By Brian Trompeter
Shrevewood Elementary School students will return this fall to find a repaired air-conditioning system, enhanced positivity and environmental initiatives, and a different, but familiar, face in the principal’s office.
Former assistant principal Katie Vandawalker took the helm Aug. 1 and succeeded Joshua DeSmyter, who became principal at Floris Elementary School. Moving into the principal’s chair “feels great,” she said.
“Being a part of this community for the last three years has just been wonderful,” Vandawalker said. “I really love the staff here, the families and most importantly the students. It’s been really great to try to figure out where we’ve been and do some reflecting and thinking about where we’re headed in the future as a school.”
Shrevewood this fall will have about 540 students and 85 employees, including 26 classroom teachers.
The school’s students are remarkably kind, care about each other and want to build strong relationships, Vandawalker said. Shrevewood is a “Positivity Project School” that focuses on building students’ character strengths and relationships.
“They’re able to see the differences in one another, but be so accepting,” she said. “We have a wonderful, diverse population . . . Students here really make it a warm, fun place to work. It really is a family.”
The school will enhance its environmentally friendly programming this fall by continuing its recycling efforts and beginning a new initiative to avoid wasting cafeteria food, Vandawalker said.
Shrevewood also will bolster its “Lunch Bunch” efforts, during which students are invited to dine with and get to know staff.
“Lunch Bunches are so fun,” she said. “We listen to a lot of Taylor Swift and different songs and talk about favorite foods.”
When Vandawalker started working at the school, the only students she met through that initiative were those who volunteered. She wanted to meet more pupils, so the school started a Lunch Bunch raffle in which two students selected on the Monday news show could invite three friends each to that week’s lunch.
Once that group dined with the staff, the school took their names out of the raffle pool to let others participate.
Shrevewood underwent major air-conditioning repairs this summer, forcing cancellation of its summer programs, but will offer a more comfortable setting in the fall, the principal said.
Vandawalker was born in California, moved to Fairfax County when she was 7 and graduated from South Lakes High School.
Her mother is a retired Fairfax County Public Schools administrator and her brother teaches science at South Lakes High, but Vandawalker almost pursued a different path.
She was a business-management major at James Madison University and worked at a law firm for a few years before realizing the legal field wasn’t for her.
“I kind of wanted to be different from my family at first, but then really realized that that was where my heart was, in education,” she said. “I took a leap of faith, quit my job, went back to school, got my master’s in special education [from George Mason University] and started as a special-education teacher at Twain Middle School.”
Vandawalker later was a crisis-resource teacher at Woodlawn Elementary School, where she helped create plans to support struggling students. She then chaired the special-education department at Justice High School before becoming the school’s assistant principal.
Vandawalker in July 2021 became assistant principal at Shrevewood Elementary because she wanted to “get back to where the education journey begins for kids.”
Her work with special-education students taught her skills that can be applied to general education, Vandawalker said.
“Good teaching, good instruction, is good for all students,” she said.
By contrast, working as an administrator has taught her how to see the bigger picture by taking all elements of the school into account, she added.
Vandawalker and her husband have twin daughters and a son. The family enjoys exploring the outdoors – Great Falls Park and trails in Reston are some of their favorite places – as well as attending live music events, watching sports and sampling different restaurants on Friday nights, when schedules allow.
“There really isn’t a food I’ve found that I don’t like,” she said.
