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Former super heads county school |
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Tuesday, 17 November 2009 |
By MATT NICHOLS
Staff Writer
After serving as New Knoxville High School’s principal and district’s superintendent, Charles Rowen decided to take a break from education — a choice he says turned out to be one of the most invaluable decisions of his career.
“When you’re in education for so long and you step away, you really connect the dots on how important education is,” Rowen, 57, said. “You really realize what skills the kids need and how to prepare them for the employment process. It really hammered it home for me.”
Fresh from his two-year hiatus, Rowen has thrown himself into a position full of new and unique challenges, acting as the Auglaize County Educational Service Center’s Opportunity and Alternative School’s director.
Rowen said the job is leaps and bounds different from anything he has ever approached, but the job title was still something he has sought after for many years.
“When I left New Knoxville, I said the job in education that I would love to do is run the Opportunity School in Wapakoneta,” Rowen said.
The center’s Opportunity School is designed for students who are at risk in their home school due to juvenile legal difficulties or due to the fact that they have exhausted all options at their home school. The Alternative School is geared to serve as a short term suspension program, one to 10 days, for all county middle and high school students.
Rowen said the two schools provide him with challenges geared to his skills as an educator.
“This job gives you a chance to teach whenever you want to, and I’m also able to counsel kids quite a bit,” Rowen said. “I can help them line up courses they need to take and help them with probation officers. It’s more hands-on and that’s what really interested me.”
From the time he was a young man, Rowen said education always seemed to be his future.
His wife, Theresa, has taught for 37 years, currently serving as a second-grade teacher at West Elementary School, in St. Marys. Rowen said everything pointed him along that same route.
“My wife was having success and a lot of our friends at that time were educators,” Rowen said. “A lot of people that I was around were having a lot of success and they really seemed to be enjoying what they were doing.”
A 1970 graduate of St. Marys Memorial High School, Rowen holds a two-year degree in law enforcement technology, and has earned a bachelor’s degree in social studies comprehension from Wright State University, and a master’s degree in educational administration from the University of Dayton.
After his education, Rowen took a job teaching social studies and New Knoxville. He said he was comfortable with the position until the school’s superintendent approached him with an offer to serve as the school’s principal in 1999. He served as principal for four years when he took over as New Knoxville’s superintendent until his two-year break.
When he learned the Opportunity and Alternative School Director Hank Stroh was retiring, Rowen jumped at the chance to get back into education. He took over the job in July and soon found out the challenges the job brings.
“We only have two full-time teachers, so we’re trying to blend teacher-led classes and computer-based education all while making sure the kids are getting the requirements they need,” Rowen said. “We have one student here who is only going to be here for nine weeks, so we need to make sure when he gets back to his school, he hasn’t fallen behind. It’s a lot of talking with guidance counselors and blending with our curriculum.”
Rowen said when the school-year began, the two schools had fewer than 10 students. Now the student population totals in the mid-20s and Rowen estimates that number to swell into the 30s before the school year’s end.
During his first two days on the job, Rowen said he just sat in the hallway, grasping a vision and a handle on the school’s policies. Just four months into the job and Rowen is already making changes to benefit the students.
“We’ve done things to make the alternative room isolated so the kids coming here for the short term are self-contained,” Rowen said. “Right now we’re just doing all we can to utilize space and maximize the students’ time.”
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 18 November 2009 )
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