Today she is a voracious reader and an experienced educator with two postgraduate degrees.

And she's been named principal at Whetstone High School.

Dennis, who turns 34 next month, succeeds Christopher Shaffer, who left Columbus City Schools to become campus director of Springfield High School.

Dennis admits that she needed a lot of help as a student. Because she got it, she became a teacher.

"I fell in love with teachers who support the underdog," she said.

After graduating from high school, Dennis enrolled at Kent State University. She initially wanted to major in special education with a goal of teaching deaf children, but broadened her studies to include what are now called emotionally disturbed children.

Dennis said that she wanted to be able to challenge these so-called "challenged" students to "be more than they ever thought they could be."

One of her first teaching assignments, in Cleveland, exposed her to students with not only behavioral issues but also literacy problems, and Dennis went on to become a reading specialist at the high school level. She also went on to pick up the first of her two master's degrees from Ashland University.

After a year with the Cleveland schools, Dennis came to Columbus and worked for a year at Indianola Middle School, followed by two years at Buckeye Middle School, four years at Briggs High School, six months in the high school curriculum office at the district headquarters, three years at Marion-Franklin High School and two years at Mifflin High where she was an assistant principal.

Dennis earned a master's in education administration at Ohio State University after moving to central Ohio.

"I have had the most exciting experience with Columbus City Schools," Dennis said last week, sitting in her office at Whetstone. "It was the opportunity of a century."

During her tenure at Marion-Franklin, Dennis said that she had the opportunity to run the "freshman success academy."

It was a sort of school-within-a-school, she said, and with the help of a group of "insightful teachers," she was able to improve test achievements in those students by 27 percent over their predecessors.

Dennis said that she made those students promise to graduate from high school and in exchange, she'd attend their graduation ceremonies. She's been to a lot of them.

"They kept their word," Dennis said. "It was really nice."

And it was experience she expects to call on in her new post.

Dennis admits she's young for a high school principal, but she pointed out that several others just as young have moved up the administration ladder as a result of retirements and other personnel shifts in the district.

"I am not an administrator who sits in her office very much," Dennis said. "I want to be in the hallway with the students. I want to be in the cafeteria. I want to know what the teachers are doing at all times so I can have an educated conversation with parents when they come in.

"I get one on one with lots of students."

The most recent data set Whetstone's enrollment at 1,089, and Dennis expects it to top 1,100 by the time classes start.

"I cannot tell you how welcoming the people have been," she said of the parents and nearby residents she has encountered so far.

Dennis is seeking to welcome the community to the school with plans for a series of "Community Care Days" in which parents and neighbors volunteer to put in plants and pull weeds on the grounds.

The first such effort was scheduled for Aug. 12.

Dennis lives in Lewis Center with her husband, Scott, and their 3-year-old daughter, Avery Rose.