BENTON — Parents, teachers and friends lined the walkway to the entrance of Benton Elementary School late Tuesday morning, clicking cameras, clapping and cheering while students marched out of the school and into summer.
Cheering on students as they get on the bus for the last time until September is an end-of-the-year tradition for the school, but it had a special significance this year. This was the final day for the principal, Suanne Giorgetti, who is retiring.
Giorgetti stood to the side with teachers, giving high-fives to students as they passed and taking a pause for those who wanted goodbye hugs.
On one of the buses waiting for students, there was a large sign that read “We will miss you Mrs. Giorgetti” in children’s handwriting.
“It’s a loss for our school,” first-grade teacher Donna Kissinger said on Monday. “She’s been a great leader.”
Giorgetti started at School Administrative District 49 as a teacher at Fairfield Primary in 1977. She became principal of Benton Elementary in 1982 and remained in the position for 34 years.
“I’ve truly been blessed to work with this district,” she said in an interview Monday. “It’s been a very rich and fulfilling career.”
Giorgetti, 65, grew up in a household of educators. Her mother taught French, Latin and English and her father was a high school principal. She went to Gorham State Teachers College, now the University of Southern Maine, and earned a bachelor’s of science in teaching. After working in Fairfield for a few years, she got a master’s degree in education administration.
“As a teacher, I could impact a classroom of children; but I wanted to help more children and make a bigger impact,” Giorgetti said of why she chose to go into administration. While she was concerned she wouldn’t get as close with students as she had as a teacher, she discovered she can still get that as a principal. One example is a group of 12 older students she calls the “lunch bunch” who don’t like the cafeteria environment, so they sit and eat together around a meeting table in her office.
Being in a leadership position, she can make decisions that affect the school at large. One change she made was smaller class sizes. When she was a teacher, Giorgetti said she had a fifth-grade class of 36 students.
“In order to teach kids, we needed smaller classes,” she said.
Giorgetti was on the building committee for what is now Benton Elementary School, so she made sure the building had enough classrooms to get class sizes down to the 20s.
The year it opened, it held 915 children, she said, so one goal was to keep the building from looking like a high school. The committee came up with the idea of making pods, each with about six classrooms clustered together, and they put the library in the center.
AIMING TO DO THE RIGHT THING
Giorgetti has seen a lot of changes to education during her time with SAD 49. She said teaching is harder now because so much more is demanded of educators.
Increased assessments and tests of students have given teachers a higher level of accountability, which Giorgetti sees as a positive thing. She also appreciates the consistency testing has created across grade levels and how it promotes building on previous learning as students move from grade to grade.
But there is a delicate balance that’s been tipped, she added.
“I think we are overassessing kids now,” she said. She sees an increase in stress for students and teachers, and that stress is counterproductive to learning, according to Giorgetti.
As the representative for Maine in the National Association of Elementary School Principals for six years, Giorgetti was able to speak with legislators in Washington, D.C., about the issue, as well as the problem of unfunded mandates from the federal or state governments. This was one of the most difficult things for the administration to get past, she said.
“It’s not uncommon to have mandates that aren’t fully funded,” she said.
While Giorgetti and her peers always “aim to do the right thing” by the students, they also had to figure out how to implement the mandates effectively without putting too much of the burden on taxpayers.
Education is important, Giorgetti said, because it is a child’s “foundation for the future.” If she can provide a strong foundation, she said, the child will be able to go on to college and then work in a field he or she will enjoy.
Giorgetti wants that for students because she loves her work, and said the quotation “If you do what you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life” applies to her.
Working in education, she has been able to solve students’ problems and help them overcome their difficulties, whether it was with reading, mathematics or social issues.
“I’m able to do that because I have such a great staff here,” she said. This past year she had about 100 people on staff at Benton and about 630 students enrolled.
COMMUNITY CARES
Giorgetti also appreciated the community around Benton Elementary School.
“The people of this community are very genuine people who genuinely care about children,” she said. “And they appreciate what people do for their children.”
Looking forward, Giorgetti said retirement is bittersweet.
While she’s excited about spending more time with her husband, Steven, without worrying about “6 o’clock alarms,” saying goodbye to her students and staff at Benton has been one of the most difficult hurdles in her career.
“This is like a big family,” she said.
Giorgetti isn’t leaving her position shouting “yahoo,” she said, but she does feel satisfied that she’s made a difference.
For her retirement, she plans to travel with her husband and spend more time with her three daughters and eight grandchildren.
On Monday, Giorgetti visited Kissinger’s class of first-graders, who were eating ice cream to celebrate summer birthdays. Giorgetti asked each child with a birthday coming up to tell her the exact date, one by one. Before she left, she said she’d be sprinkling magic on them Tuesday when they left so they would become second-graders.
“That’s what it’s all about,” Giorgetti said while leaving the room. “Spending time with the kids.”
Madeline St. Amour – 861-9239
mstamour@centralmaine.com
Twitter: @madelinestamour
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