Curing your curiosity
New staff member edition!
Dean of Students: Mrs.Weyer
Have you been seeing some staff around school, and you’re not too sure who they are? Maybe you see them in the hall every day on your way to math class, and they always wave at you with a bright smile. You’re too afraid to ask them their name, or too scared to go up to them and ask them who they are. That’s okay, that’s what I’m here for!
You’ve probably seen Mrs. Weyer while scanning your badge, walking to and from class, or maybe you’ve gotten called into her office (for good reasons hopefully). You may or may not know this, but she’s the Dean of Students, one of the administrators in our school.
Okay so now you know her name and what her job is, but you’re probably asking what the heck is the dean of students. Or at least that was my first question when I heard her title. The Dean of Students is an administrator, and her main two tasks are to support us students and to support the teachers. This can come in all sorts of different forms such as doing home visits with students who can’t come to school, talking with parents, doing one-on-one meetings with students to address issues, and making sure that we’re all in class. Mrs. Weyer says, There is no typical day.”
Mrs. Weyer went to school right here in our hometown at Binghamton University. Back when she went, there was no teacher-education program or track for her, so she first got her Bachelor’s degree in English, then went back again for her Masters in teaching, then went AGAIN for a degree in educational leadership. If there was anything that I learned about Mrs.Weyer, while doing this interview it would be what a hard worker she is. I mean come on, aren’t you getting tired just reading about all that work? Not to mention, while she was getting her educational leadership degree, she was working full-time as an English teacher, and she had a whole family to go home and take care of afterward. There are no bounds to what people can do, I commended her for all her work and she humbly shrugged it off and said, ¨ A lot of the time those are the best goals when you’re working really hard for it… it feels the best.¨
She has always wanted to become a teacher, wanting to help students and our perspective of the world as her teachers did for her in the past, ¨ I had an English teacher in my eleventh-grade year of high school that opened my eyes to like the way the world was, and all different kinds literature and I thought… This is absolutely something I would want to do for other kids.¨ It seems as though she was destined to become a teacher, given that both her parents were teachers as well. Weyer described what that was like for her growing up and says that it just made her understand the value of an education and how special and important that is for people to have.
Mrs. Weyer had a bit of a hard summer, given that her youngest son left for college and went all the way down in Florida. He’s studying to become an aerospace engineer, so, as you can imagine, he will have a lot of work and tough things to do in the future, and that thought can really put a strain on a mother. Please don’t fret for Mrs. Weyer, though, because even without trying, you are helping her through this tough time. She explains, ¨Starting this job this fall was really perfect because having all of you guys as new students and the connections gave me a focus on kids, to help kids.¨
That’s all she really wants to do; she wants to help us. In fact, I asked Mrs.Weyer if there was one thing you could tell the whole world about yourself what would it be? She told me something that I’d never heard of before; she said that she would tell the world that she’s a servant leader. Now, for those of you like me, who don’t know what that is, a servant leader is someone who believes that doing good for others will lead to good things happening for you and the people you care about. This fits perfectly with what she is doing with her life; she helps us and the people in our school every day to make our education experience the best she can.
