Award-winning Maine educator took pies to the face to cheer students during pandemic

By Ernie Clark, Bangor Daily News Staff

DEXTER — Jessica Dyer believed she was destined for a career in education even during her earliest days in a classroom, but never did she imagine she would have to help a school maneuver through a pandemic.

“I don’t think there are words that would describe it more, other than it’s been really, really hard,” said Dyer, an assistant principal at Ridge View Community School in Dexter who was honored as the state’s National Association of Elementary School Principals outstanding assistant principal of the year Dec. 3 during a ceremony at her school.

Dyer has been an assistant principal at Ridge View for the last five years, parlaying the skills she developed during 17 years as a teacher into a key administrative role. Relationship building and a tireless work ethic have been at the heart of Dyer’s professional rise, according to SAD 46/AOS 94 Superintendent of Schools Kevin Jordan.

“Jessica knows every student in the school and their parents by name,” he said. “Many staff members also claim she knows most of the grandparents, step-parents, aunts and uncles. This gift truly makes Jessica the best resource for students in the school and allows her to establish productive relationships with every family.”

Those skills have been put to a unique test since mid-March when COVID-19 suddenly forced Ridge View and other schools into remote learning.

Dyer turned to social media as one way to keep the lines of communication open. 

She and former fellow Assistant Principal Greg Hughes developed a live broadcast they aired regularly on Ridge View’s Facebook Live page throughout the spring to keep students and their families engaged with their school.

“The kids went home on a Thursday afternoon, then we had an in-service day on Friday and we expected to see them again on Monday, but that didn’t happen. We didn’t have kids back in our building until September,” Dyer said. “We found that communication was really important because things were changing so quickly and we needed to be able to get the message out so we went live one day and it kind of morphed into a show.”

The show was part information, part encouragement as Dyer and Hughes provided updates about school happenings while adding lighter touches to boost the spirits of the school’s 650 pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade students.

“We’d issue challenges for them to do things like send us pictures of them reading to their pets, or if you send us so many pictures about how to be safe on the schoolbus we’d do something completely ridiculous. We took pies to the face, and the other assistant principal was really the unlucky one — one time he had to wear a tutu.

“We found that by going on live and with our banter together we were able to build a bridge to our community and help them get to know us and let them know that we were still here for them, that while our doors were closed we were still working for their kids.”

With no certainty that Ridge View students would return to in-person learning this fall, Dyer spent the summer as the chief architect of a new hybrid daily school schedule for the student body and the more than 100 staff members.

Among her goals was to accommodate collectively bargained planning time for all teachers while incorporating safe practices, such as organizing student learning cohorts and social-distancing requirements.

“Our busing is different, our daily schedule is different, lunch is different, recess is different. We added a teacher at each grade level in grades K through 5 so we could decrease the number of kids in each classroom so we could have them here all day, every day. Everything about the way we did school was different. Everything,” Dyer said.

A 1993 graduate of Nokomis Regional High in Newport, the 45-year-old Dyer received her Bachelor of Science in elementary education in 1997 from Keene State College and her Masters of Education in educational leadership from the University of Maine in 2013.

She was a kindergarten teacher at Palmyra Consolidated School in 1997, then moved to the Hartland Consolidated School where she was a pre-kindergarten and then first-grade teacher from 1998 to 2014 before moving to Ridge View.

“Her leadership and laser focus on advocating, nurturing and sustaining a school culture conducive to student learning and professional growth are the epitome of what we expect of those in the assistant principalship,” Maine Principals’ Association Executive Director Dr. Holly Couturier said.

Dyer’s job has continued to evolve this fall, with more time previously spent helping students who might be having a tough time in the classroom now dedicated to additional administrative duties.

“It feels like a million emails a day because we’re trying to limit our person-to-person contact as adults, too, just so we can stay in school,” she said.

That the Ridge View community was able to gather Thursday to recognize Dyer’s contributions to the educational battle against the pandemic was a tribute to all involved, according to the person being honored.

“I have never seen teachers work harder,” she said. “These teachers are trying everything they can think of to make sure their kids are having a positive experience whether they’re here or not. 

“To have such a positive thing like this happen right now has meant the world to me, and I’m psyched for me but I’m really psyched for my school. I’m excited just to have everybody focused on something good.”