Charles City Community Schools welcome a familiar face

(ABC 6 News) – The Charles City Community Schools will welcome a familiar face to the district.

Dr. Jennifer Schilling will serve as the new Director of Academic Services. This new position replaces the Executive Director of Students Engagement and Leadership.

Schilling’s most recent experience is at the Central Rivers Area Education Agency as a math consultant. She also supported a standards-based evaluation team and served as a social studies consultant. Before working at the AEA, she was an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Wartburg College. Community members may recognize her as a former teacher in Charles City, teaching middle school math for a decade from 1998-2008.

Her professional presentations over the last 25 years focus on connecting students with math and STEM instruction and problem-solving support K-12 public math education. She focuses on school improvement by building collaboration around a common goal and building on individual and team strengths to improve student performance.

“I’m excited to be back in Charles City. It’s exciting and scary, considering this position is new, and it has a lot of expectations. I’m excited for the challenge and working with various district teams to improve student achievement.”

Her top goals are building a cohesive math curriculum and supporting teachers in implementing best instructional practices across all school campuses built on a common philosophy about what is best for student learning. She strives to provide teachers with professional learning and the best math and literacy instructional practices.

The new director position will focus on curriculum district-wide, the local oversight of Iowa’s Teacher Leadership and Compensation (TLC) System, Title I Program, and English language learners. “I really want to be out in the classrooms and talk with teachers about what’s happening with instruction and get a feel for what’s happening in the classroom.”

Schilling earned her BA in elementary education from the University of Northern Iowa, her master’s in reform mathematics from UNI, and her doctorate of education in curriculum and instruction from UNI. She has two daughters, Megan Vanderloop, an 8th-grade teacher at the Charles City Middle School, and Morgan Neuendorf, an environmental engineer consultant in Charlotte, NC.