Elaine Beam

Mrs. Elaine Beam has been blessed with the position of principal at Saint Michael School since 2009!  After going back to college and changing her career from business management to education at age 30, her first teaching assignment was in Acworth, NH.  This little community school is where Mrs. Beam found her love for teaching and learned how important community is in creating the ideal learning environment for students, families, and staff.  Although Catholic classical education was not yet part of Mrs. Beam's teaching, she quickly learned that true learning comes from the search for all that is good, true, and beautiful.  

 

While spending the next leg of her professional journey as a teacher and principal in Grafton, Vermont, she embraced the local history and community in the education and development of its children.  She again returned to school herself to complete her graduate work in school administration.  After 12 years in Grafton and longing for her Catholic faith to become the center of the teaching she loved so much, she accepted the position of Principal at SMS.   Having attended Saint Charles Catholic School in Bellows Falls, VT from kindergarten through grade six,  Mrs. Beam knew the gifts that a truly Catholic education could offer.  Much work was needed to grow SMS and search for a curriculum that would embrace the school's mission, "The soul of education is the education of the soul."  ~Pope Pius XII. 

 

Mrs. Beam truly loves being a teacher along with the duties of leading the school as principal. One of her greatest joys is being able to still be in the classroom one period per day teaching  third graders mathematics.  She says it fills her heart!  

 

When asked about the greatest rewards of working at SMS, Mrs. Beam is quick to say that it is being able to see God at work in each member of the school community, whether it is a student, a teacher, a staff member, or a parent.  Each person brings their individual gifts, their struggles, and their faith. She also sees that by offering a Catholic classical curriculum, SMS is able to introduce students to the greatest minds in all of history, while also finding the beauty and goodness in everything around us.  Our youngest children get to learn from Aesop's fables, and stories from the bible, and by sketching in their nature journals.  Older students study the lives of saints as the real heroes of our world, and our high schoolers understand the wonders of Euclid's geometry and experience history through great literature.   Mrs. Beam is truly grateful for all of the teachers and staff who have answered the call to join SMS as we strive for "Excelsior".