Stephanie Oyster
As the Brookfield Elementary School principal, Stephanie Oyster has a nice-sized office with lots of shelves and cabinets and enough room to have a conference with five or six people comfortably. Yet, she wants to talk about the wheeled stand in the corner.
“That (stand) is my office,” said Oyster, who was hired as principal over the summer.
Oyster started using the stand about halfway through the last school year, when she was Brookfield’s assistant middle school principal.
“It fits my laptop on the top,” she said. “I just roamed the halls. It’s so easy to go into the rooms, stay in the hall, park yourself in front of the bathroom. You can get your work done, be visible. The kids see you. They’re less likely to misbehave. I plan to be that visible principal.”
That visible principal who has clearly identified for her staff and students what is expected of them and what her role is, she said.
“For elementary, this is the foundation,” Oyster said. “This is where they learn. That’s one of my biggest goals for this year. We want to set the groundwork of teaching them how to be good students. Why are we here? We are here to learn, we are here to work together. This is where they develop skills that they can carry on with them for the rest of their years at Brookfield.”
Her vision for the elementary school is one where every student feels safe, seen and “motivated to grow academically, socially and emotionally.”
One of the academic challenges Oyster will face is her students’ reading skills.
“A large majority of our students, they’re struggling readers,” she said. “We have a very high percentage of students who are on reading improvement plans. We need to get that under control.”
Oyster said she will work with the literacy committee to understand the data collected from diagnostic tests that are given three times a year, and she’s adding a supplemental reading program called Lexia Core5, which she used at the middle school.
“It starts with everybody needs to be on board and everybody needs to be working together for the same goal,” she said.
She has seen in her own household how kids have lost touch with reading, she said.
“I blame social media. I blame technology, because it’s easy,” Oyster said.
But, the solution is not to try to force high literature on kids, she said.
“You don’t have to force your kids to read books,” she added. “Give them a comic book. Encourage that love for reading.”
Oyster said she collected a bunch of books at a used-book store and will distribute them to teachers and ask them to give them to students.
“There is a just-right book for everybody,” she said. “You just have to find it.”
Oyster described herself as “very blessed to work in this district.”
“I think that Brookfield students are great kids,” she said. “I love working here. I love working with Brookfield kids. They amaze me. A lot of kids, they come from home lives that are less than ideal. But, they come to school and they perform like they don’t have anything going on at home. That amazes me, that they can do that. They’re genuine.”
Oyster came to Brookfield as assistant principal in 2023 after working in Mineral Ridge and Pymatuning Valley. She has experience teaching fourth-graders.
