Wardwell

EAST GREENWICH — Heather Wardwell, Latin teacher at East Greenwich High School, takes the phrase “carpe diem” seriously. But in addition to her “seize the day” attitude, she’s not afraid to take advantage of happenstance when it presents a good opportunity.

Or, as she put it Friday afternoon during an interview at her home, amid packing boxes destined for New Jersey, “That’s the way fate rolls.”

Next month, with some reluctance, Wardwell, a 37-year-old mother of three, will roll out of East Greenwich and move to a new charter school in New York City.

She will be one of eight members of a handpicked “dream team” faculty, selected from a field of 600 applications by a principal determined to cherry-pick the best teachers in the U.S. at the Equity Project, a charter school that will open in upper Manhattan’s Washington Heights in September.

The enticement: a starting salary of $125,000 plus the chance of a $25,000 bonus, based on school performance, in the second year.

Her current salary is about $70,000.

Wardwell said she stumbled onto the plans for the charter school and its extraordinary salary one night while cruising the Internet, about a year ago.

“I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ But this was a very cool school. And when my husband came home from work, although he was tired, I made him look at it. I had no intention of applying,” she said.

That changed when her husband, William, was recruited to work at The Record in Hackensack, N.J., a post he assumed in October.

“You can apply for that job now,” he told her.

It turns out she was just what the new school was looking for.

A Rhode Island native, Wardwell’s teaching style was singled out for praise even before she was certified.

At age 21, while still a student at the University of Rhode Island, she got a desperate call from the Westerly School Department. The Latin teacher was recovering from a heart attack and they needed someone immediately. She filled in from September to February. One of the students nominated her for a teacher-of-the-year award.

After URI, she worked for two school systems — Barrington and Somerset — simultaneously. It required traveling between schools but “If you like your job, it’s worth it.” After five years, the number of students in Somerset’s Latin program had grown from 9 to more than 60.

In 1999, she got the call from East Greenwich, a full-time job that required her to conduct Latin classes in both the middle school and the high school. By 2004, she was working fulltime at the high school.

One thing that has helped her build a strong relationship with her students — and their parents — is that they’ve been with her for so many years. “For many of these kids, I had them in seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth grades. I would really know them. It’s nice,” she said.

Wardwell even draws non-Latin students. “A lot of kids, if they have study hall and they don’t know where to go, just come into my room, even though I’m teaching, because of the way it feels,” she said.

She’s also been a big believer in the idea that different students need to be given different paths to learning, a technique now known as differentiated instruction.

“It’s basically giving the kids what they need, not making everything standardized,” she said. So in her classroom, some students might be placed close to the front for regular instruction, and “there might be some people who are so independent and know what they’re doing they’re craving some independence and more difficult work, so you can send them to the library. It’s not watering it down and making it easier.”

You never know when a child will blossom, she said.

“If they have the right attitude and they’re trying, you have to let them be themselves,” said Wardwell. “That’s why the whole differentiated instruction idea makes sense to me. Just keep pushing the kids along and giving them the support. I’ll never fail anyone. It’s impossible to fail if you try. It’s impossible.”

gemery@projo.com