Pittsfield school honored for educational excellence

PITTSFIELD – Warsaw Middle School received another award this week, one in a string of accolades for the formerly average junior high that has become an award-winning model for other schools.

Warsaw’s most recent award was its selection in late April as a Spotlight School by the New England League of Middle School, one of only seven schools recognized across New England.

Awards are nice, Principal Arnold Shorey admitted this week, but it is the success of individual pupils that gets him excited.

Shorey is the type of hands-on, thinking-outside-the-box principal who could dance on his desk or cartwheel in the hallways and it wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.

He is intensely proud of his staff and 400 pupils and is the first to try an innovative idea if he thinks it will have benefits.

“There is such a partnership here between Arnold and the staff,” computer teacher Lori Stevens said. “He tries to build a consensus, listens to everybody and shares ideas. There is great strength in this.”

Alyce Volovick teaches seventh- and eighth-grade math at Warsaw. “We all work together, and we focus not just on academics, but on a kid’s progress,” she said. “We are getting them ready for life in general and are fostering an appreciation for learning for what it is, not just because they have to.”

Programs developed at Warsaw are being copied across the state. They include the Advisor/Advisee Program, in which every pupil meets with an advocating adult for 15 minutes each day, a schoolwide exercise program, and the FISH program, which stresses staff involvement with pupils.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say, and James Horner, Maine Central Institute dean of academics, praised the quality of students coming to MCI from Warsaw.

“Their readiness continues to improve year to year,” Horner said Friday. This year’s ninth-graders were so advanced in technology, he said, that they were ahead of some students already at MCI.

“This ninth-grade class has had to comply with the Maine Learning Results,” Horner said. “That has been a difficult transition for both teachers and students. The readiness and willingness of the Warsaw students has been very helpful.”

Shorey said that there used to be an attitude that middle school “is fluff, a touchy-feely place.”

“Middle school here is about high standards for everyone,” he said.

Since Warsaw pupils in each grade are grouped heterogeneously – all levels in one classroom – teachers are required to be creative and flexible, Shorey said.

“My most important job is to get good teachers here,” he said. “Good teachers make good students.”

While it is lovely to receive awards and recognition for what goes on at Warsaw, Shorey said it is the pupils’ success that the teachers really crave. To accomplish this, teamwork and self-esteem have become the watchwords at the school.

Over the past decade, Warsaw has shifted from a junior high school to a middle school philosophy, focusing on a more individualized and alternative approach to education.

“A middle school recognizes that adolescents have different needs than high school students,” Shorey said. “It has taken us some time, but our goal has been to get everyone on the same page, with the same vision.”