WOODSTOCK — Beth Clarke said she is very excited as she starts the year as the new Woodstock School Teaching Principal, replacing Jess Wilkey who had been in that role for six years.
Beth Clarke is the new Woodstock School principal.
Clarke said one of her goals is to get children outside to become, “stewards of the land and to develop resiliency skills.”
In a “hopes and dreams conversation” with the other teachers, “every staff member agreed that we need to get our kids outside. Whether it be for more play, forest recess, on Buck’s Ledge, reading outside or doing some science. They [the teachers] get it, they understand why it’s important.”
Clarke, of Bethel, was most recently the education director at Bryant Pond 4-H camp where part of her role was to help direct the Telstar Freshman Academy. She was also very involved in North Star Mentoring.
Before that she was an elementary school principal at the Agnes Gray School in West Paris for six years. And prior to her principalship, she was a literacy coach, a kindergarten teacher, a Title 1 teacher and a first grade teacher.
She said some members of the Woodstock Conservation Commission popped in recently. “They want to extend the trail to Buck’s Ledge from Woodstock, so it’s directly across the street from where our garden is, they’d put a cross walk in and the trail head would be right there, which would make it so much more accessible to us,” said Clarke.
Currently the entrance is .6 miles through a neighborhood and private land.
“We are in dreaming stage,” said Clarke. “[However] in the grand scheme of things adding the [trail extension] is incredibly simple compared to everything else they [Woodstock Conservation members] have accomplished.”
Enrollment
“Our enrollment is low … we have gone to two multi-aged classrooms. We combined [grades] four and five and [grades] one and two with fantastic teachers.
About six or seven years ago they had 121 students enrolled. Last year they had 62 students and there are 56 this year. However, Clarke said she is hopeful since the incoming Woodstock kindergarten class has 14 children. It is the most they have had in awhile.
“We want to share who we are and what we are proud of, and be more communicative with the community about what we do and why we’re special,” she said.
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