01907 Summer 2018

A matter of
PRINCIPAL
Lois Longin to the rescue at Stanley School
BY BRIDGET TURCOTTE
When children
at Stanley
Elementary
School needed
stability,
calling retired Swampscott teacher
and administrator Lois Longin was
a no brainer.
“I think more than anything I
was asked to come back because
I knew the system and there had
been a lot of concerns around here,”
said Longin, who came out of retirement
to be the school's interim
principal.
Superintendent Pamela
Angelakis announced she would
not renew the contract of former
Principal Shannon Daniels in
March, about a month after the
administrator announced he would
transition from male to female.
“They were looking for
somebody who could bring some
stability to the building and I
wasn't the unknown, coming into
a system that had just been through a lot
of turmoil,” said Longin. “It was really the
teachers who held this building together
during a difficult year. They worked in
such a way that their children had no idea
there was any turmoil going on - only
that they were learning.”
Longin grew up in Swampscott and
went through the public school system.
After graduating from Boston University,
she took a gig at a school in Brockton
for a half a year, then later at a private
school for a year. Soon, she found herself
returning to her hometown.
Longin began her lengthy teaching
career in Swampscott at Stanley Elementary
School in 1985, where she remained
for 15 years. She starting as a kindergarten
teacher, then moved on to first grade,
and later second.
A student in her first grade class was
an immigrant from Iran who had been in
a severe car accident that took the lives
PHOTO BY SPENSER R. HASAK
When a temporary principal was needed at
the Stanley School, Lois Longin answered
the call.
of both of his parents. The child was burnt
over 80 percent of his body, including his
face.
“The first thing I said was did you
hire an (english language learner) teacher,
because he only spoke persian,” said
Longin. “They said no, they hadn't found
anybody. The second question was whether
the guidance person was going to be in the
building for that first day of school, and
the answer to that was ‘no, it wasn't a day
that she would be there.’ And this was not
all that uncommon back then.”
Longin made a call to the guidance
counselor's house to request she be there
for the student's first day, and requested
the student start on the second day to give
her time to prepare the other students.
“It was a good thing that we did
because it was scary for them,” she said.
Initially, there were kids who were
scared but after a week or two
everyone was fine and eventually, he
learned english.”
Longin pushed herself to earn
master's degrees in guidance counseling
and school administration,
feeling like she needed to be better
prepared for unique situations like
she had experienced.
“I felt ineffective as a teacher to
get things done,” she said. “And as
a teacher, I knew there were some
very specific holes in the needs of
students in the Swampscott school
system.”
Her career eventually led her
administrative roles. She left the
town for a year to take an assistant
principal role in Nashua, New
Hampshire, and returned to be the
principal of Hadley Elementary
School for nine years.
The district experienced turmoil
when, under former Superintendent
Matthew Malone, it lost a
neighborhood school in the closing of
Machon Elementary School.
“It was a difficult and difficult time
in the history of the school system,” said
Longin, who was brought in to merge the
former Machon student with the children
at Clark Elementary School.
“(Malone) asked me to go over there
and help unify the community and actually
develop a new community - one where
Machon and Clark came together,” she
said.
For two-and-a-half years before she
retired in 2016, Longin finished her career
as director of curriculum and instruction
for the district. When she got the call to
come back, she said the decision wasn't
hard because she missed the students.
“I loved retirement, I did all kids of
things, but I've always missed the kids,”
she said.
Longin will return as principal for the
next school year.
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