Change is on the wind as the new principal at Medomak Middle School settles in to her new position and aims to keep up the school’s momentum in transitioning to a standards-based learning system.
Katherine Race, originally from Middlebury, Vt., and now of Woolwich, started as the principal at Medomak Middle School earlier this month.
Race has taught “across the globe” for 15 years while traveling with her husband, Brian, then an army officer, and has worked in both teaching and administrative positions in Maine for the last 12 years, according to a bio she provided.
According to Race, the traditional system where students are lectured to on a given schedule, followed by studying the material, and finally taking a test to demonstrate their knowledge is “going by the wayside” on a national level and in Maine.
In its place will be a standards-based system where students will be required to show proficiency in certain areas but can learn (under the guidance of a teacher) at their own pace and in their own way, Race said.
Kids do learn at different paces and in different ways, and “we’re going to give that fidelity,” she said.
A deadline set by the state calls for all students graduating after Jan. 1, 2018 to be given proficiency-based diplomas. In order to meet that requirement, middle and elementary schools need to pioneer those methods of instruction so students are used to it by the time they reach high school, Race said.
Medomak Middle School is on the right trajectory to complete that shift, and the staff in a middle school is uniquely prepared because middle school is already a place of constant change, Race said.
Race herself has experience with changes in education: she has worked in several positions within the past decade – including three years as the principal of a three-grade middle school – where she pursued changing the traditional instruction method over to one where students self-regulate and teachers guide and instruct based on students’ needs.
RSU 40 has adopted just such a method, one called the Partnerships in Comprehensive Literacy model, Race said.
The model changes the structure of how information is delivered to the students and uses a “workshop model” where the teacher begins a class period with a five to seven minute mini-lesson before the students break out into small groups, Race said.
The teacher then moves between the groups to work on targeting specific skills, and the students move among the groups depending on their needs, she said.
Bringing the model to RSU 40 will help create a consistent teaching method throughout the district, Race said. “I’m very excited about that, because this is all about the craft of teaching, what teaching looks like,” she said.
Fifty-four teachers in the district, three of whom work at Medomak Middle School, will take a year-long graduate level course in Partnerships in Comprehensive Literacy, Race said. When they return and implement it, teachers will see it works for literacy and can be transferred to any content area, she said.
The staff is on board to make the many changes before them and the necessary conversations are happening, but “we know it’s going to be a long journey,” Race said.
