Tutus, swim caps and accountability: Inside Shoreline Middle School’s beloved principal duo

Colleen Martin and Melissa Nix finish each other’s sentences and aren’t afraid to hold each other accountable. 

Their distinct personalities are complementary. Martin, reserved and calm, doesn’t like to be photographed, while Nix, bubbly and animated, is known to wear tutus to school to celebrate Feb. 2 (or 2/2).

Martin and Nix aren’t the main characters in a sitcom about two teenage best friends. They’re the principal and assistant principal, respectively, of Shoreline Middle School, and considered by parents and staff to be a “dream team” that has been essential to creating a school culture that prioritizes social-emotional health, accountability and fun. 

Principal Martin, 58, has been in the seat for the past 16 years and assistant principal Nix, 49, is in her sixth year as second-in-command. They call each other co-principal and share duties rather than dividing responsibilities as the roles traditionally do. For example, an assistant principal typically takes on student discipline, but Nix and Martin share the work. They say that might increase the number of hours they put in, but it makes them a stronger team. And it’s more fun. 

“I’m the principal, she’s assistant principal – but even the kids say, ‘No, the other principal,’” said Martin, laughing. “It’s great to always have a thought partner. We often spend most of the day — when we’re not out with kids — in my office or in her office. We don’t really work in separate offices.” 

Nix added that it’s meaningful that Martin doesn’t feel she has to keep the head principal role to herself.

“It’s sweet for you to relinquish that,” said Nix. “Some people might be really needing to hold on to that power, title – and she doesn’t.”

Teachers, parents and local educators say it’s rare to have an assistant principal and principal to stay at the same school for so long, and for them to remain a team for several years and be so widely beloved. Between them, they have 54 years working at Shoreline Middle School. 

Several people told Lookout they credit the duo for creating a fun but rigorous academic atmosphere, implementing successful restorative justice practices to resolve student conflicts and increasing student involvement in extracurricular activities to help develop students’ sense of belonging. The school has about 50 staff members – including 29 teachers – and serves about 480 students in grades six through eight. 

Their work hasn’t gone unrecognized. The Santa Cruz County Office of Education named Martin the 2017 administrator of the year, and then gave Nix the same title in 2023. That year, the California Department of Education named Shoreline Middle as one of 36 schools on the state’s 2023 “Schools to Watch” list, which recognizes “high-performing model schools [that] demonstrate academic excellence, social equity, and responsiveness to the needs of young adolescents.” 

Martin said they’ve both had opportunities to take jobs at other schools.

“It’s been a great partnership, and both of us have been offered positions elsewhere, but we just value this,” she said. “We both wanted to stay together, so that might be the main reason it’s working so well – our choice to stay together.”

In 2024, when the district proposed reducing Nix’s position to part-time to address a deficit, outraged teachers, parents and staff successfully fought against the cut. Parent Stacey Kyle was one of the community members to speak at meetings in support of Martin and Nix. 

Kyle said they’re a “passionate pair” and always a step ahead of everyone when it comes to making decisions with the well-being of students in mind. 

“I could not envision a Shoreline where one of them is working without the other,” said Kyle. 

Kyle is the founder of the school’s parent-run fundraising nonprofit, Live Oak Education Foundation. She has one child, Alexandra Boles, currently in eighth grade, at the school and another who graduated. Boles, 13, said Nix and Martin add fun and games to their daily routine in ways that help students want to learn. 

“They make the whole school a lot better and make sure kids aren’t being mean to each other,” she said.

Boles told a story about how the principals put their understanding of adolescent psychology to work to create a positive atmosphere. When students have swim classes – at Simpkins Family Swim Center adjacent to the school – they have to wear a swim cap if their hair goes past their eyebrows. The school’s eighth graders have a monthlong swim unit during their physical education class. 

Students who wore swim caps became targets for teasing to the point that three boys shaved their heads to avoid wearing it, Boles said. 

“So Ms. Nix and Ms. Martin came out at break and lunch and were wearing swim caps like all day,” said Boles. That put an end to the teasing and any reluctance to wear a swim cap.

When a student says or does something rude, Nix said she’ll ask them to write down 10 nice things, to “make up for the rude thing they had said.” The paper they write on has the phrase “Free kindness messages” written on the top and 10 pull tabs on the bottom where the student writes one nice thing on each of the tabs. 

Nix then tapes the anonymous paper on a wall in a hallway where staff and students can pull a tab they like to keep or give away. One paper left on a hallway wall earlier this month had several pulled tabs. Two of the tabs that remained read “Cool hat!” and “Say thank you.” 

Nix said this practice is about rewiring the kids so that after they misbehave, they don’t feel stuck in the mindset of believing they’re bound to be a troublemaker. Instead, they can put some good out in the world. 

“You’re a kid, you do dumb things. It doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t define you,” she said. “You don’t have to be the one saying something rude to somebody. Fix that. And so every rude thing you said, let’s make up for it and say 10 nice things.” 

Les Forster, a longtime teacher and administrator in local schools, said Shoreline Middle is the only school countywide that has two current principals who have won the annual administrator of the year award. 

“It’s a tribute to their longevity, how they’re looked up to, they’re revered, they’re respected,” he said. “Their hearts are in it.”

Jeremy Powell, a teacher at the school for the past 16 years, said he can attribute his long tenure there to the duo’s leadership and how they “walk the walk.” He said Martin has an unmatched “pulse on the school.” If there isn’t a physical education teacher available, she’ll get in the swim center’s pool to teach students how to swim. 

Nix is a genius and a “math wizard” who uses empathy to repair student relationships and hold students accountable for misbehaving, Powell added. 

“They’re consistent, reliable leaders,” he said. “You won’t find one disgruntled colleague about these folks.”

He said it also likely helps that Martin, a mother of three adult children, and Nix, a mother of two school-aged kids, understand what their middle school students are going through because of their parenting experience. 

“They’re both former teachers, so they know the challenges and benefits of the classroom experience, but they’re also moms,” he said. “And I think that you can’t really put words to the importance of knowing the ins and outs of adolescent development when you’re sharing bathrooms and you’re sharing your home with adolescents.” 

Nix, whose parents were both teachers, studied psychology at UC Santa Cruz and didn’t plan to be a teacher. But she ended up taking a job as a substitute teacher while studying and continued on the education path. In 2004, she got a job at Shoreline Middle, where she taught math for 10 years, became a district-wide math coach then took on the assistant principal role in 2020.  

“I’m real protective of this place. I’ve been here for a long time. My husband proposed to me in my classroom,” she said. “These are my people. And so when [the prior assistant principal] left, I was like, ‘I can’t just have anybody come and take this job, and so I applied.” 

Martin got into education because she wanted to be a swim coach (she started the school’s swim unit in 1998). She became a physical education teacher, first at Del Mar Middle School in 1993. Shoreline Middle School later opened in 1997, and Del Mar Middle became an elementary school. Martin became Shoreline middle school’s assistant principal in 1998. 

She’s been working at the district’s only middle school for 33 years – which means some of her current students are the children of former, now grown-up students she previously taught. 

Some of these parents have asked Martin why their kids weren’t punished for doing the same thing that earned them a suspension years ago. She said she responded: “‘How did that work out when we suspended all of you guys?’ They’re like, ‘Not great.’” 

Martin said their discipline strategies have evolved over the years, with a strong shift toward more restorative practices — instead of being punitive, like suspension or sending kids home for the day. Martin and Nix believe that students learn more from their mistakes by talking about the impact of the behavior and owning up to it rather than being isolated at home without a productive way forward, which could lead them to repeating the misconduct. 

Nix said all those years of working with the same people have created a unique level of trust and accountability between the administrators and families. 

‘There’s this unspoken level of trust,” she said. “Like, I know you’ve got me.” 

The co-principals believe clubs will help students be more engaged and social at school, which also helps their academic performance. Shoreline has clubs for Lego, birding, board games and surfing, as well as after-school sports, which allow teachers and students to engage with students in new ways.

“The more connections you can make, the less conflict we’re going to have, because you actually know people,” said Martin. 

From 2022 to 2023, the first year Martin and Nix focused on increasing student engagement in activities, the school saw the percentage of students who talk with their friends every day go from 41% up to about 85%, according to a survey. Since 2023, the number of clubs at the school has doubled from eight to 16.

Martin and Nix acknowledge that their co-principal approach isn’t common among schools. They tell each other what’s going on with students, they often consult each other on tough decisions and work throughout the day in each other’s offices. 

Martin said they’re “interchangeable,” which is an advantage. Because they’re both filled in on essentially everything, students and staff can’t go to one of them to try to get what they want after the other said no. 

“You can’t really play us. You can’t do the mom-dad thing,” said Martin, smiling. “You can’t not get what you want from one and go to the other, because we literally talk about everything.” 

They think that the demands placed on them during the pandemic — like constant pivoting and the emphasis on students’ social-emotional needs — likely contributed to their dynamic. 

“The pandemic somewhat caused us to really lock in together in a very intense way,” said Nix. “We would spend about 10 hours a day on Zoom, and we would just keep it open all day in that first year.”

Nix added that she does think their administrative style is “unique” because they’re both willing to “roll up our sleeves,” they’re vulnerable with each other and they hold each other accountable when they make mistakes.

“I wouldn’t want to do it — I don’t know how to do it — any other way,” she said. “There’s a lot of joy that comes from this.” 

Nix said she and Martin often repeat a saying that her husband once shared with her, a reminder to always have a growth mindset. 

Martin chimed in: “He said, ‘To get good at something, you first have to be willing to be bad. So don’t practice to get good, practice to suck less daily. Tomorrow we’re gonna try to suck less.” 

Nix said they sometimes slightly adjust it: “Middle school sucks, and we just try to make it suck less.” 

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