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01/03/2018 07:30 AMArriving on Oct. 2 as the new principal of Old Saybrook Middle School, Dr. Krista Bauchman spent the last two months getting to know staff, parents, and children, and learning more about the school and its programs. She’s excited by what she’s seen so far.
“The Old Saybrook Middle School has a lot of very dedicated teachers and a school community dedicated to their children and wanting to be successful,” Krista says. “The children here are kind, outgoing, [and] polite and I’m excited to get to know them better.”
Old Saybrook Middle School students spend five years at the campus (from 4th- through 8th grades), allowing staff and teachers to build close connections with individual students and their families over time.
“I like the middle school age. Middle school is an interesting time because [the students] are on the brink of independence, but they still need your support. It’s about finding a balance,” says Krista. “They have different needs as they go through the changes of adolescence. [For teachers and staff] it’s an opportunity to make an impact.”
Krista comes to the district from Irving Robbins Middle School in Farmington where she served as assistant principal for the last five years.
“It’s been a journey over time. When I first started teaching, I didn’t think I wanted to move into administration, but then at the seventh or eighth year, I started doing committee work, and became a team leader. I found I really liked helping other teachers with their instruction,” says Krista. “I realized I wanted to do more for kids beyond my own classroom, and going into administration would allow me to impact more students and teachers.”
Teaching wasn’t the first career path she had in mind, however. In high school, at first she wanted to be a TV weather person, though as she pondered this future, she also had joined a club called Peer Advocates.
“As members of Peer Advocates, we taught 5th-grade students about peer pressure and stereotypes. A social worker that had seen me teach said I should write my own lesson on stereotypes,” says Krista.
After she delivered that original lesson to a 5th-grade class, the teacher of that class pulled her aside and asked whether she had ever considered becoming a teacher.
With the rewards of that first teaching experience and the positive encouragement from the social worker and the teacher, she shifted her sights toward a teaching career. She says that her parents knew she should become a teacher even before she did (her dad is also a teacher).
Her first education job was as a 5th-grade teacher in Bloomfield; it was a job she loved, but after a few years, she realized that what she really wanted to share with students was her life-long love of science. So she returned to school and earned a master’s degree in science education.
“I have always loved science and wanted to share that inquisitive perspective with my students,” says Krista. “I played with Legos a lot as a child and had a large collection of plastic dinosaurs. I was also a fan of Mr. Wizard growing up. I would ask my mother to get me various household chemicals so I could do experiments—she was horrified!” Krista recalls with a smile.
After years of teaching science, she still has and wants to share with others that awe and fascination with the subject. At home, she has built an insect collection under glass, declaring them to be cool, interesting, and beautiful. Her prize specimen? An elephant dung beetle. Her first science teaching job was as an 8th-grade science teacher. She quickly connected to the students and knew that middle school was where she wanted to stay.
“When I was attending middle school, I struggled with a group of students that were mean to me,” says Krista, who remembers what that felt like. “I want to empower kids and make sure they feel supported in those middle school years. I want to help them navigate these years as self-advocates who are also supportive of each other.”