After gaining decades of experience in the school district, Tracie Cote is leaving Wareham Middle School for the 2025-2026 school year for a new role in the district that supports teachers, students and families at all three schools.

Cote has been with the school district for over 30 years, starting as a special education teacher and working her way up to middle school principal. Now, she is stepping into a new role as the Director of Teaching, Learning and Technology.

“I’m feeling excited, I was feeling exhaustion because I was finishing up the role as being principal,” Cote said.

In her new role, Cote will be working with teachers, students and families to develop a plan that addresses a variety of the district’s needs.

“I’m going to be working with teachers on effective teaching practices and the curriculum we’re presenting to our children each day,” she said. “I’ll be in all three schools supporting teachers, students and families, making sure everyone has what they need to do what they need to do.”

She added having spent all of her career in the district has allowed her to create relationships that have spanned generations which will help her better the district.

“Wareham is a wonderful community but it has its plusses and minuses and I already know those,” she said. “Before I even begin my job I have plans on how we can improve things and I know what’s working awesome and how we can continue that.”

With the first day of school right around the corner, Cote said her first plan is to get in the classrooms of all three schools to get a better idea of what the district needs.

“I’ve done that at the middle school but I haven’t been able to be in the classrooms of the elementary and high school,” she said. “What I want to do is ask everyone ‘what do you think,’ observe it and come up with a great plan.”

Part of that plan will be addressing how the district will approach MCAS testing now that it is no longer a graduation requirement.

“We saw a real big effect in grades 7 through 10 and we are going to have to work on getting kids to buy-in,” she said. “We always had the buy-in because kids needed it to graduate.”

She added MCAS is still an important tool for the district because it gives them a sense as to where each student is academically.

“It gives us a lot of data but if students don’t buy-in then it raises the question: are the results we get true results?” she said.

On the technology side, Cote said she wants to take a proactive approach to artificial intelligence in schools and learn how to utilize the new technology’s capabilities.

“We had a presenter on artificial intelligence last year who spent a lot of time in our schools with our staff and that consultant is coming back to work with our teams in November,” she said. “I think children know more about it than we adults do so we need to get ourselves up to speed on that. It’s going to be a different way of teaching and learning.”