On a typical school day, Mr. Jeff Schutte can be seen running all over school and being pulled in a hundred different directions each moment. Despite him being everywhere at once, few know what Schutte truly does on a daily basis.
Starting at seven thirty in the morning, he arrives at school and heads to his office located in room 603. The time between his arrival and the start of the school day goes fast as he answers phone calls and helps students and staff members. Once the day gets started, he attends a meeting or two, and then directs Woodgrove’s morning show, Wake Up Woodgrove. During lunch, Schutte answers an astronomical amount of emails, “I tend to get a lot of emails from parents and outside sources when they don’t know where to go, so a lot of my email job is redirecting people,’” explains Schutte. He also works very closely with Ms. Shayna Mackey to connect with students who have attendance issues or grade concerns, so they can support them in whatever way they need. Schutte and Mackey also attend administrator meetings throughout the week and brainstorm ideas for Woodgrove’s student body. To keep track of all his tasks for the day, Schutte must stay organized, “At the end of the summer Ms. Mackey tried to get me on board with using just a digital calendar. I don’t know if I’m too old school to do that or if it’s just easier for me, but I have a paper calendar and I write everything down.”
Out of all the different tasks he completes, his favorite is interacting with students. “I would say that’s probably why ninety nine percent of us [teachers] got into this profession is to deal with kids and help make an impact,” explains Schutte. He is a former math teacher, so he loves anything to do with interpreting numbers and data, like analyzing how many students signed up for and attended their club, “I love looking at data and I just sent an email today about yesterday’s clubs and how we had 37 percent of the student body sign up for a club and of those 580 students I think 92 percent of them went to their club.”
Although Mr.Schutte is a very busy man, he continues to work to help Woodgrove run and support students in every way possible.
