'Maintaining excellence' remains priority at Owen under Dawn Rookey

High School Principal reflects on first semester in new role, elucidates vision for the future

Fred McCormick
The Valley Echo
January 30, 2024

Owen High School Principal Dawn Rookey focuses on maintaining excellence and servant leadership in her first year in the position. Photo by Fred McCormick

The campus was more than familiar to Dawn Rookey, last July, when the former English teacher arrived at Owen High School to commence a new chapter in her career. She walked by the classroom in which she taught for nearly two decades and greeted staff she had known for years, but as she returned to the halls after a 2019 administrative internship at T.C. Roberson and three years as assistant principal at Enka, her destination was the principal’s office.

Halfway through her first year as Owen principal, Rookey has observed some changes since she left, but the core of the institution and community it serves remains, creating a solid foundation on which the Swannanoa Valley high school can build.

“Owen High School has a history and reputation of being an excellent school, so we don’t need to make it excellent, we have to commit to maintaining that excellence,” Rookey said. “The only way to do that is through our commitment to the people in the building and our investment in the work we do.”

Rookey, a native of McDowell County who holds bachelor and master degrees in English and a Master of School Administration from Western Carolina University, was hired in 2001 to teach English, by then-principal Bob Washel. A 20-year Swannanoa Valley resident, she was named the Buncombe County Teacher of the Year in 2013 and awarded the Transforming Principal Preparation Grant five years later.

The scholarship, operated through the N.C. Principal Fellows Program, funds a year-long assistant principal internship and the courses required to complete the school administration master requirements. While the administrative track took Rookey away from the school she had grown fond of, she hoped to return.

“I thought, ‘if I’m ever going to be a principal, my heart would be in being back at Owen,’” she said.

Meg Turner stepped down after 11 years as Owen principal, following the 2021-22 school year, while her successor, Samantha Sircey, retired in 2023. With a few years of experience in an administrative role, Rookey was hopeful when she applied for the vacant position last June, but had “no expectations.”

“I think there were quite a few really qualified applicants, but I knew this was where I wanted to serve,” she said. “I raised my son in this community and I’ve lived here for so many years, so I’m really invested in this school and community. I feel like this is where I’m supposed to be.”

In her first months as the lead administrator for Owen, Rookey reunited with familiar faces, including former students, Samantha McIntosh, who returned to her alma mater as an assistant principal in 2021, and Owen Middle School principal Brad McMahan. Early in her tenure, Rookey has embraced a philosophy of “servant leadership.”

“I feel like this school has some of the best teachers I have ever worked with, and I’m very fortunate to be part of that,” she said. “They’re all truly committed and invested into becoming better, and I love that about the teachers here. My role is to learn their needs, based on the data and what they say, and figure out how to build structures and supports to meet those needs.”

Rookey’s familiarity with the culture at Owen offered unique insight into prior successful methods.

“Meg (Turner) was an incredibly strategic leader and a very good principal,” Rookey said. “She had the four c’s, which were caring, clarifying, communicating and consistency. These were things that all of the teachers knew, and they have worked in this building.”

Rookey chose to continue to focus on those principles and add a fifth: commitment.

“It’s really difficult to be in the teaching profession right now, for a lot of reasons,” she said. “There are legislative issues and perceptions that make this work challenging, and that can become overwhelming and disheartening for people.

“But, when we walk into this building everyday, we have to know we’ve said yes to this work, even though it’s hard,” Rookey continued. “Making a commitment to the work we’ve said yes to is extremely important to me. That means we’re giving the best we can to the person in front of us everyday.”

Although she was only away from Owen for four years, she returned to “a great amount of change.”

“So much had happened,” Rookey said. “There were changes in leadership and changes in how things had been done, and some of that was due to everything that happened during COVID. So, when I came in I wanted to understand how to understand that change, and what we wanted to hold onto and what we should rethink.”

She devoted much of her first month on the job to analyzing data.

“There was a lot of digging to do as I was getting my bearings and figuring out how things were working,” Rooky said. “I really wanted to identify needs and look at ways to respond to those needs.”

She found the school was still “really good at teaching,” Rookey continued, and led by experienced and dedicated teachers, even as Owen experienced a transitional phase.

“That’s always been a strength here, because we have quality instruction happening here all the time,” she said. “I know people retire, and there will always be transition, but my goal is to find new people who come in with the same type of commitment we’ve seen at Owen for many years.”

A strong community spirit thrives at Owen, according to the principal.

“People here really love the place they work and genuinely care about what happens in this school,” Rookey said. “We’re constantly showing we care about each other and we’re here doing this work together.”

Strengthening community partnerships within an ever-evolving Swannanoa Valley represents one of many present goals for the school’s current administration.

“We have a strong school advisory board and some great partnerships, including the Kiwanis Club, Hand in Hand and Bounty & Soul, who all do amazing things for our school,” Rookey said. “But, I believe we can continue to expand our outreach in the community and find new ways to work with our partners.”

Progress has been steady through the 2023-24 school year so far, according to Rookey, who envisions a renewed commitment to upholding and building upon a long-established Owen legacy.

“I would like to see Owen keep its course of excellence, where we are not just meeting state measures of growth, but exceeding them, which we have done for many years,” she said. “We want to continue being successful in the opportunities we provide students, whether that be in academics, athletics or the arts. We want to provide opportunities that make students want to come to Owen High School.

“Having been a teacher at this school for many years, I taught students who went on to Harvard, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Georgetown and University of Chicago, and I’ve taught students who attended A-B Tech and did amazing things with their lives,” Rookey continued. “I believe part of that awakening for all of those students happened here. I really want us to keep helping students find who they are, what they want to do and accomplish, so we can find a pathway for them.”