With her 29th year in education, Bates joins the school community to serve as the newest assistant principal. Bates started teaching in 1996 and has taught biology, Anatomy and Physiology, Integrated Physics and Chemistry and sponsored Student Council and cheer. Bates served as an AP at Akin Elementary School, Four Points Middle School and Cedar Ridge High School and an instructional coach at Hendrickson High School.

“Rouse is amazing,” Bates said. “The community I am absolutely in love with.”

Seeing as her father was an educator, Bates was inspired to pursue a similar career.

“Most of my background as far as my family in education has been at the university level, which maybe I’ll look into when I retire someday,” Bates said. “I graduated from college and actually just went straight into education. I knew it’s exactly where I wanted to be.”

By becoming an AP, Bates now has the opportunity to work with a wider range of students.

“[I want] to continue to foster a community school relationship, support our students and make sure that they are career and college ready upon graduation,” Bates said. “For our younger students, [the goal is] really to provide that support that they need to get to the point that they are able to see the value in education.”

Bates wants to strengthen trust between parents and educators by connecting with families and students.

“I like to greet kids in the morning as they get to school,” Bates said. “I help out with buses right now, so it’s really awesome to get to start my day with seeing all the kids coming in. I really enjoy ending my day there as well because then I get to say goodbye to everybody and get to see how kids’ days were.”

When discussing student discipline, Bates’ objective is to figure out the cause of the behavior before issuing a punishment.

“I look at discipline as a way to help create change,” Bates said. “[It] is usually an action that is caused by something else. If I can figure out what it’s caused by, that really helps me drive how to conference with kids and how to help them understand ways of coping.”

Bates is looking forward to being on campus and learning more about the Raider community.

“I absolutely love Rouse,” Bates said. “I know a lot of people say that, but for me, I’ve been to a lot of places that I haven’t always loved, but here at Rouse, not only do I learn a lot, but I also love it at the same time.”