BY VINCENT TODARO
Staff Writer
SCOTT PILLING staff Julie Rhodes takes a moment yesterday to read with John Reyes and Alyssa Colon, both 7, at Spotswood’s Schoenly School. SPOTSWOOD — The district will lose a longtime administrator known for her dedication to improving borough schools when Julia Rhodes retires this summer.
The principal at G. Austin Schoenly School since 2001, Rhodes plans to conclude her 43-year career in education this August due to health concerns. Rhodes, who had aimed to spend at least 30 years in Spotswood, will leave with 29 under her belt.
“I’ve seen her working endlessly trying to change things for the better,” Superintendent of Schools Anthony Vaz said.
Vaz, who will retire next year, worked with Rhodes throughout his tenure as superintendent, and before that, when he was the principal of Schoenly and Rhodes, was a district supervisor and teacher.
“Julia is a very intelligent person. She’s well-read in the field of education. She also understands the developmental needs of her students,” he said.
Though she is best known these days as the energetic principal of Schoenly, which houses the district’s pre-kindergarten through first grade, Rhodes began in Spotswood as a supervisor of English and foreign languages at the high school. The high school was brand new in 1976, Rhodes’ first year after coming to Spotswood from a teaching position at West Windsor Plainsboro High School.
The high school was still being built when Rhodes was brought aboard to hire a language staff for the upcoming school year.
She stayed in her position as supervisor of communication arts and world language for 25 years, though her duties changed. Originally hired to supervise grades seven through 12, the district placed her in charge of K-12 around 1990. This took up more of her time, meaning her real love, being in the classroom, was stifled.
“I could really no longer teach at that time,” she said.
Nonetheless, she remembers the period as being remarkable. She had become passionate about literacy development because she wanted to find out why students in grades seven and eight tended to dislike reading and writing.
The studies reminded her of her own education, which culminated in her graduating with a master of arts degree in teaching from Harvard Graduate School of Education, also the place where she met her husband, Rodman.
Thinking back to her Harvard years reminded her of a poignant moment during her career in Spotswood. She was teaching at the high school when a student a asked where she had gone to school. When she told him Harvard, his response was, “Then what are you doing here?”
“It personifies what people thought of themselves living in a small town next to East Brunswick,” she said. “Kids don’t realize their own talent and worth. That’s why I was so glad when we got that first Blue Ribbon.”
Rhodes lists among her professional highlights the authoring of three successful applications to the national Blue Ribbon School of Excellence program.
Her nearly 30 years in the district have given her a great deal of perspective on how the schools have changed. She said the district has grown enormously in terms of quality, even though it was always good. The schools have become more progressive, comprehensive and research-based.
“The community has come to respect itself much more than it used to,” she said.
Rhodes became principal of Schoenly in 2001, because she wanted a change.
“When you are a districtwide supervisor, you don’t get much time to be with the kids. I missed that,” she said.
And being with kids is why she got into the field, starting off as a ninth-grade English teacher in Needham, Mass. That was in 1962, right after Rhodes became certified to teach English and French at the secondary level.
“For the majority of my teaching career, I did work at the secondary level,” she said.
She accompanied her husband, also a teacher, around the country as he switched jobs. This included periods in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Illinois. In addition to French and English, she also taught social studies, speech and sex education. Just prior to coming to Spotswood, Rhodes taught seventh- through 12th-grade English, social studies and science for students with learning disabilities at West Windsor Plainsboro High School in Princeton Junction, where she resides.
Through all that, she found time to have two children, Rebecca and Sara, as well as to fight a brief battle with cancer in 1965.
Rhodes said she is thrilled to have spent so much of her career in Spotswood.
“This is a very special place,” she said. “I am so lucky. I was called to do this. I knew it when I was 8; I don’t know why. It’s a good thing, because I don’t have any other talents. Teaching has been a complete joy.”
She would be happy to work until she is 70, but her health won’t allow that.
“It was indicated to me I need to spend more time taking care of myself,” she said. “It makes me very sad [to leave]. But I need time to exercise and eat right and see my doctors, and that just doesn’t happen in this job.”
Rhodes said she is grateful to have been able to work for so long with her colleagues, and the children and parents of Spotswood.
“I delight in the fact that so many of the Schoenly parents were once my students. It is wonderful to see what loving and capable adults they have become,” she said. “I rejoice daily in our students, and I am eternally grateful for my colleagues here at Schoenly and throughout the district. They are extraordinarily energetic and generous professionals who are devoted to teaching, learning and the growth of the children in their care.”