New Lynn curriculum director hopes to continue moving district forward

LYNN – Summer has been a busy time for Lynn Public Schools employee Susan Rowe.The district’s new Executive Director of Curriculum has been learning her new position on the fly as she oversees a host of professional development workshops and continues to try and support the district’s standards and goals, all while managing a massive staff change in the school administration department.Retirements plagued the Lynn Public School administration this summer as several members of the district’s vital curriculum team stepped aside, leaving a successful department in an untimely rebuilding phase.After a school year that saw positive reviews from auditors and featured a promotion of sorts away from the Department of Education’s priority one district watch list, selecting replacements for the five veteran educators who retired from the team is a tall task for Rowe and Superintendent Nicholas Kostan.Kostan selected Rowe, a 30-year veteran, to replace executive director of curriculum Joanne Roy before school ended in June, but the positions of K-12 assurance specialist for math, science and English, along with the director of technology integration will not be filled for another week or two, meaning Rowe is still blind to the team members she will be entering the school year working with.Despite the uncertainty, Rowe has been focused on moving the department forward, and says she is looking forward to working with the new team whenever it is in place.”We are continuing to do interviews and we are trying to select the right people. The previous team was so strong, I would really like to keep that momentum going,” she said in an interview Thursday. “I like to work as a team. I like making team decisions as a team and working under that structure.”Rowe began her career as a special education teacher 30 years ago, and has worked at several of the city’s schools as a teacher, reading specialist facilitator and coach. Eventually, she moved to the administrative side of things, serving as assistant director of curriculum and most recently, a school support coordinator.As executive director of curriculum, Rowe says she is committed to supporting the district’s three main goals: data driven decision-making, supporting standards-based instruction and departmentalizing all of the elementary schools.Data driven decision making, where teachers use data to determine what type of education an individual student needs, received a boost this summer thanks to a Department of Education grant that allowed educators in Lynn, Salem, Peabody and Gloucester to attend workshops and use new technology.Rowe is in frequent contact with the state in discussing standards-based instruction, including the MCAS exam, and is hoping to implement the departmentalizing of at least a few elementary schools this year.Departmentalizing the elementary schools would essentially allow teachers to focus more on a single subject than taking on the burden of instructing students of all subjects.Much like the middle and high school levels, students would have different teachers for different subjects every day.Rowe said the program is already in place to some extent at the Cobbett and Ingalls schools and will begin at the Harrington this year.”The model looks different in each building depending on the staffing,” said Rowe. “It will be at the Harrington this year and we are slowly trying to get more schools on board. The curriculum is just so robust now, it is difficult.”Rowe worked closely with teachers during the professional development workshops and is available to all of the city’s principals for support, including newcomers Brian Fay, Michael Molnar and Bernadette Stamm at the Cobbett, Harrington and Drewicz schools.She is looking forward this year to keeping the team working like a well-oiled machine and providing the proper support necessary for the people who are inside the schools every day.”I like to get out to the schools as much as possible without intruding,” she said.