If Shaun Pickett harbored any doubts about parachuting into yet another Vermont school as an interim principal this fall, a kindergartner at Hartland Elementary School dispelled them the other day.
“A school is a great place to be,” Pickett said last week. “I’ve grown to appreciate a 5-year-old who brings cupcakes for their birthday to share with classmates and drops one off for the principal. I really savor that kind of moment.”
Pickett started missing such moments not long after retiring from the front office at South Royalton School in 2012, following 26 years in charge. Along with mentoring several principals in and around the Upper Valley, within a year of retiring Pickett was bridging a gap at the Newton School in South Strafford.
During the 2015-2016 school year, he took the reins while the Roxbury Village School in central Vermont searched for a new leader.
And when Pickett, a 59-year-old Pomfret resident, answered the Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union’s call to work twice a week at Hartland Elementary, in collaboration with Dean of Students Angie Ladeau and teacher-leader Mary Margaret Hitchcock through the 2016-2017 academic year, no one breathed a deeper sigh of relief than Jeff Moreno, who was leaving after three years to serve as athletic director and assistant principal at Hartford High School.
“It was a very tough time, emotionally, to leave Hartland and worry about what the next year would look like,” Moreno wrote in an exchange of emails on Monday. “There’s a ton of change in education right now and knowing he was coming in for the next school year really helped reduce stress. He is a master at making big change feel small and manageable. He is the epitome of calm within the storm.”
During the first 15 years of his career in education, Moreno, a graduate of Hartford High School and the University of Vermont, learned the definition of calm while working under Pickett as a teacher, coach and administrator in South Royalton.
“He always kept his emotions in check and listened to people,” Moreno recalled in his email. “It used to drive me crazy when I was a young teacher/coach and we were getting spoken to by an unhappy kid or parent. My natural response would have escalated the situation, but he knew how to keep calm and listen. He always said that everyone has a message, you just need to find it, even when someone is very upset at you or the situation. They are trying to communicate that something is not working for them and it is our job as educational leaders to refrain from engaging in the argument and find out what the message is and look for ways to address it. He modeled that all the time.”
Before the Vermont Principals Association inaugurated a formal mentoring program a couple of years ago, Pickett learned in the early stages of his career from a number of veteran role models.
“Back then, it was more coaching, telling you, ‘This is how you do it,’” Pickett said. “Mentoring nowadays is more talking about options. You develop relationships, help them process what’s happening.”
While Pickett likes what he sees among the new generation he’s mentored in recent years — among them Jenifer Aldrich, principal at West Windsor’s Albert Bridge School, Windsor Schools Principal Tiffany Cassano and Woodstock Elementary Principal Maggie Mills — he also doesn’t envy them.
“The job is much more difficult than it was,” Pickett said. “On the one hand, with greater access to preschool and to full-day kindergarten, usually they’re coming in more academically prepared. It’s very rare that they don’t know their ABCs or how to count to 10. What is a greater issue now is the social and emotional difficulties they’re bringing in. That’s what we’re seeing now.”
With the flexibility to choose his assignments as an interim principal, Pickett adds that it isn’t an accident that he’s filling in at elementary schools.
“Elementary kids are pretty consistent,” Pickett said. “They’re mostly happy to see you every day. … I could enjoy being back in high school, but I don’t think I could sustain it for long hours and nights anymore. I visited a school a few weeks ago, where there was a lot happening. I sat there and watched the principals approach how they were going to deal with it. I felt my energy level picking up from that adrenaline rush I used to get, but at a certain point in your life, you don’t want too much of that.”
On the other hand, the current arrangement at Hartland works just fine for Pickett. The supervisory union has set Dec. 9 as the deadline to apply for the full-time principal position.
“Someone has taken good care of it over the years,” Pickett said. “They have a good school board and a committed faculty. This school got good over a long period of time. There’s a tremendous community involvement in the school.”
And there’s still a lot of give and take with Pickett’s predecessor.
“We communicate regularly and keep each other fit for the job,” Moreno said. “He continues to teach from his deep bag of tricks and I get to teach him what a Google drive is, and things like that. He is also mentoring the high school and middle school principals at Hartford, so his presence continues to be felt in the Upper Valley.”
River Valley Community College in Claremont is inviting high school and middle school students to learn about computer programming concepts, including use of three-dimensional graphics to create animated video, during its Kids in Technology gathering on Dec. 5 from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Next Tuesday, Nov. 15, is the deadline to register for the gathering, at which breakfast and lunch will be served. Students now taking the community college’s six-week class on the use of the open-source software Alice will demonstrate how to create videos, culminating in a contest for the visitors. To sign up and learn more, email Ali Rafieymehr at arafieymehr@ccsnh.edu or call 603-542-7744, ext. 5340.
The Windsor Central Supervisory Union is inviting residents of Woodstock, Barnard, Bridgewater, Pomfret and Reading to a forum in Woodstock on Wednesday night to discuss a plan to restructure the district.
The plan, which school officials are considering presenting to voters in March as a way to comply with Vermont’s Act 46 consolidation law, would change Barnard Academy and Reading Elementary School into pre-K–2 schools, and send more of those town’s students to Woodstock Elementary School and Prosper Valley School, beginning in 2018.
The forum starts at 5:30 p.m. at Woodstock Elementary School.
The Orange East Supervisory Union will hold a forum at the Newbury (Vt.) Elementary School on Wednesday night, 5:30 to 7:30, to discuss the alternatives facing the school under Act 46.
Dec. 22 is the deadline for students of Mascoma Valley Regional High School to submit stories, poems and artwork for publication in the next edition of the school’s Literary Arts Magazine.
The subject on which writers and artists are asked to create is “Wishes for the New Year!” Prizes for earning publication in the magazine are $50 for first place, $25 for second, $10 for third and $5 for honorable mention. All work from the magazine makes the creators eligible for publication in the special Student Showcase edition of the Mascoma District Newsletter.
To submit stories and poems and artwork, and to learn more, contact art teacher Christopher Morse.
Dartmouth College researchers are looking for Upper Valley children ages 8 to 10 to play an educational iPad game as part of a study of cognitive neuroscience.
Participants who have permission from their parents or guardians to take part in the study will complete age-appropriate tasks on the computers and answer questionnaires. They will be compensated for their time. To register or to learn more, email kraemerlab@gmail.com and write “interested in iPad game study” in the subject line.
Thetford Academy will hold an open house on Dec. 1 for students interested in attending the school starting in September 2017.
The open house, which starts at 6:30 p.m., in the Mary Jane Rich Theater in Anderson Hall, offers opportunities to talk with faculty and current students, and to tour the campus. To learn more, visit thetfordacademy.org or call 802-785-2600 or email wendy.cole@thet.net.
The University of Michigan recently honored Hanover resident Peter Mertz for his volunteer efforts to raise money for his alma mater.
Mertz, the co-founder, chairman, CEO and chief investment officer of Global Forest Partners, made gifts to and led fundraising efforts for Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment.
Holder of a bachelor of science degree and a master’s in business administration from Michigan, Mertz also contributed to and led fundraising projects for the university’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business, its Frederick A. and Barbara M. Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise and for the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital and Congenital Heart Center.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304. Education-related announcements and items also can be sent to schoolnotes@vnews.com.