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Roberto Clemente Middle School Principal Shawn Joseph has been named the best middle school principal in the state by a national schools organization.

Joseph learned he was selected for the MetLife/National Association of Secondary School Principals' Principal of the Year award for Maryland on Friday, he said. He will receive the award in Ocean City on March 20.

Joseph will also be considered for NASSP's National Principal of the Year. Finalists will be announced in August with a winner chosen the following month.

"It was great, it was very humbling," said Joseph, 34. "… I'm so focused on just doing work, winning an award wasn't even on my radar."

Joseph started his educational career as a seventh-grade English teacher at Clemente in 1997. He taught at the Germantown school for four years before joining the support staff at Benjamin Banneker Middle School in Burtonsville. He was an assistant principal at Redland Middle School in Rockville for three years and has been principal at Clemente for four years.

"It was a blessing to go back there," Joseph said. "You always want to give back to the place that gave you so much. …Clemente is a great school, it really is. It's the kind of school I'd put my own children in."

He lives in Hagerstown with his wife, Ocheze, an assistant principal in Washington County, and their children Isaiah, 6, and Ava, 3.

"He's a very accomplished man and he's done remarkable things with Roberto Clemente in a short amount of time," said Craig Cummins, president of the school's PTSA. "I'm very pleased, I think he's a spectacularly good principal. He understands the big picture and he's put together a team who can run the day-to-day operations."

Joseph said that test scores at the school have improved in every category. He said he never planned to become a principal but that once the opportunity presented itself, he relished the opportunity to encourage students to succeed and set the school vision.

"You have an opportunity to give kids opportunities that they may not have had," Joseph said. "…The award isn't necessarily about my work — it's the work the school and the community have done."