Home. We spend our entire lives trying to find a place to call home. Ms. Dina Schaefer found her home with us at Westwood High School. She started her career hoping to join the healthcare field as a nurse but instead, life took her onto a different path, and she joined the military.

Before the Berlin wall fell, she served as a German linguist and as an interceptor. Afterward, she served in healthcare facilities with insurance claims. As part of her service in the military, she had to move around a lot within the U.S. During this time she met a variety of people, including her husband. When her husband decided to go back to school in order to work towards being an officer, Ms. Schaefer decided that she would try to step into the world of school administration. She applied for a preschool educational assistant job with the Killeen School District and soon was promoted to a library assistant followed by an opening as a secretary in the front office.

“I started out in an elementary school and worked my way up,” Ms. Schaefer said. “I transferred from [that] school to [a] school in Washington, Georgia, Arizona, and California and worked in different secretarial and administrative positions.”

After her husband retired, Ms. Schaefer applied for an opening at Cedar Valley, and worked there for four years as the Principal’s secretary, managing the bookkeeping. At Westwood, she is our Senior Administrative Associate and works in a more managerial manner.

“I monitor and handle the timekeeping for all the hourly employees,” Ms. Schaefer said. “[I also] schedule facilities for athletic events, robotics, debate, the PTSA, the SATs, and [most other facility-related actions]. I’m the first line of defence.”

In the early days of this year, Ms. Schaefer was the one who fixed the furnace of the D Wing by directly working towards fixing the air conditioning, knowing how much it meant to us as students and how important it was to us. She coordinated the necessary people and brought them in time to fix the air conditioning in the D Wing.

Ms. Schaefer has quickly become a part of the Westwood community. With the encouragement from her fellow administration and the enthusiasm of the students, she truly feels welcomed.

“Westwood makes you want to come to work,” Ms. Schaefer said. “When you find a job that you love, where you’re appreciated by everyone else and get a simple thank you- it makes you want to come to work every day with a smile on your face.”

As she settles in her newfound home at Westwood, she strives every day to reciprocate this feeling of home with the students.