As summer vacations wind down, a new school year is just around the corner. In the hallways and in their classrooms next week, students will notice some new faces among the faculty. Eight new educators will join Hildreth Elementary School and the Bromfield School this year, five at HES and three at Bromfield.
Beth Robinson. (Courtesy photo)
Beth Robinson, language arts specialist
As the new English language arts specialist at HES, Beth Robinson will oversee the whole plan for teaching elementary language arts. The job description for her position emphasizes identifying current best practices in language arts and helping teachers put those practices to use in the classroom.
Children’s language skills, she said, develop in a sequence: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. She noted that children need a firm foundation in the first two to move on successfully to the literacy skills of reading and writing. By the fourth grade, their reading starts to include more difficult, unfamiliar words, and students need the skills to cope with that higher level of literacy.
Teachers are being flooded right now with new research on how to teach reading, Robinson said. She sees her job as bringing “a very open and curious mind” to see what HES is already doing successfully and then to move forward from there. One of her responsibilities will be to recommend professional development opportunities to help teachers incorporate the latest research.
Robinson began her career teaching in the primary grades, then stopped to raise her own children. Since 2016, she has worked as a reading specialist in several nearby districts, most recently in Westford. In 2018 she earned a master’s degree in education as a reading specialist at the University of New England in Maine.
Evan Woodworth. (Courtesy photo)
Evan Woodworth, physical education teacher
Evan Woodworth, a former 2016 student teacher at HES, is excited to return as the school’s new physical education teacher. Woodworth graduated from Bridgewater State University with a bachelor’s degree in physical education, and is currently working toward his master’s degree in physical education at Westfield State University. For the past six years, he has taught at the Billerica Public Schools.
Woodworth describes himself as a child at heart. He said that he grew up playing whiffle ball with a hairbrush and pingpong ball and learned to adapt classic games with creative twists. “Bringing in cartoons like Pokémon or Mario, and relating the games to those, helps me get on the kids’ levels so that they can have fun and be active,” said Woodworth.
Looking ahead to this school year, Woodworth said he is excited to organize his first field day for students and to reconnect with the HES faculty he met as a student teacher. “It’s like coming home to a family,” he said.
Claudia Owens. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
Claudia Owens, art teacher
Many elementary students say art is their favorite class, and new art teacher Claudia Owens is looking forward to their enthusiasm. “They love any kind of creativity,” she said, adding “They especially love clay.”
Owens has taught art for seven years, most recently in Salem, New Hampshire. As an undergraduate she majored in fashion design at Framingham State University. Later she earned a master’s degree in art education at Lesley University. She is excited about teaching in Harvard where, she said, the art program seems strongly supported.
Travis Parisi. (Courtesy photo)
Travis Parisi, school counselor
Travis Parisi will be a part-time school counselor for grades K-5, a position in which he says he “wears many hats”—mentor, advocate, and a sort of “big brother” at school. The goal of an educational counselor, he said, is to try to make sure that kids really want to be at school. He will be working closely with full-time counselor Lynne Dumas.
Parisi said being an educational counselor involves helping children develop the psychosocial skills for dealing with others. Sometimes, he said, it’s just giving them a short break from whatever situation is stressing them out—a time to get their equilibrium back. But the main thing about his job, he said, is “You just have to care about kids.”
Parisi earned his master’s degree in education with a concentration in counseling from Springfield College in 2013. Afterward, he moved to the Midwest for a while and then returned to Massachusetts. He worked part time as a counselor last year at both Overlook Middle School in Ashburnham and Westminster Elementary School. He is also a firefighter in the town of Auburn.
Angela Steed. (Courtesy photo)
Angela Steed, health teacher
As Bromfield’s new and first middle school health teacher, Angela Steed will oversee classes and curriculums that are separate from the previously combined health and physical education program. “I’m going to be stepping in and teaching them things they might not have been exposed to before,” said Steed. Students will start the school year with lessons on mental and emotional health, followed by nutrition and physical health. Steed explained that lessons about sex education, and safety and prevention regarding drugs, alcohol, and substance abuse, will vary by grade.
“I love offering students a safe and welcoming environment because those are the type of teachers that stuck out to me most when I was a student,” said Steed, adding that she was on her way to transform the science classroom she was assigned into a health classroom with twinkle lights and plants. Steed is looking forward to getting to know her students through their first project assignment. The students will create a Padlet, which is similar to a Pinterest board, and showcase their interests and health habits.
Steed is a recent graduate from Worcester State University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in health education and minored in psychology, communication, and education. This past spring, she was a student teacher of health and physical education at Sutton Middle School and a long-term substitute physical education teacher in the Worcester Public Schools. Steed intends to continue her education and is working toward a master’s degree at WSU.
Tyler Wachtelhausen. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
Tyler Wachtelhausen, physical education teacher
Teaching is a family tradition for Tyler Wachtelhausen, both of whose parents were teachers. And he says he has always wanted to teach physical education. He will teach PE in grades 6, 7, and 8 at Bromfield.
Wachtelhausen likes teaching middle schoolers, he said, because they are starting to put together some of the physical skills they learned in elementary school, but they haven’t specialized in a sport yet. “They’re open to new experiences,” he said in a phone interview.
Wachtelhausen comes to the Bromfield School after 15 years teaching sixth- to eighth-grade physical education and wellness in Newton. His experience includes adaptive physical education for students with special needs. He also coached boys football and girls soccer in Newton for several years, but his longest coaching experience there was 13 years with both girls and boys basketball teams.
Wachtelhausen received his bachelor’s degree from Keene State College and his master’s from Plymouth State University, both in New Hampshire. He has lived in Harvard for seven years.
Kae Pierron. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
Katharine Pierron, art teacher
Katharine (Kae) Pierron is returning to Bromfield as the middle school’s art teacher after being hired in January. This year, she is shaping her curriculum around Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB), a method that emphasizes practicing art in a similar way to practicing sports and music. “It’s a studio environment where students are expected to do self-directed learning with a different set of work spaces,” said Pierron, explaining that painting and drawing are two available spaces. Through the TAB program, students will be encouraged to advocate for themselves and the type of art they want to experiment with.
Pierron said she enjoys her yearly clay project, in which students can choose to make a variety of objects out of clay, such as tic-tac-toe boards or pencil holders. She likes to learn what her students are excited about and help foster their artistic minds. “I like middle schoolers because they’re so quirky and creative,” Pierron said.
Pierron earned her bachelor’s degree in art education from Bridgewater State University and is working toward a master’s at The Art of Education University. Previously, Pierron was an art teacher at Normandin Middle School in New Bedford for 2½ years.
Shaye VanDyne, special education teacher
The Press was unable to reach Shaye VanDyne, who will join HES as a new special education teacher.
