”

Long-term, Nance hopes to use the collective to create a website that serves as a “one-stop shop” for families who are new to town, or simply need help. The site would ask about the ages of their children, whether they have access to services that provide medical care or transportation, and whether they’re looking for a home church. Then, they’d be directly connected to one of the group’s members or partners.

Through a potential partnership with Ameren, which Nance said the group hopes to secure soon, families would also be able to get help paying their electricity bills.

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The group is still in its early stages. But by simply facilitating conversation between community leaders who wouldn’t otherwise meet, Nance has filled a void.

“In June, I said, ‘Let me get some feedback about these meetings, because no one’s getting paid, you’re showing up for two hours every Monday, so let me know if this is really doing something,’” Nance said. “And everybody at the table says, ‘This is different. This feels like a true dive into people’s perspectives to create innovative solutions to gun violence.’ I’m just excited and proud that the framework I created, people are really taking to it.”

The group’s meetings, which went on hiatus for a few weeks while Nance prepared for the new school year, began with 10 founding members and ballooned to dozens at the most recent gathering. Just over a year after he moved hundreds of miles away from the only region he’s called home, Nance is well on his way to establishing a legacy in his new home beyond the walls of his school.

“He came here as a principal,” Hayes said. “As long as he does his job as a principal and an administrator, he’s fine. He’s superseded that. He dove into the community. (He said), ‘This principal thing, I’ve got this, but I’m here now. This is my home now, so I want my home and the children of my home to be better. So, he put this on himself.’ It wasn’t part of his job title.

“When people make it to positions like that, they’re more focused on the position and job security and how to maintain this career-driven path. He don’t give a damn about that. He gives a damn about, ‘How do I save these kids and put them on a different trajectory in life?’ That’s what he stands for, and I’ve never seen a person in a position like that mean so much to the community.

“I’ve never seen it.”