A Passion for Learning
Marquardt takes up Legacy principal position

She’s an impassioned and eloquent teacher who truly cares about education — not only the subject she has taught for most of her career, but also about encouraging learning as a lifelong skill and sharing her passion with the world.

Former Taylor High School Assistant Principal Norma Marquardt is the new principal at Legacy Early College High School, and with her passion, Marquardt seems like the perfect woman for the job.

“This is something that I’ve always been interested in,” Marquardt said. “Working with students who are underrepresented and giving them the opportunity to be successful.”

Marquardt’s “greatest joy” is helping people “see the world and decipher it,” she said, and with her background in teaching U.S. History, she has learned how important learning about the world can be.

“I’m a firm believer that if we don’t help people and give them the tools to succeed, then we will not survive as a country,” Marquardt said.

In the capacity as principal at Legacy, which provides up to two years of free college equivalency credits to promising students through an accelerated dual-credit program, Marquardt’s job will be to enable students “who don’t normally see themselves as college students” to achieve their higher education dreams, she said.

With the third cohort of students joining the Legacy ranks, the campus is more cramped than ever, but continues to be successful. Marquardt’s goal is to help the campus continue to grow and, once the East Williamson County Higher Education Center’s flagship building is complete, to help expand the program to that building.

The program is still a half-day program due to space issues, however, and Marquardt intends to see it through to a full-day program. Students are now transported from the Legacy campus to the Taylor High School campus each afternoon for their electives, including fine arts, choir, PE, foreign language and culinary arts.

Marquardt lives in Pflugerville, and taught high school-level U.S. History and Advanced Placement U.S. History courses in Pflugerville ISD for 17 years. When the job as assistant principal at Taylor High School became available, she decided to apply, in spite of her apprehension.

“I really struggled for a long time about when I was going to move out of the classroom,” Marquardt said. “At first, I didn’t go eagerly, but what we shared was that when you teach in your classroom, you reach those 150 kids a year, but if you can impact the passion of the teachers, then the number of kids you reach becomes 10-fold.

“I will never forget what it means to be an educator, to be a teacher first, but I am here to help the teachers have passion and the resources that they need to be a role model.”

It was this passion that she showed to then-THS Principal Kim Mason that earned her the job. The administration “took a chance” on Marquardt, she said, since she had no administrative background, but the gusto with which she expressed her love of education was too much to pass up.

“Now, I think that by hiring me to be principal at Legacy, the district also thinks this was a worthwhile effort and that they have confidence in me,” Marquardt said. “We are continually growing, and everything that happens in our lives and every incident is something to be learned from, and I continue to learn every single day.”