Entering her eighth year working at Malden High, another busy year is upon Shereen Escovitz as the new House Principal for Jenkins House, just after she was selected as the new STEM ( Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) director last year.
Escovitz’s previous job as STEM director consisted of working with the Kindergarten to twelfth grade at the elementary schools of the Malden Public Schools. With this position, she was involved with the “curriculum and instruction” of students along with gathering the materials they need in order to learn. These materials include necessities for labs and course material for math classes.
She found the experience of being director a positive and joyful one. as she was able to meet a lot of elementary and middle school teachers and learn about what goes on in the lower grades. But, at the same time, she really wanted to go back to working with students since this position “doesn’t directly work with kids as much”.
A big difference that she noticed during the transition from director to House Principal was that she was back to having a routine again. She recalled that back when she was a teacher, she had a classroom and she prepared tasks for the students– there wasn’t much of a routine for STEM considering she was balancing out work in all six schools of the district. Now with the role of House Principal, she can go back to a routine which consists of morning arrivals, signing cut-slips and visiting classrooms.
During the application process, she felt a good amount of stress as she went through many interviews despite knowing most of the staff. Upon hearing the news of receiving the position of House Principal, Escovitz remembered being “ excited” due to the fact that this was something she desired for such a long time. She implied that this was also a goal that she was trying to reach for quite a time.
Principal Edward Lombardi was among the group of eight people who were tasked with choosing the new role along with counselors and teachers. He revealed that the process took about six weeks and out of all the participants that they saw, they had to narrow the pool down to just four finalists.
Math teacher Aleskandra Kordowska found it to be a “pleasure” working with Escovitz within the math curriculum (Algebra, Geometry) for a year and was impressed at how she engaged the students into listening and respecting her.Three words Kordowska would use to describe Escovitz are “reliable” because of her commitment to getting things done, “consistent” because she has no favoritism among her students and “ held them” to different expectations, and “caring”, as Kordowska states that “[Escovitz] enjoys working with students and you can tell that she really cares about them, individually.”
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