A woman who advanced from substitute teacher to full-time teacher to assistant principal at Baechtel Grove Middle School in Willits will take the helm as principal of Fort Bragg Middle School on July 1.
Tawny Fernandez, 45, who will replace the retiring Marli Shoop, plans to commute for the first year. Then, she and her husband hope to buy a home in Fort Bragg, a place she has dreamed of living and working since she was a teacher in Hayward in 1993-94.
“Even back then, it was kind of a pipe dream to sometime move over to the coast and live in one of the beautiful homes on the bluff, hearing the ocean and watching the sunset each evening. When this position opened up at Fort Bragg Middle School, it seemed like a sign and an opportunity that was too good to let pass,” she said.
While running a middle school might strike terror into the heart of the average Marine Corps drill sergeant or corporate CEO, Fernandez loves her work now. But she remembers a time when she too had those fears.
“When I first began substitute teaching in Willits, there was no way that I would even set foot on the middle school campus. The kids were bigger than I was, they seemed so tough, and, well, it just seemed better that I stay with the younger kids, K-5,” she said.
But then a teaching job opened up at the middle school and she took it.
“I have never once looked back nor regretted my decision. It takes a special breed of cat to enjoy the ins and outs of middle school — you must have a fierce sense of loyalty and compassion, a clear sense of integrity and truthfulness, an open heart, a listening ear, an ability to sense fact from fiction, an ability to look beyond any behavior to discover what is at the root. You must truly, openly, with all your being, love children,” she said.
“Children, young adults, at this age come with their own set of instruction manuals. They are trying on the suits” of adulthood with the innocence of childhood. Our goal, then, is to provide a consistent structure for them to safely try on these suits” and to receive guidance from us (teachers, administrators, parents, instructional assistants, etc.) as to which fit will help them grow into confident, intelligent, clear-minded adults. This task is daunting at best,” she said
Fernandez” resume was very attractive to the Fort Bragg Unified School District, particularly her experience working with a school resource officer in Willits, which FBUSD is about to hire for all the local schools.
Her public school experience contains much of what any school board would like to see — varied experience as a substitute, six years in a classroom in Willits, three teacher of the year awards, and successful experience with grant writing. But her work history has one area not found in many public school principals; while working as a teacher in Hayward, she pulled her children out of the schools in Hayward and home-schooled them.
“My son was in second grade at the time. At the end of second grade, my son had qualified for the ELP/Gate program at the school he was attending. However, they missed the fact that he could not read,” Fernandez said. “My son did not return to school. In the fall, I resigned from my teaching position and began home-schooling both of my children. I home-schooled both of my children for four years before returning to the classroom.”
Fernandez has lived in Willits since 1995 when the family moved from Hayward to raise two children “in a more community based — as well as slower — atmosphere.”
“At that time, we settled in Willits, loving the redwood trees and the thought of living in the forest after having truly lived in the city. As a family, we often made frequent trips to both Fort Bragg and Mendocino to enjoy the ocean — especially during the whale-viewing months,” she said.
She plans to spend the last week in June working with retiring principal Shoop.
Fernandez is also taking classes this summer to improve her Spanish, but isn”t ready to call herself bilingual.
Fernandez, whom this reporter met only by phone and email, conveyed tremendous energy and a willingness to discuss her philosophy of administration and personal motivations. She expressed an interest in keeping the community up-to-date through a regular column in the Advocate-News.
“I am very involved in the community here in Willits and look forward to creating that connection in Fort Bragg. I am very much a family girl.” My closest family resides in Michigan, and I am visited every summer by my mother — who has come to love California — except for those rainy winters,” she said.
She said her job is to support the staff and students at FBMS, whom she credits with making great progress.
“I honestly believe that teachers are born, not made; that true teaching comes from the heart, and that that passion is something that can”t be diminished by test scores or a rough day or having to extend a consequence to a child. We all want to make a difference in this crazy thing that we call life … Making that difference in a child”s life is the most powerful.
“I know that the challenges of Fort Bragg will be possibly quite different than Willits, yet I also have quite an obsessive personality when it comes to new challenges and getting things done.”
One thing she will be doing is introducing the concept of an SRO (school resource officer). The Willits Unified School District has an SRO, a police officer who works at both the middle and high school.
“His presence on campus (in full dress) is a calming one for the students. They have come to see him as part of the middle school family, not just a cop.” In many ways, the SRO position is a way of humanizing police officers and allowing them to create relationships with the students in a positive way,” she said.
The idea will be relatively new in Fort Bragg, but Fernandez gives a clue of how it works.
“Our SRO spends time in our Community Day School each day, strolls the halls, helps out with brunch/lunch/after-school duty and teaches periodic lessons in the classroom,” she explained. “He is also here as a parent resource when we are struggling with a child”s behavior. As a police officer, he is also able to write citations to the students, make home visits concerning absences ?, as well as administering a breathalyzer assessment.”
She said an SRO adds to the comfort of school staff and the sense of responsibility in everyone from pupils to the principal.
“In many ways, I have seen a heightened sense of awareness of responsibility that I believe is due to the presence of our SRO … Our SRO here, as well as myself, have been trained in The Parent Project, which is a series of parenting classes providing strategies and support for parents of out of control children. I have been teaching the class here in Willits and our SRO will take that over upon my leave.”
She said the SRO has had an impact on the real and imagined issue of gangs.
“We have, what we call, wannabes” here in Willits. By instituting a consistent and effective school wide discipline policy, adding the support of the SRO, and providing information to parents, staff, police and students about gang activity, including attire, hand symbols, written graffiti” symbols, we have kept the influence of gangs here to a minimum if not entirely absent. We have open and frequent discussions and conversations with parents about what to look for at home as well as concerns that we have about their attire or contents of a backpack,” she said.
But battling gang behavior goes beyond policing.
“It is essential to keep in mind that children are children, looking for a place to belong. It is part of our job to see that the choices that they make in that belonging are smart ones.”
Although Fort Bragg”s middle school has more students, she said the two middle schools, and all middle schools, are much alike.
“Both [Willits and Fort Bragg] are in the process of program improvement through No Child Left Behind, which means that both are struggling with keeping up the test scores as well as educating all of the subgroups contained within. Both are [grades] 6 to 8 middle schools. Both have incredibly dedicated staff members who willingly spend their time educating young adults,” she said.
In 2002-2003 she was Willits Teachers” Association”s teacher of the year, in 2003-2004 the Teen Ink Teacher of the year and in 2004-2005, she was California League of Middle Schools” Teacher of the Year for Region. She has a bachelor”s degree from Michigan State University and earned a multiple subject teaching credential from San Francisco State University, followed by a list of other credentialing work.
Fernandez hopes the 50-minute daily commute will be “a great time for reflection, listening to great music and keeping up with my reading through books on tape.
“There may be days, due to inclement weather, that I will not be able to make the Highway 20 pass — but I have a four-wheel-drive and am hoping to have none of those next year,” she said.
