Steven Connolly wants to hit the ground running when he begins his “dream job” as the new principal of Cape Elizabeth Middle School. For a start, he plans on meeting with parent groups, community groups, property owners, individual staff members and anyone else who will meet with him.

Connolly said it is a small system – he has worked with about half the staff already, he said – and wants people to feel “we’re all in this together.”

Connolly was hired unanimously Tuesday evening by the School Board and has already met with incoming superintendent Alan Hawkins, whom Connolly already knew from grant work he had done in South Portland when Hawkins was a principal in that community. Connolly said they discussed philosophy and education and “we are definitely on the same page about why we’re here.”

On July 1 he will return as chief administrator to the school where he taught sixth- through eighth-grade math and science from 1982 to 1996, replacing longtime Principal Nancy Hutton, who is retiring at the end of this school year. Contracts for principals’ salaries in Cape are under negotiation, but all three principals this year make $80,933 for the 46-week school year.

When he left, he felt he had developed leadership skills – as eighth-grade team leader and half-time math and science curriculum coordinator – and a master’s degree in administration, which led him to seek a position elsewhere. “It’s very difficult to take a next step in the community you work in,” he said.

When he left CEMS, he intended to return someday. While away he looked for positions that were different and would offer him a broad range of leadership experiences. He worked as a primary school principal, elementary school principal, at colleges as a post-secondary instructor and is now assistant principal at Portland High School.

Connolly gets involved in the schools where he works and with the everyday lives of his teachers and students. As assistant principal at PHS he participates in book groups and co-teaches with teachers in the science department.

“Be a model; be a model learner, be a model citizen, be a model for the things that are happening in the school,” Connolly said. Turning those words into actions Connolly joined the mentoring program at PHS and considers his mentee, a Sudanese boy, as a son. “He is one of the greatest people on this planet, no questions asked,” Connolly said.

When Connolly learned about the mentoring program at PHS he was amazed that only 15 percent of the school staff was involved. Connolly said he could not ask someone else to do something he would not do himself. Being a mentor at PHS has been “the greatest single piece of learning that I’ve done as an adult.”

“This, to me, is really giving back,” Connolly said. “This is really putting your words into actions.”

Apart from being a good role model, Connolly said the most important job of any administrator or educator is “to create, manage and promote the culture of that organization. … If you do that everything else will take care of itself.”

Middle school students are a fragile and fun age group to work with, Connolly said. But, “if you don’t reach the kids on a personal level first … then they’re not going to be able to access the academic component.”

During his time as an administrator Connolly has also tried to keep his hands in the curriculum by reading and keeping up with new trends in education. One of his main interests is assessment, a big issue in the schools since the Maine Learning Results require a local assessment system. He said the guiding principles of the Learning Results are good – to create clear and effective communicators and problem-solvers – but that the content standards are misdirected.

“How do we know kids are progressing or not? You might think that shouldn’t be a new question in education,” said Connolly. But it is.

Connolly said it is very important to look at the work that students are doing, which he said sounds logical, but in reality teachers grade the work and don’t often have the time to really look at it. Assessment should determine the efficacy of what teachers do, Connolly said. “Is it effective, isn’t it? What’s effective about it, what’s not effective? Fine-tune what you’re doing.”

Connolly said he is looking forward to reexamining the mission and beliefs of the school, which he said will take place this year.

“That’s the big picture,” Connolly said. “I want to get that in front of staff and in front of parents as often as possible and say ‘does everything that we do support this?'”

Connolly questioned the current methods of grading students and the purpose of an honor roll. He agrees with recognizing student achievement, but he wonders if the way it is being done is the best way. He also pointed out that students rising from fourth grade to fifth grade move from a learning environment without grades to suddenly being thrust into a more competitive environment where some make the honor roll and some don’t. “What’s the message we’re giving kids with that?” Connolly wants to bring these issues into the forefront for debate.

“What is that trying to do? Is that one of those archaic structures that doesn’t serve a purpose any longer, or serves a misguided purpose? Or, is it a structure that actually serves a meaningful purpose towards the mission, vision and beliefs of the Cape Elizabeth School Department?”

He used the analogy of a finish line, which in the past some kids crossed and some didn’t. But, Connolly wants to talk about “personalized learning plans” and a new goal to get every student across that line by personalizing education.

Connolly said there is no doubt this is a transition point and every day is going to be a new challenge. “There are no two days that are the same,” he said. He added that within education right now the challenge is to improve. “So, if we’re looking at that, how can everything we do not be challenging?”

“The goal that I have with everyone that I work with and myself is constantly improve,” Connolly said, which he related again to being a good role model. “Let’s work smarter, not just harder.”

Part of the middle school culture Connolly wants to foster is healthy student-to-student relationships. He wants to build structures to help interactions between grade levels; give the older kids more responsibility and make them feel they have a meaningful role in the school.

Connolly said that type of atmosphere is already inherent in sports teams where older athletes view their job as supporting and developing the younger athletes because they know in the future they will need a strong team. But, Connolly asked, how do we create that environment in the school every day?

“I’d like to walk down the hall and see an eighth-grade kid sitting alone with a fifth-grader and helping that student in some way or another and that when I go by they barely even look up to say hello because they’re so engrossed in what they’re doing … there’s some good stuff happening there.”