The Oregon Youth Authority is proud to welcome Miranda Cryns as the new principal of Lord High School, which serves MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility.
Lord High operates through a partnership between the Oregon Department of Education (ODE), the Willamette Education Service District (WESD), and the Oregon Youth Authority. Together, the agencies educate youth in OYA custody – helping them earn high school and college credits, graduate, and build the skills and confidence they need for life after release.
“I was a student who hated high school,” Cryns said. “It didn’t really work for me.” She graduated early to move on with her life – but later realized that experience gave her clarity. “When I became an educator, I wanted to make school more relevant, more connected to the futures students imagine for themselves.”
Cryns began her career at Trillium Charter School in Portland, where students and educators collaboratively built educational plans and students showed their learning through projects. Later, she taught at Salem’s Career Technical Education Center, designing English and writing lessons around real-world career pathways in fields like construction, cosmetology, and animation. After serving as an administrator at McKay High School and Roberts Alternative School, she spent two years teaching at an international school in Barcelona.
Across those experiences, Cryns developed a strong grounding in restorative practices – an approach that connects learning to accountability and repair. “If I believe in restorative practices for a traditional high school in my neighborhood,” she said, “I should believe in repair and restoration for youth who are currently incarcerated.”
At MacLaren, she brings that belief into a collaborative approach. “If we work together,” she said, “we all win – and that ultimately serves the youth.” At all our facility schools, education runs alongside treatment and security, and Cryns sees her role as helping those systems work in rhythm. “You keep throwing barriers in my way,” she said with a laugh, “and I’m going to keep figuring out ways to solve those barriers.”
In her prior work, that meant working closely with parents, but at MacLaren is means connecting with living unit managers, case coordinators, and other staff. These conversations have helped her build working relationships and strengthened her understanding of how the daily flow of campus life – meals, sleeping patterns, staffing, and line moves – affects the school day.
That teamwork is already shaping the school’s direction. This fall, Lord began mixing classes across two living units – a change that expanded both academic and enrichment options. By combining math instruction, the school was able to open a standalone English Language Development class for Spanish-speaking youth and a psychology elective that otherwise wouldn’t have fit.
Cryns’ next goal is reopening the school library, a project she sees as “an example of more normalcy.” Libraries, she shared, “are spaces for exploration and opportunity” – opportunities like workshops, poetry slams, shared research projects – opportunities that make Lord feel “more like a school.” She envisions youth helping run the library – checking out books, organizing shelves, and sharing recommendations with their peers. “It’s the kind of space that doesn’t belong to one teacher or one unit,” she said. “The library is all of ours.”