By Mitch Evans
Beth Benoit grew up in Holliston, Massachusetts and was the Principal of an Early Childhood building in Colorado prior to joining Davis Elementary in 2013.
Beth has always been in education. Starting as an undergraduate at Wheelock College in Boston, she then taught pre-school for four years, followed by kindergarten for four years at Tufts University Laboratory School. While at Tufts she studied for her Masters and then moved into an administration role in Colorado. Beth currently lives in Belmont with her husband.
Do you miss teaching in the classroom?
All the time. I miss the direct connection. The ability to take kids from where they are to the next place. Seeing the excitement that they have when they succeed in something they found hard. I also miss shaping a classroom as well. I do it now from a building standpoint but I miss the conversations within the classroom. I think it makes me stronger as a principal to have had those experiences. .
You are now entering your third year at Davis, do you feel you have settled? Are your feet firmly under the table now?
I do. I’m excited for this third year. The first two years were a lot of learning, I don’t feel solid in everything yet, but it feels good. As a school team we know our path now, next year will be about walking that path. We have found the right direction for Davis and it’s about everyone working together to get there now.
What are you most looking forward to during the next school year?
I’m really excited about the curriculum work we have been doing. We have really shifted from looking at programs, to looking at what the end learning expectation is for kids, and looking at how we can creatively help them learn. I’m also looking forward to seeing what teachers bring to the table, their own passions. Also how to have kids more actively engaged in projects. The common core took us off course, in the sense that we were trying to understand these new expectations and the best way to help kids get there. The school itself went in the direction of, ‘let’s look at all these new programs’, but now we are saying ‘OK these programs are great but we need to understand what’s important about them and what we can get from them as a resource’. But that’s not the road map. The map is about the children in front of you and what they are interested in and what the teacher is interested in, and how we proceed in a meaningful way, to those expectations.
And the meaningfulness, the engagement, what are your thoughts on the role of play in all of this? Because the common core seems to have a more academic focus.
Right, it does. I feel like we have lost sight of how a teacher can be really purposeful through a child’s play and through their project work, while still being academic. It’s not an either/or. I feel that play is very much the vehicle for younger kids to learn new skills. They have to be engaged in hands-on play. As they enter 2nd grade that focus may shift to more projects but they still have to be engaged in their desire to learn those skills. It’s hard work to learn to read. There has to be a motivation to do it.
I think the way in which the next generation science standards are helping is that it’s about posing a problem to kids and letting them figure it out. Play allows them to solve that problem. So we are not talking about free play, it’s directed, intentional play. Teachers have an understanding of the end result and they can ask the right questions to help children get to the correct answer. There are, of course, some things that need rote teaching and rote practice but as a school we are all on the same page. We understand that this is how you engage children in an early childhood building.
What are the biggest challenges facing Davis in the coming year?
Population has been one of our biggest challenges. Trying to figure out if this is a trend or the new reality; 575 kids under the age of 8 years is a lot of children who aren’t yet self-sufficient in how they move through their world. They are used to relying on grownups. This means that at bus time and at lunch time it can feel very busy. But the teachers are phenomenal at how they help their classrooms feel connected and how they get the kids to understand the bigger community at Davis. However there is always a balance – trying to still feel like a whole school, having all school assemblies and the meaningful ways we can bring everyone together. The only difficulty is when we have family events, as we can’t do an all school gathering. We have to split by grade or by classrooms in order to fit everyone in the gymnasium.
You have one more modular unit being installed this summer, which takes the total to three.
Yes that’s right.
How many kindergarteners are starting this September?
Right now we are at 190, which is 10 classes. There may be a few more to arrive or a few children to leave before the start of school. But this year’s second grade class is still our biggest cohort so far, at 205 students.
What role should technology play in elementary schools and how can it support learning and teaching?
I think there are a lot of great ways it can support elementary schools. Particularly as kids are coming in to school now already knowing how to find the answer to questions. They think in more technological ways. They don’t need to go to the library, check out a book and look up the answer, and actually that’s just not how people carry out research any more. Technology enriches the children’s ability to learn. Also, learning to be a good consumer of information is important and technology is a venue for doing that with kids.
There are also so many great interventions that can help kids when they are struggling. They can go online and receive immediate feedback even when a teacher is working with other kids and then they can come back and show how they will use that information. We have an iPad cart for every grade. They are used in a variety of ways by the teachers, for writers’ workshops, for reading activities, for practicing basic skills.
Plus every classroom should have an interactive whiteboard or a smart board by the end of this year. We also have the interactive table which was funded by Bedford Education Foundation. This has been great, it can do some interesting things. It’s shared amongst 1st grade and kindergarten classrooms and allows kids to collaborate in different ways.
What message would you hope the school conveys to visitors when they walk through the door at Davis?
I hope people feel that they are known and respected and that their learning style matters. I don’t just want that for kids but for adults too, whether they are teachers or parents or other faculty members. Who you are as an individual is valued and what you have to contribute to the community is important. But while we respect this uniqueness, it’s us as a collaborative force that is going to support kids, to learn and create new things. Together we are much stronger.
What major projects are you working on over the summer?
Well the building work is happening, in preparation for the new modular classroom. Plus we are preparing for the implementation of the SAIL program (Social and Academic Integrated Learning) which is going to allow children with autism or a related disability, who have typically been outplaced, because we haven’t been able to meet their needs at Davis, to come back into the Bedford school system. It will be a sub-separate classroom with inclusion as much as possible, depending on the child’s individualized needs. We have hired support staff and a teacher with a background in this area and have also been working with the New England Center for Children to help implement ACE (Autism Curriculum Encyclopedia). This is a complete educational system designed for children with autism. We have also been looking at how we educate our community, around who these children are and how we get to know them as individuals. There will be training for our whole faculty but also helping to bridge that gap for our family community as well. So, for example, if a child in your kid’s classroom has autism and your son/daughter wants to invite them to a birthday party, what do you need to know so that these students really feel included in the community. Some of these children were being bused to a school over an hour away, in order to get the appropriate curriculum. Now they can attend school with their siblings and their neighbors, which is great.
We have also been looking at our inclusion practices in our general education classrooms. We have been using a cluster model which allows groups of teachers to be clustered around resources. Then children are appropriately placed, based on the type of resources they need. This allows support staff to assist kids within the classroom and it makes scheduling much easier.
There must be a lot of communication between Davis and Lane to assist in making the transition between 2nd and 3rd grade as smooth as possible.
Absolutely. It helps that we have a small administrative team at the district level, which means that the principals of the four schools really get to form a cohesive group. Jon has been working with all of us around understanding the bigger Bedford vision and how we each help our buildings to see their own parts in that future. So I think that helps with the smooth transitions, because everyone is clear on what our goals are for our students.
The leadership teams will communicate between schools and I think with the appointment of Mary-Lou (Sallee) as Assistant Superintendent, the continued articulation and alignment of our Bedford vision from grades K-12, is key. We will see this area continue to strengthen. I feel very lucky to work within such a supportive leadership team. There isn’t a competitiveness between schools, which can happen in other districts, particularly when you are competing for money. It’s a team approach here, for example we needed some funds and Kevin (Tracey) and Henry (Turner) were happy to shuffle their budgets and delay some items on their schedule so that we could afford what we needed this summer instead. It’s a real team mentality and it benefits the kids ultimately.
When you have time off, how do you like to relax?
I’m an outdoor type of person, just being outside rejuvenates me. Last year I took up paddle boarding and I like to hike and ski. The fresh air clears my head and recharges me. I love spending time up in New Hampshire, on Lake Winnipesaukee.
Is there anything else you want to talk about? Although it’s not relevant here at Davis, we haven’t really talked about standardized testing and PARCC.
No, I’m glad PARCC isn’t here and I hope it’s not coming. We are fortunate that we don’t need to administer it but we do feel the ‘push down’ pressure of having to get our 2nd graders ready for PARCC in 3rd grade. I think we may feel the impact more, once Lane has received the 3rd grade results and had a chance to interpret them.
If we can do play and project based learning well, there will be a general reduction in stress felt by the children at the end of the year. That’s why we really want to look at the social and emotional learning projects. Kids moving from 1st to 2nd grade start to notice when they find things a struggle; up to that point in their development children know when something is hard for them, but it’s not as apparent to them that it’s any different to the other children.
I think we also need to help kids decide how they learn best and not just what they are learning. There are many different styles. Some children may find it easier to write about something first, others may need to talk about it, and others might find it useful to draw a picture. They are just different ways to help them organize their thoughts. We can’t expect young children to arrive already knowing how to operate in a ‘school way’. If we can help them with this, hopefully the levels of stress felt later, as the work gets more challenging, will reduce. We are also working on helping children with selfregulation. How do you calm yourself down when you get upset, who do you go to when you are feeling worried, how to deal with different situations. Our Open Circle curriculum is great at teaching these important life skills.
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