About

Dr. Scheckel is a joyful, visionary and transformative educational leader with extensive experience spanning K-12 teaching, arts specialization, principalship, university-level instruction and central office administration. Having recently transitioned to the role of Coordinator of Visual and Performing Arts in the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District, Dr. Scheckel oversees the Proposition 28 plan and has enjoyed leading a team of VAPA teachers through the writing of a new 5-year strategic arts plan.

Dr. Scheckel is a published author, who co-authored an article for the peer reviewed Journal for Learning through the Arts and was an invited presenter to the prestigious AERA conference in 2020 highlighting her quasi-experimental, mixed methods research with long term English learners taking a choral music class instead of a second hour of ELD and then measuring their academic and social emotional growth. Dr. Scheckel holds a Bachelor's Degree in Music, sang Gospel for the Pope in the Vatican, and was a guest star on the hit Disney animated series, Phineas and Ferb.

Language through Music: Bridging the Opportunity Gap in the California ELD Classroom

Journal for Learning Through the Arts

DOWNLOAD RESUME

ACSA REGION 15 PRINCIPAL OF THE YEAR 2021

ADMINISTRATOR OF THE YEAR AWARD

Visionary, Student Centered Leadership that is Bright, Bold & Joyful!

coordinator, visual & performing arts

I currently serve in the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District as the Coordinator of Visual and Performing Arts. The Arts and Music funding initiative, Proposition 28, requires districts to develop an expenditure plan that expands arts offerings to students in our TK-12 schools. Working alongside our VAPA faculty, we have initiated a comprehensive gap analysis to identify areas of inequity in arts education experiences for students. This has led to the creation of our 2024-2025 strategic arts plan that includes hiring a dance, music and visual arts teacher to serve at each of our elementary sites weekly, the birth of a strings program leading to a fully developed orchestra program by 2030 and a middle school mariachi program.

professional organizations

site administrator

I served as Executive Principal of Altadena and Eliot Arts Magnet (K-8) One School, Two Campus span school in the Pasadena Unified School District. I am known for my passion and enthusiasm for arts education. I formerly served as Assistant Principal for Student Support Services at Marshall Fundamental School (6-12). As a two time recipient of the Magnet School Assistance Grant and the leader of the first French Dual Language Immersion Program in PUSD, I have doubled enrollment, increased parent engagement and built an exemplary arts conservatory for students in grades 6-8.

Arts background

One of my greatest sources of joy in life is music, and I carry this joy with me as an educational leader. In the performing arts, students find community, learn collaboration skills and find ways to perform in front of an audience; creating the original project-based learning experiences. To that end, I continue to be personally involved in the professional arts community both as a performer and as a playwright. In addition to voicing a character for a popular Disney show, Phineas & Ferb, I co-wrote a musical, Bend in the Road, The Anne of Green Gables Musical, one of ten new musicals featured at the New York New Musical Festival in 2013. Bend in the Road has performed as a reading at the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte in 2017 and at Kitsap Forest Theatre in 2022.

IB myp Coordinator

As an International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme Coordinator I had the opportunity to support teachers in creating IB Units of Study. In my role as an arts administrator, I have led teachers through the creation and implementation of arts integrated units of study in all four core academic subjects aligned with Common Core and CA VAPA standards.

Teaching

I began my career in education as a teacher, and it has helped shaped my educational philosophy. In my classroom, students were encouraged to see the best in themselves and explore their strengths. I believe that all children, given the right circumstances, can and will succeed. After many years in the classroom, I began to see a bigger picture and have since sought to implement my ideas in an administrative capacity. My passion is to create happier, more effective schools, where children are excelling, and parents feel engaged in the whole school community.