“I love being able to turn it over to her,” he said.
The district’s Character Education Initiative, which earlier this year earned Hamilton the title of the 2010 Ohio School District of Character by the Ohio Partners in Character Education, began four years ago when Place took over the Hamilton High School football team. He set up expectations for his players that went beyond academic requirements by insisting on good character as well as academics.
Superintendent Janet Baker, who already had started working character education into district programming, was so impressed she put Place in charge of a district-wide initiative, which now includes more than 100 events throughout the district each year.
At Baker’s recommendation, Place tapped Hutzelman to be one of the core members of the team to get the program off the ground, and with his pending retirement, Hutzelman moves from her counseling job at the Freshman School to character education and chemical abuse specialist for drug-free schools.
“The District’s Character Education Initiative has been successful beyond expectation under the leadership of Jim Place,” Baker said. “(Hutzelman’s) appointment will create a smooth transition due to her firsthand knowledge of the program components. It is her goal to build on the momentum that Mr. Place has established and take the program to the next level.”
A can-do attitude
With an infectious can-do attitude and a love of all things Hamilton, Hutzelman said she believes she can make a positive impact.
“I want people to grow up in Hamilton to be proud of being from here,” she said.
Hutzelman went to Monroe Elementary and Garfield Middle schools, and loved every minute,.
“I loved the learning. I loved being creative. I was in every activity I could be in. It was really a great experience and I have always wondered why people dog Hamilton so,” she said. “It’s a great place to live and a great place to be from.”
Hutzelman said she wanted to be a teacher since she was a little girl, although she confesses that for a time she wanted to be the first female president of the United States.
“Then I saw how much they aged in their first four years,” she said.
Still, she had her sights set early on Miami University, for no other reason than that she wouldn’t have to stray far from home.
“It’s the only school around, isn’t it?” she joked. “I never would have dreamed of leaving my family and everything else seemed so far away.”
She began on the Hamilton campus, which she loved, but found herself feeling out of place in Oxford’s preppy atmosphere, so finished her degree at the University of Cincinnati.
“I wasn’t used to growing up with the kids of doctors and lawyers,” she said. “But at U.C., they were more like the people I was familiar with.”
After graduation, she took a job teaching math to students who had failed the Ohio Graduation Test, but a round of lay-offs found her without a job after the first year. Fortunately, however, Hamilton High School soon called and she taught algebra, geometry and consumer math for five years.
“I loved working with my students,” she said. “I’d get 10th- and 11th-graders taking algebra for the first time, and it was fun to keep trying to explain it in different ways until you get the light bulb turned on for the first time. I liked that I could have success with kids that didn’t have success in math for several years.”
What she found, she said, that building good relationships were just as important if not more important than what teaching techniques she used. Building those relationships also meant that students would come to her with their problems not related to the classroom, finding in her a sympathetic ear and good advice.
“Those were the moments that I knew what I needed to be doing,” she said.
So back to school she went, this time to Xavier University to get her credentials for counseling at the same time she was carrying her daughter, Hannah, who is now 11 .
“As soon as I finished, there were openings at the high school and at the middle schools, so I went straight to Wilson (Middle School),” she said. “Wilson was a perfect world. We had a wonderful combination of administrators and staff who care about the students.
“That’s also the hard part about leaving (the Freshman School). We’ve got a great team here — But change is good, and I feel so strongly about the character program and the drug-free program that it’s a natural fit.”
One thing on her agenda is to expand the five moral traits that are the focus of the Character Education Initiative to include “performance character traits.”
“Many kids find it easier to give up when the going gets tough,” she said. “A good work ethic isn’t something a lot of them understand at this age.
“I want to help our kids be better citizens. There’s a lot of need in this community and we’re having to step up where a lot of parents aren’t.”
Her experience as a counselor also has given her some insight into ways that the drug-free education program can be directed, such as making students and parents more aware of the dangers of over-the-counter medications.
“A lot of students think that because you can buy it without a prescription that it’s not dangerous,” she said. “I don’t think parents know how much their children are dabbling in their medicine cabinets.”
Hutzelman said that getting the community involved in character and drug-free education is also going to be on her to-do list.
“I like the idea of it taking a village to raise a child,” she said. “The more partners we have, the stronger we get.”
Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2188 or rjones@coxohio.com.
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