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MOUNT PLEASANT Growing up in Long Island, N.Y., Edie Sayewich had eight sisters and brothers.
So that helps explains her calm in the daily sea of 944 students at Mount Pleasant High School.
With so many siblings, you learn that your elders can't always tend to your every little quandary.
"You figure out a way to make it work and move on," she said.
Her quiet, steady way is the first thing students will tell you about Sayewich, selected by her peers as 2010 Wachovia Principal of the Year for the Cabarrus County Schools.
"She's really outgoing, really nice, and she doesn't yell at you," senior Jeremy Mayhew, 17, said as Sayewich walked the halls during lunch last week. "I've never heard her yell."
Students aren't afraid to approach her with ideas they're not sure will fly, student body president Aurelia Edwards said.
Seniors wanted to paint the Senior Wall in the cafeteria black this year, which had never been allowed because the color is tough to paint over, Edwards said. Sayewich OK'd it. When seniors wanted to wear crowns the first day of school, Sayewich gave the go-ahead.
"We pitched it to her, and she thought it would help a lot with (school) spirit," Edwards, 18, said.
Seniors won't merely lecture about the importance of staying in school when they visit fifth graders at Mount Pleasant Elementary School soon. Thanks to an idea from Sayewich, they'll show up in their caps and gowns.
"She's very approachable, and I say that not only as a peer but a parent," Mount Pleasant Middle School Principal Sam Treadaway said.
It's reassuring to know that students advance from his school to Mount Pleasant High, "where the administration led by Mrs. Sayewich is so strong," Treadaway said.
Sayewich has been principal at Mount Pleasant since 2001, after three years as an assistant principal.
A four-sport athlete in high school, Sayewich played field hockey and softball at Springfield College in Springfield, Mass., from where she graduated in 1976. She started as a physical education teacher in Amsterdam, N.Y.
"I love playing, so what can I go into where I can continue playing?" she thought.
She and her husband, Jack, also a teacher, gravitated South at the coaxing of friends teaching in Gaston County. The system had job openings, and it sure was warmer than upstate New York. Sayewich taught at Hunter Huss High for a decade; her husband taught at the private Gaston Day School.
Sayewich also has worked as a volleyball, basketball and softball coach. She was assistant athletic director, senior women's administrator, women's basketball coach and instructor of sports management at Pfeiffer College, now Pfeiffer University, in Misenheimer.
As she roams the halls at Mount Pleasant High, she said, she sometimes feels like a character on NBC-TV's drama "The West Wing," constantly solving problems.
Sayewich greeted one student after another in the halls last week. In the cafeteria, she congratulated senior Jocelyn Parnell, who'd just learned she'd won the Wendy's Heisman Award for excellence in academics, athletics and service at Mount Pleasant.
Seconds later in a hallway, a staff member approached to tell Sayewich a student had been sent to her office because of an infraction.
Sayewich said she'll typically discuss with such students their choices, why they made the choice they did "and how do we fix it?"
The constant interaction is what she loves about the job, she said. She's also outside the school at 7 most mornings to greet parents and students.
Sayewich said she's proud of how everyone at the school takes pride in keeping the 19-year-old building so clean.
She's proud of the school's academic and athletic accomplishments, including its national-scale achievements in the Odyssey of the Mind problem-solving competition, and its animal science program. The school has a barn outside, and students have tended to horses, chicken, sheep and a llama.
The school is also an animal rescue center and was alerted when a truck carrying about three dozen cows crashed Oct. 27 along Interstate 85 in Cabarrus County, killing the driver and spilling livestock along the roadside. The school ended up not having to house any cows.
For Sayewich, her award is not about her. "As honored as I am with this award, it's really a tribute to our kids, our teachers, our community, because they are the school," she said. "I'm proud to have let them grow in this way and not get in their way."
