Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Edgewood Middle School Principal JoElla Hauselman will retire in June after 42 years in education, with over two decades as an administrator at Warsaw Community Schools.
Hauselman said her last official day with WCS will be June 19. She is going to run one more session of summer school before retiring.
She began her career in education in 1983 as a special education teacher in San Angelo Independent School District in Texas before joining Warsaw Community Schools in 1987 as a consultant for emotionally handicapped students. She spent four years teaching in Texas and three years as a consultant for WCS through the North Central Indiana Cooperative.
When she was working as a consultant, Hauselman said WCS asked if she would be an administrator. She thought she’d give it a try. She already had one master’s degree in counseling, so she went back to school and got a second master’s degree in administration.
“And they said, ‘We guarantee you if you can do that in two years, you will have a job’ because that was the year 1990 when Edgewood and Lakeview became two separate schools and they needed an assistant principal in both buildings and so that’s how I got started,” she said.
She spent five years as assistant principal at Edgewood. She was also asked to be the athletic director of both middle schools, which she said was a very unusual role for a woman at the time.
“And so my first year, first time they found out I was the athletic director, 10 of the coaches quit and I’m like, ‘Oh.’ And then people would ask me questions about what kind of an offensive line do you want? I didn’t know, but I though, you know what, I can learn, I’ll figure it out. And I ran athletics for both Lakeview and Edgewood for two years while I was assistant principal here,” she said.
She then was the principal at Whitko Middle School for five years before returning to WCS as principal for Edgewood, serving for the past 25 years.
When asked what got her into education, Hauselman said her parents told her she needed a degree where she could get a job.
“And at that time, for women, it was mostly being a nurse or be a teacher. I thought I wanted to be a nurse and then I realized I don’t do bad smells or body fluids and I thought ‘Nope, time to teach,’” she said.
When she came back to teach in Indiana, she thought she’d stay a few years, but Warsaw became home and that’s where she had and raised her kids.
The good part about WCS is they encourage staff to keep learning, and Hauselman said when she thought she was at the top of her game, she would get challenged to learn something else, she said, adding classes through University of Virginia and Dartmouth Business School helped revitalize her and made her rethink how to lead in schools.
WCS also challenged Hauselman in getting Edgewood STEM certified. She said once she got that challenge, she wanted to make Edgewood the best STEM school. Edgewood has been STEM certified for three years and the certification is good for five years. She added the school is making sure they’ve done everything needed to make sure it stays STEM certified.
“And so we’ve done some amazing things here at Edgewood and I’m really proud of it,” she said.
One of the examples Hauselman spoke on was the schoolwide project-based learning units the school does. One of the units is based on the book “Boys in the Boat” and Edgewood does a semester’s long project including reading the book. It culminates in boat races, which involves engineering cardboard boats students can row up and down the pool at Warsaw Community High School. She added Edgewood is, as far as she knows, one of the only schools in the U.S. to do a schoolwide project-based learning unit “and that’s one of the things that sparks the ongoing love of this is it’s fun.”
Through her career in education, she said she’s seen some tremendous change, “some good, some not so good.” She thinks the biggest change that has come along in her tenure is technology.
“Technology changed the game for good and not so good and it’s really hard to figure out what is that balance” to help students and what to protect them from, she said. She said it’s a different world people live in now.
After leaving, Hauselman said she wants the school to sustain what “we know is good and what we know is right. We have an incredible literacy component for reading and writing. We have an amazing STEM component. We do want to be the best middle school in the state, so we’re constantly looking at our data and figuring out how can we become a better school,” she said.
She said she’s hired almost everyone at the school and she has complete confidence that what they learned and built together, the staff can sustain.
After Hauselman retires, she is planning on selling her house and going to move down south. Her husband, Jerry, has family in the Newport, Ky., and Cincinnati, Ohio, area. She said she’ll figure out what she wants to do next, but is looking forward to time with family.
“While I’ve been here, I’ve lost my mother, my father and my oldest sister, so I only have two sisters left. I’d like to spend some time with them. And my children don’t live anywhere near me, so I want to spend time with them,” she said. Her focus will be time with her family and her husband.
She said she’s taken one vacation in the last 10 years, so she would like to know how it feels to go on a vacation and do things for fun and just enjoy life. She loves it in Warsaw, but she also wants to enjoy life at a different pace.
In honor of her retirement, the community is invited to a retirement reception on Tuesday from 3 to 5 p.m. at The Barn 1880: Historic Venue in Warsaw.
A special toast celebrating Hauselman’s legacy and impact will take place at 4 p.m.
“WCS extends its deepest gratitude to Hauselman for her years of service to education. Her influence and impact on the Edgewood Middle School community and beyond will not be forgotten,” according to a news release from WCS.
