Wednesday, January 16, 2013

New Administrators

Please welcome two new administrators to the Ville!  Hired in October of 2012, Mrs. Melissa McCooley, Director of Curriculum and Instruction, and Mr. Timothy Teehan, Academic Achievement Officer, have been quickly acclimated to the world of the Somerville.

Mrs. McCooley previously served as the Director of Curriculum and Instruction in Upper Township School District.  Upon her entry into the district, she sent out a "Call for Participants" to the school community in an effort to form parent curriculum committees.  These committees will serve as advisory panels in particular areas of revision.  In November, Mrs. McCooley served as the district's liaison for the Quality Single Accountability Continuum monitoring, an extremely tedious and time consuming process.  She met this challenge with exceptional ability and effort.  Some of her responsibilities include serving as the district Anti-Bullying Coordinator, Affirmative Action Officer, the PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness and of College and Careers) Coordinator and lead facilitator of Professional Development.  She has been managing all of these tasks efficiently with tremendous skill and talent.

Last year, the Board formed the position of Academic Achievement Officer. The position was designed to support and monitor the delivery of instructional programs and to assist, direct and supervise school principals in the development of specific plans to meet identified school and subgroup performance targets.  The principals presented these building level plans at the December 11, 2012 Board of Education meeting.  Mr. Teehan has been analyzing data and statistical tools with teachers, assisting staff members in utilizing data in a meaningful way and acquiring support services to meet the needs of under-performing students.  One of the measures that was recently highlighted on his blog at http://www.tteehan.blogspot.com/ was the incorporation of DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills), a measure used for "assessing the acquisition of early literacy skills from kindergarten through sixth grade" (taken from http://dibels.org/dibels.html).  Mr. Teehan's assignment is limited to Van Derveer for the 2012-2013 school year with a phase in of other buildings in consecutive years.


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