NEWINGTON - Newington High School Assistant Principal Michael Gaydos will be running John Paterson Elementary School this fall, Superintendent of Schools William Collins announced in a press release put out last week.

       The resignation of former John Paterson Elementary School principal Debra Grainsky prompted the change, which, for Gaydos, will end an NHS tenure that began in 2007.

       â€�"Mr. Gaydos has a high level of energy and strong organizational skills and cares deeply about children,” Collins wrote in the press release. â€�"I have been very impressed with Mr. Gaydos’ natural ability to work with the students, staff and families in Newington.”

       Gaydos was one of nine Newington administrators that attended Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education Change Leadership and worked for collaboration between NHS and The State Education Resource Center for aid in transitioning to Scientific Reseach-Based Interventions (SRBI), according to Collins’ press release.

       â€�"In addition to his work with students and families, Mr. Gaydos works collaboratively with other educators to implement our shared vision of effective teaching,” Collins wrote. â€�"His strong leadership has given our new hires a model from which to learn valuable skills.

       The Harvard conference, which Collins also attended, focused on preparing educators for the sweeping reforms that will fall into effect in the coming school year.

       â€�"Mike has been involved in school reform since we sent him there in 2009, so he’s been there from the very beginning,” Collins said last week. â€�"We learned how to design our change process so that when you go to implement, you’ve thought of everything.”

       Quality instruction, as indicated by the emphasis on teacher training and evaluation, was a heavily stressed focus point, according to Collins.

       â€�"If you don’t establish what effective teaching is, how are you going to evaluate?” he said.

       The group got input from the rest of the teachers and administrators in the Newington school district when it came to setting the guidelines, Gaydos said.

       He admitted that one of the challenges he faces moving from the high school level to elementary education is how much more crucial the implementation of effective intervention for struggling students is.

       â€�"I’ll be frank with you--I don’t know what I don’t know,” Gaydos said. â€�"There’s still a lot of learning that I’m doing to get caught up on what I’m looking at.”

       What he does know is how to establish intervention methods at the high school level, an area where Newington has been in need of it for quite some time. Programs such as extra math and reading instruction for struggling students have been in place at the elementary and middle school level, but need to be consistent throughout the K-12 curriculum in order to bridge standardized test achievement gaps, Gaydos said.

       â€�"The gap just gets larger and larger as they get older and older,” he said. â€�"Then what you have is a ninth grade kid coming in reading at a sixth grade level.”

       A lack of intervention at the high school level is not unique to Newington, Gaydos said.

       â€�"It’s just not out there,” Gaydos said. â€�"So it’s kind of left for [individual] high schools across the country to figure out what kind of intervention to do.”