by Julie Gowel, Marty Green, and Carlene Phillips ·
Friday, September 6, 2024
The Hildreth Elementary School has two new specialists joining the faculty for the 2024-25 academic year. Elizabeth Bala is taking on the role of board certified behavior analyst. Haley Lowney will serve as a special education teacher concentrating on grade 4.
At the Bromfield School, Gerin Murphy is a new special education teacher, working mainly with the English department, while Kimberly Faulconer joins the faculty as a counselor for middle school students.
Bala, a resident of Harvard with two sons at Bromfield, decided to leave her position with the Nashua, New Hampshire, public schools after 16 years to work closer to home. “It was honestly a hard decision to leave,” she said. “I loved my previous district, the kids, and the co-workers, but we moved to Harvard for the schools and have been so happy with the education they’ve gotten here. [I was] so grateful and thankful when this opportunity came up. I can work where we’ve chosen to raise our kids.”
Elizabeth Bala, behavior analyst at HES.
Haley Lowney, HES special education teacher.
Bala’s job at HES is dynamic; there is no ‘typical’ day. She works mostly with students who have an Individual Education Program (IEP) and span a multitude of behavioral and learning challenges. She enjoys discovering each child’s specific strengths and incorporating them into a plan that works for both the student and the teacher in the classroom.
Haley Lowney lives in Oxford with her fiancee and two labradoodles and joins the Harvard Public Schools after working with the Littleton and Marlborough districts for four years. She specializes in dyslexia and is looking forward to co-teaching with Michelle Keane on the grade 4 team. Lowney said what drew her to special education as a career was that she herself was on an IEP from first grade to 12th grade. “I had an incredible special ed teacher [in Groton-Dunstable] who was also dyslexic. She taught me that some of the best special ed teachers are ones that know how the students feel. I didn’t even know if I was going to go to college. Now I have three college degrees. She really showed me that just because you’re on an IEP does not mean that you can’t also do big things.”
With a background in both English literature and special education, Gerin Murphy will be co-teaching English at grades nine and 10 in classes with Alicia Safier and Emily Verrochi. Murphy told the Press that, while he will be working particularly with students with IEPs or special accommodations, “I’m here for all students.”
Gerin Murphy, special education teacher for grades 9 and 10.
Kimberley Faulconer, Bromfield middle school counselor. (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)
“My expertise as an English teacher is my avenue to work with students,” Murphy said. After earning a bachelor’s degree in English and a certificate in English education at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, Murphy went on to Rivier University, where he completed a master’s degree in educational studies. Most recently, he became certified in the Orton-Gillingham program that helps students who struggle with reading.
At Newmarket High School in New Hampshire, where Murphy began his teaching career, he was first a special education case manager and later taught 11th-grade American literature. But, he said, he has found being a special education teacher gives him more direct contact with students. For the past seven years, he has taught at North Middlesex Regional High School as a special education liaison.
In addition to co-teaching in English classes at Bromfield, Murphy will be leading a skills lab in his own room. There he will work with smaller groups of students in reading, English, and other subjects as needed.
Besides being a vital skill itself, Murphy said reading is central to students’ ability to write. “Students don’t read enough. … If they aren’t reading, they have less exposure to quality writing, … and that impacts the quality of their writing.”
Murphy has also coached basketball and baseball, and he is part of a team that regularly officiates at New Hampshire youth football games. Asked if he might coach a sport at Bromfield, Murphy said Dave Boisvert, the athletic director, had brought up the idea informally.
Kimberly Faulconer, who lives in Northborough, is a new Bromfield middle school counselor.
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Westfield State University in 1999, she spent nine years at the Department of Children and Families in Lawrence, providing direct services to adolescents age 14 to 22. She then worked as an education specialist in the Northborough-Southborough Public Schools, where she implemented IEP goals for individual students with significant language, emotional, educational, and medical needs.
Returning to school at Fitchburg State University for her master’s degree in counseling, she did two internships. One was at a charter school in Worcester, creating and delivering social emotional learning lessons to children in kindergarten through grade 2. She also counseled individual students to address various social emotional needs. Faulconer’s more recent internship was at Lunenburg Middle and High School. She facilitated small groups in social emotional skills and counseled students for academic and social emotional challenges.