Shady Side Academy Names New Junior School Head

Academy President Tom Cangiano has announced the appointment of Ellen McConnell as the next head of Shady Side Academy’s Junior School. McConnell, who is currently assistant head of the Lower School at Isidore Newman School in New Orleans, LA, will begin her position at Shady Side on July 1.

She will succeed current Junior School Head Cheryl Little, who is retiring at the end of the 2011-12 school after more than 30 years as a teacher and administrator at SSA.

At Shady Side, McConnell will oversee the educational experience of approximately 220 students in grades pre-K-5 on the 7-acre Junior School campus, located in Point Breeze. She will manage a faculty of 35 and a small team of administrators and support staff.

“Ellen has been fortunate to work in some great schools around the country and has left her mark at each one,” said Cangiano.  “She is an outstanding elementary education leader—creative, knowledgeable, hard-working, personable—and I know she will bring so much to Shady Side's Junior School.  I'm very excited to work with her."

“The moment I set foot on the Junior School campus, I felt like I was
home,” McConnell said in a news release. “Everyone, from Tom Cangiano to Josie, Caroline and Koji, my fifth-grade tour guides, was so positive about Shady Side, and it was easy to see why. The students, faculty and parents that I met were so kind, respectful and enthusiastic about this wonderful school that I feel incredibly lucky to now be a part of it.”

McConnell has more than 15 years experience as an independent school teacher and administrator at the elementary level. She has been at Isidore Newman—a coeducational, college preparatory independent day school for grades pre-K-12 in uptown New Orleans—since 2008.

As assistant head of the Lower School (grades PK-5), she oversees curriculum, professional development, divisional operations, budget and discipline. Her achievements at Newman include: building an iPad lab for grades PK-2; designing a balanced literacy curriculum for grades PK-1; creating phonemic awareness and phonics assessments that follow students through the Lower School; writing and editing the Lower School curriculum section of the school’s self-study for re-accreditation; facilitating curriculum changes and introducing new programs such as “Singapore Math,” “Lucy Calkins Writing: Units of Study” and “Words Their Way”; constructing the master schedule; crafting online report cards; and supervising, evaluating and mentoring faculty members.

Prior to Newman, McConnell spent six years at Trinity School in Atlanta, GA, including five years as a kindergarten teacher and one year as an instructional technology specialist. In the latter role, she planned, designed and implemented the structure necessary to maintain a 21st Century Learning environment for grades 1-6, and designed and wrote the technology curriculum for grades PK-6. McConnell spent the first seven years of her teaching career in New York City, serving as a kindergarten teacher at The Marymount School and The Caedmon School, and as a technology coordinator at The Dalton School.

A native of Cresskill, NJ, and a graduate of Dwight Englewood School in Englewood, NJ, McConnell earned her Bachelor of Arts in psychology and history from Wellesley College in 1995 and a Master of Arts in communications, computing and technology from Columbia University Teachers College in 1996.