Warner Elementary School Principal Meg Hoefer has a message for the teachers now working for her.
“You’ve got to want to work here. You’ve got to believe these children can learn and you’ve got to make a commitment to do that,” Hoefer said in an interview with the Community News. “These kids that come from the city are just as capable of learning as any kid.”
Warner Elementary is one of the Red Clay schools restructuring because its black, low-income and special education students have failed to meet English and mathematics standards under state and federal guidelines.
When Red Clay School District Superintendent Dr. Robert J. Andrzejewski was searching for the right leader to head the school this coming academic year, he zeroed in on Hoefer because he liked her long history at the city school.
Hoefer entered Warner in 1991 as a fourth-grade teacher and spent 10 years in that role. She spent three more teaching a program called Instrumental Enrichment, two teaching technology and then became an assistant principal, splitting time between Warner and Shortlidge Elementary.
She moved around the district and filled in various assignments as assistant principal in several schools and finished up at Marbrook this past spring as assistant principal/Educational Diagnostician.
Now that she has returned and is the school leader, she has no small task.
Critics of high poverty schools say good teachers are hard to recruit and retain at inner city schools, but it couldn't be farther from the truth for Hoefer.
“I was here at this building for 16 years and I love working at Warner,” Hoefer said. “I love working with the kids – whoever came through the door. When the building changed [with the new feeder patterns prioritizing attendance by nearest neighborhood], it took a different mindset because the children need better background knowledge, help them build vocabularies. That’s the big focus for me this year."
Hoefer and her assistant principal, Kendal Mobley, have sat down to figure how to get their teachers all the resources and professional development they need. She and Mobley aim to be supportive leaders that empower teachers of Warner to in turn be effective leaders of their respective classrooms.
“But my one key thing is that I want you to want to be here,” she said. “Everyday they go home, I want them to try to truly believe that they’ve made a difference in someone or something that day. You’ve got to believe change is possible. I do.”
Warner will extensively use data to determine what the children know and don't know and put extra time in place for the areas that the students need additional assistance in, Hoefer said. The extra time is being built into the schedule through what is called RTI - Response to Intervention. This will be done with a series of re-teaching periods for reading, although the school may do the same for math in January.
Warner is also a Title I school, meaning it gets federal funds to help combat the effects of poverty, Hoefer said. This will be very beneficial with the RTI process.
Hoefer also wants to build on what has worked at Warner. For instance, Warner's Reading First Program has done an excellent job getting students to begin to read well – an issue that plagues many urban children suffering from “word poverty.” Scores for Warner students on the dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills, known as DIBELS, were some of the best in the state.
As far as the school environment is concerned, Warner will continue with the fairly new Positive Behavior System, Hoefer said.
“We want to reward students at regular intervals so we can build on this initiative,” she said. “We are also looking to do some type of enrichment for students who are succeeding during the time that interventions are being done for others.”
Hoefer also believes she needs to show respect for and embrace all the cultures and diversity present at Warner.
“I wish to have the school open and inviting to students and parents. I want parents to work with us as partners. They are the children's first teacher, so if we can empower them to work with us I believe that this will help us make progress with the children.”
