A friendly face is making a return to the Annandale community. If you are a senior and went to Poe Middle School then the name Paula Meoli might ring a bell. The previous Poe administrator left the narrow hallways of middle school behind and joined the ranks at Fairfax High School as their assistant principal. Now she is coming back to help guide Annandale High School and its students as our new assistant principal.

“I have lived in Annandale for a long time. From between 1987 until 2012, when I left Poe, I either lived or worked in the neighborhood that’s by Annandale High School. So when I went to Fairfax High School it was the first time pretty much since I lived in Virginia that I wasn’t in some way connected to the Annandale community and I found that I really really missed it,” Meoli said when asked why she chose AHS. “When I moved out to Poe and you know middle school is a little different than high school, but when I moved to Poe I really enjoyed the students and getting to know the students and it’s just been different at Fairfax and so I wanted to get back to the community that I really love.”

Meoli is a dedicated educator who is living her lifelong dream by being a Fairfax County employee.

“It is kind of silly and corny but it’s the only job I ever wanted to have. Even when I was a little kid I tried to teach my three year old brother to read… it didn’t work,” Meoli said.

She went to Roanoke college to get her bachelor’s degree and she got her masters degree at George Mason.

Meoli has had plenty of experience over the years working at different schools. She taught reading recovery, which is the first grade reading intervention, second grade, third grade, sixth grade, and eighth grade english. She was also an IB new year’s coordinator and then became a middle school and high school assistant principal.

After her move to Fairfax High School, she found her experience to be a much different one than what she was used to.

“Going to Fairfax was really different because my whole career in Fairfax County before I went to Fairfax was in what was cluster free then. It was a totally different community, I had never taught high school so it was a totally different level,” said Meoli.

While it was different, she still had lots of fun and learned lots of different things. She enjoyed seeing her students in different activities outside of school like sporting events and shows.

Now that she’s back in Annandale and working in its high school, she has to get accustomed to the way things go here. She wants to meet all the staff and get to know them. Next she wants to learn the strengths of the school then learn about what can be done to improve the areas where we are lacking.

Those are her short term goals. She won’t have her long term goals until she knows for sure what’s working well at Annandale.

Overall she wants the best for Annandale and its students and wants to make sure they have the best experience here and that they know she’s excited to spend time with them.