>> School Committee: Malcolm Astley

Email Malcolm Astley

Town Service:

Trustee for the Wayland Library (2006-2009)
President of the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church (2007-2009)
Advocate with the Suburban Coalition for two years
Pine Brook Neighborhood Association Convener

Professional Career:

Principal
Vice Principal
Teacher
Counselor
Also spent a training year at Children’s Hospital Medical Center in clinical psychology and a year as a Fulbright Exchange teacher in Thame, England.

Educational Background:

Wesleyan University, Bachelor of Arts in English
Harvard University, Master of Arts in Teaching
Boston University, Doctor of Education in Counseling and Human Development

Candidate Statement:

As a candidate for the School Committee in Wayland, I am taking this opportunity to describe what I would bring to the position. I have lived in Wayland since 1970. My daughter went to Claypit and is now a sophomore at Wayland High School. I have worked with the Suburban Coalition for two years to advocate for improved funding for towns in Massachusetts and co-authored a state petition for that cause which attracted nearly 4,000 signatures. I have been a trustee for the Wayland Library for the past three years and the President of the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church in Wayland for the past two. I have served as the Convener of the Pine Brook Neighborhood Association focused on balanced planning of conservation and development in the town. We initiated Article 18 which passed at the last Town Meeting and which supports a review of the Town Master Plan. I am retired from full time employment as a teacher and principal. I continue to supervise candidates for teaching and administration and also cultivate blueberries for sale at Russell’s during the summer.

My investment in education goes back over forty years to my early involvement in conversations, readings, observations and debate on the subject with relatives, friends, co-students, and teachers, and later with professors, colleagues, and mentors. My formal education included earning the degrees of Bachelor of Arts in English at Wesleyan University, a Master of Arts in Teaching at Harvard, and Doctor of Education at Boston University in Counseling and Human Development. As an educator I have served in the diverse roles of teacher in grades 1-8, as a counselor, and as vice principal and principal working with grades K through 8 in the towns of Concord, Brookline, Bolton and Lexington. I also spent a training year at Children’s Hospital Medical Center in clinical psychology and a year as a Fulbright Exchange teacher in Thame, England.

I am a mixture of liberal and conservative in my values and thinking. I think of those poles of liberal and conservative as, in fact, often involving a false dichotomy. When examined, the two apparent opposites often meet in common ground. Radical historically means arising from or returning to first principles – a definition with the potential of nicely mixing the virtues of both our yearnings for reliability in “The good old__” and staying on the cutting edge with, “What’s new?!”

I think of education broadly in terms of its being a life long process and involving complex currents we continue to make gains in understanding. We who attempt to preside over formal education continue to review and refine these processes in schooling, acknowledging to ourselves all the time that while education involves some relatively stable fundamentals, it also involves dramatic nuances and changes that constantly, even at age 60 something, stir wonder in us, both at what we do not know and what we can know. I value poetry highly and as much as science and mathematics, and think we made a major error in dividing the verbal and mathematical spheres some time ago. The multiple intelligences paradigm seems highly useful. I support thorough assessment, but assessment that supports important learning, not that takes us and students away from human questing for meaning, caring, and wisdom. I want us to provide many means for students to demonstrate mastery and to try again when they have not yet been successful. That way, we know, students will be most likely to try and to succeed in reaching the goals set.

I believe in spending money wisely and within constraints, but also believe that education, like caring for teeth, is relatively expensive, takes time, and is money well spent for children and the future. I believe we need to be vigilant and creative in looking for means of achieving savings.

To our various economic and educational challenges, I would bring optimism, a dogged creativity, and a willingness to wrestle with and resolve problems at their deeper causal levels. To deliver on the current exciting options of promise, I would bring a broad and deep knowledge of educational practice from over thirty years of experience as a teacher, counselor and principal in a variety of public school and other educational settings.

Part of the work of the School Committee in my view should be to commit resources with other town governmental bodies and those in other towns and the state to spell out right now more effective funding approaches for education, even if the new approaches must wait in the end until signs of economic recovery before final implementation. Hopeful groundwork has been initiated on several fronts at the town, state and national level, and this ground work needs to be further developed in order for us to arrive at a smoother and more dependable funding process.

Our educational challenges at this time involve, first, confirming our core values as a reference for budget decisions. I am committed to maintaining a strong academic program which emphasizes excellence in knowledge and thinking; and which is anchored in the development in students of sound attitudes, habits of mind, and passionate interests that give meaning to community and life. Second, we need to focus on accountability in terms of seeing that we live out our core values both in the budget and at the delivery level in the student’s day to day experience in the classroom. That needs to be one of the final measures of our success, student success with what is important and the student’s sense of that success as well. Finally, I believe that students need effective tools to make sense of the torrent of experiences that young people have today. Students need support to reflect on these experiences, to make sense of them, and to take charge of integrating them toward effective life goals and paths, erratic as the paths may at times be in the normal course of the child’s growth and development.

I have been creative and successful over the years at identifying emerging educational needs in students and schools, and developing both resources and practical tools to meet them. I would value bringing these capacities to continue and expand the repertoire for excellence that is the legacy of the Wayland Public Schools. I seek the support and votes of Wayland citizens on April 7.

Malcolm L. Astley, Ed D
147 Boston Post Road
malcolmastley@verizon.net

2/23/09, 1:34 PM