BY CHRISTINA APPIGNANI & SYDNEY STUMPF
Abbey Dick is a well-known English teacher and Malden High School. She has been teaching here for 3 years and currently teaches English 10 CP classes and one AP Language and Composition class. Dick recently acquired a position as Humanities director of Malden Public Schools.
As Humanities director, Dick will be leaving the teaching environment and applying herself to coordinating curricula in the English, Foreign Language, History, and Fine Arts programs in the K-8 schools as well as the High School. Dick has left her “big beautiful classroom” for “a cubicle, downstairs near the gym by the athletics office.” This, Dick has said, has been a “really big change.”
Dick recalls how she got the job; “the position was advertised and [she] thought about it for a while, and [she] applied and was interviewed and got the job.” When considering the Job, Dick admits that when she read the job description, she thought “[it] is a huge and challenging role. But [she] would like to give it a shot.” Although Dick got the position on her own will, she believes that, “the superintendent and assistant superintendent made it happen.”
When asked why she applied for the job, Dick said that “[she] really likes working on curriculum so helping teachers, and not just design day-to-day lesson plans but long term picture”. She frequently asks herself “where’s the district going in the next five years? What assessments do we need to show that display how students are making progress? What does [the district] do? What does [the district] brainstorm when [students] are not making progress?”
Dick really likes the scope of work that Humanities Director offers her. She says that “being a Humanities Director is obviously incredibly different from being a teacher, and it will be very very challenging, because it’s not just English, it’s social studies, art, music, and foreign language. So, it’s gonna be a huge job learning what [she] needs to know about all of those topics.” Despite these challenges, Dick is feeling confident because of the many people there is to help her along the way.
As to her goals as Humanities Director, Dick claims that “right now, [she] is thinking about the new grading system for big assessments, called Mass Tree Connect, which is like an online scantron sheet for major assessments. [She] needs to go to all six schools and figure out what the curriculum documents are and if they’re being implemented. Another part of being the Humanities director is evaluating teachers rather than students, and Dick does this by “going to their rooms to write reports on them and watch them teach”. Dick also mentions that “There is a lot of important professional development days that [she] will be in charge of, so, there’s a lot of activities that [she] will need to be able to balance at the same time to do this job correctly”
Dick’s new position will also require different work years, as she will be working for 220 days, through the summer, as opposed to the teacher’s’ work year of 183 days, working only during the school year. The movement of the job will also be a major difference from her job teaching English. Dick will be “coming and going from all the K-8 schools”, observinging teachers, and working on curriculum “on that level.” This will be a major transition for Dick, as her “whole life [was] tenth grade English and AP Language.”
“Meeting teachers in the district [Dick has] never met before”, is one the more exciting aspects of her new position. Dick feels like “we can all learn something from every person we meet, and there’s so many people [she] hasn’t met.” Dick recalls the “2-3 years [it took] to learn all of the names of Malden High School teachers.”
Dick started her new job as Humanities Director on Monday, Oct. 31st. As for Dick’s classes, the students “[were] the first to know,” and were still being worked on as of Thursday, Oct. 27th.
