Get to know Amy Hartley-Matteson, the next superintendent of Wareham Public Schools

Amy Hartley-Matteson is set to be the next superintendent of Wareham Public Schools but the lifelong educator is also a mother, lover of athletics and a proud South Coast native.

Hartley-Matteson grew up on what she calls the compound in Rochester, a piece of property with six houses that has been in her family for 80 years. She currently lives there with her husband Jesse Hartley-Matteson and she is also a mother of four kids.

“It was a really unique way to grow up. I was next door to my grandparents, my great grandparents, my aunts and uncles and I have one brother,” Hartley-Matteson said.

It was when Hartley-Matteson was in high school that her dad and uncle developed open space on their property into cranberry bogs — which formed the most “South Coast” thing about her, Hartley-Matteson said.

“In high school I started working on the cranberry bogs driving a loader and loading dump trucks. Eventually I started weeding the bogs and picking the berries,” she said. 

After graduating from Old Rochester Regional High School as a basketball and volleyball player, Hartley-Matteson continued her athletic career at Springfield College where she studied rehabilitation to help injured kids.

But her major shifted to education after working with an area third grader on a weekly basis.

“We would hang out on campus, shoot hoops or do homework and we had what was called the ‘BC’ to get snacks and have dinner and then he would go home,” Hartley-Matteson said. “I looked forward to that part of my week so much that finally my then boyfriend, now husband, said to me ‘You don’t talk about your classes but you really talk about the impact you’re having. Do you think you want to be a teacher?’”

And after fighting the decision because her mom was a teacher and principal, Hartley-Matteson switched her major to education. 

“It’s the best thing I ever did,” she said.

But landing that first teaching job didn’t come easy for Hartley-Matteson. While picking weeds out of the bogs she got a call the day before school started at Carney Academy in New Bedford from the principal looking for a third and fourth grade teacher.

“I said ‘I’m picking weeds on my cranberry bog I’m not ready’ and he said ‘if you don’t come right now you’re not getting the job’ so I changed my clothes with dirty hands and drove over there and got the job.” she said.

Her teaching job in New Bedford became the first step in her career towards becoming the superintendent of Wareham Public Schools. She remained at Carney Academy before shortly being an assistant principal in New Bedford. In 2008, she became the principal at the Woods Elementary School in Fairhaven and in 2019, she took her current job as an assistant superintendent in Randolph Public Schools.

As the Woods Elementary School principal, Hartley-Matteson said she achieved one of her proudest moments in education.

There used to be two elementary schools in Fairhaven before they merged into one new building, which Hartley-Matteson was the principal of.

One of the challenges she faced was getting community members and teachers who opposed the new school to feel like they were at home there but eventually, she said her work paid off.

“We had to really build a lot of culture and do a lot of work and spend a lot of time going really slow. It goes back to my days as a teacher and putting the time and effort into building the culture,” she said. “Fast forward two years into the new school and the same teachers that had signs in their lawns opposing the new school were coming to me and saying this feels like their home.”

Outside of education, Hartley-Matteson said she loves being active and being in nature, often taking morning walks with her husband and also values the many relationships in her life.

“I really feel like it’s important to move my body and sweat but I try to balance things to have good relationships,” she said.

Building good relationships is one of the many educational philosophies Hartley-Matteson plans on bringing to Wareham next fall. She said she saw the importance of relationships as a teacher when she spent the first six weeks of every school year building a strong culture in her classroom.

“What I found was that every year, my students would surpass other classrooms because we had spent the time building culture and when we build the culture, then we can get to the learning,” she said.

She continued this philosophy as an administrator and wants to use this method to begin making positive changes across Wareham schools.

“I’m not looking for an easy job or a job to maintain everything as the status quo. I’m looking for a community that wants someone to lead, that wants somebody to bring a lot of passion and hard work,” she said.

Once she assumes the superintendent position currently held by Matt D’Andrea, Hartley-Matteson said she not only wants to start building strong relationships, but she wants to look at what she calls tier one instruction, or the instruction that all kids are receiving.