Dr. Wayne Eberle Is Hanging Up the Phone

Picture of Dr. Wayne Eberle for the Watauga County School District. “My current role and current title are Director of Testing Accountability and Federal Programs,” said Eberle. “I moved to the Central Office in 2011, and I’ve always had testing, I’ve always had the school calendar, which is the snow day calls and things of that nature, and I am responsible for bringing all of our policy and legal updates that come from the North Carolina School Board Association before our Board of Education.”  Photo Cred: Watauga County Schools Website

Sofia Carmichael, Community Desk Lead

“This is Wayne Eberle with the Watauga County School System…”

 We all know that familiar voice. We hear it faintly through the house after our parents get a phone call announcing a two-hour delay, a remote day, or any other inclement weather. It fills us with the excitement of not having to go to school. But after 13 years, this well-known voice is being replaced. 

Dr. Wayne Eberle has worked in Watauga County for almost 30 years, where he started working at the afterschool program while he was getting his degree. As he continued his schooling, he worked to gain experience, spending  many years teaching students but also learning how to give the best education to students. 

“I began back in 1994 in the district, where I worked in our after-school program while I was going to school and pursuing a teaching degree,” said Eberle. “I went to ASU and graduated with a degree in Kindergarten through 6th Grade Elementary Education with a concentration in Psychology. I was lucky enough to start working at Blowing Rock as a third-grade teacher, and during the summer, I worked as a custodian there. I taught for seven years at Blowing Rock while I was working on my Master’s degree in School Administration.”

After gaining classroom experience and years of working towards his studies, Eberle began transitioning to higher leadership roles within the education system and our district. 

“I completed that and went to Hardin Park as an assistant principal, and served there before becoming the principal of Valle Crucis School until 2011,” said Eberle. “I went back to school during that time and finished what’s called my Educational Specialist Degree, or my EDS, and then ultimately my doctorate. In 2011, I moved to the Central Office, and I've always done testing, but then other aspects of it go along with that that I now have.”

Getting to this level in the district is not an easy feat, so there have been many hurdles for Eberle to overcome throughout the years. But one of the biggest came when he was younger, and he had to figure out how to pay for his schooling. He worked to overcome this by taking every opportunity given to him, like programs with a community college to get free tuition, and with App State to help him earn graduate classes. 

“My parents were very, very young when they had me, so they didn't prepare for a child who might want to go to college, so going to school was the biggest challenge,” said Eberle. “I knew I wanted to do it, but I didn't know how I could even afford it. But I had some pretty impactful folks who kind of steered the way for me.” 

That hard work that he had to do in the early part of his life not only gave him a good foundation of drive and passion for the rest of his life, but also showed him how support can change a student’s life. 

“Throughout the way, none of this was ever handed to me, so I had to overcome the challenges of being an only child from parents who divorced when I was five years old,” said Eberle. “So my dad will always say, you were never planned, but you were never not loved. And so they loved me, and they supported me throughout all of this. But having challenges from a very young age helped to shape who I was.”

Despite all the hard work and struggles over the years, there has never been anything big enough to pull Eberle away from being an educator. He has constantly been pulled back in by being able to help countless families and children throughout the county, and the constant fulfillment of this profession. 

“So many times, even now, there are folks who go from job to job or position to position, and maybe it's because that's what satisfies them. But I always knew that I wanted to be a teacher, and it's kind of funny, because I don't come from a long line of teachers, or anything like that. My parents were not teachers, and I had a couple of pretty impactful teachers myself, which kind of steered the way for me, and then when I got into it, I just absolutely loved it.”

While Ebele had a lot of teachers throughout his schooling who inspired or helped him along his way, it was his 3rd Grade teacher whom he noted as the one who first made him connect with teaching and make an effect on him that to this day he has never forgotten. 

“When I was in third grade, I had a teacher named Miss Riceman at Redland Elementary in Homestead, Florida,” said Eberle. “And at the time, I remember that my parents had divorced, and I was the only one in the class that had divorced parents, so I had a mom and a stepdad and a dad and a stepmom, and that may be common practice today, but it was just not the norm then. And I remember we had an open house, and there were enough chairs for my mom and my dad, but there weren't enough for my step-parents. And I remember thinking, Gosh, everyone else is looking around the room. They have a mom and a dad with them. Why do I have, you know, a second set of parents? What is that? Why am I different? And I remember the teacher at the time said some very impactful things to me that stayed with me, about not, hey, look at you. You're different. But you know what? This makes you special, like you have twice as many people to love you. And I thought, man, that is really cool. What a neat thing to say to a kid.”

So much has changed and developed over the last 30 years in Watauga County. From the addition of a Chick-fil-A to the expansion of 321 into a four-lane highway and the relocation of the high school across town, the community has continued to grow. As the town's landscape changed, technology like computers have also emerged, helping improve students' education, and as the town evolved, the district created new programs in hopes of expanding student learning and success on an even larger scale. 

“We've seen the district go through a lot of changes, infrastructure, technology, personnel, but also the way we serve and personalize instruction to students,” said Eberle. “There's just about everything that can happen here, and I've watched the development and the refinement of our CTE program give more opportunities for students, and that's what makes Watauga and our school system so special.”

So, after all of these great years of teaching and the ability to make such a large impact on students’ lives, you may be asking why Dr. Eberle has finally decided to retire. But, after so many years of giving so much of himself to his career and his community, he has decided to start prioritizing himself and his family. 

“I'm going out on a high, and I want to make that very clear. I'm not going out because I'm tired of this, or because I'm disgruntled, or mad at anyone, because, if I were called to stay here for the rest of my life, I would,” said Eberle. “But there also comes a time when I think that right now, retirement for me is the most responsible thing I can do as a husband. So, you know, Amy and I have been married for 20 years, and she's retired. So, I'm going to retire, because if something happens to me, my pension will go to her for the rest of her life, and vice versa. And, if I were to continue teaching, and something were to happen to me while I'm still working in the district, then she would get nothing. And so I feel like right now that is the most responsible thing I can do for her and for our family.”

Despite the practical reasons for retiring, Eberle and his wife aren’t looking to slow down their lives. It’s against his nature not to be doing something, so he will continue to work, but he also has some fun vacations planned and will spend more time on some of his hobbies. 

“My wife and I travel a lot, and so we're planning a pretty big trip to Spain and Portugal in September that we've been taking some time to save and plan,” said Eberle. “We've got a couple of little trips to go see some shows in Chicago and New York. We also want to spend more time, as we have a condo in Southport, North Carolina. As far as hobbies, we love to hike. We love to camp. We have motorcycles, so we're going to do that and travel the country that way.”

With Eberle leaving, Dr. Tierra Stark, a former Assistant Principal at Watauga High School, is taking over his role, and the most important piece of advice he can provide her is to just stay up-to-date and communicate well with everyone throughout the district. His main priority has always been the students and their families, and he’ll always remember this as the reason why he loves teaching.

“My greatest achievement is the number of students that I’ve had the opportunity to work with, to get to know their families, and to get to know this community,” said Eberle. “To see things happen that I was able to be a part of, like teaching kids how to read or how to do math, or to be inquisitive when it comes to science, or to have an appreciation for the arts, or to develop their athletic skills, or anything and everything in between, it’s just great.”