As a sixth grader, Virginia Bolano knew she wanted a career in elementary education thanks to her teacher, Mrs. Leonard.

“She made learning fun. She was excited about teaching and in turn we were excited about learning,” Bolano said in a recent interview.

Now 52 years old, Bolano is principal of Harold F. Scott Elementary.

“Mrs. Leonard had this amazing rapport with students and I knew then that someday I wanted to have that same impact on students and hopefully I have,” she said.

Bolano, who lives in Wakefield with her husband and two children, went on to receive her undergraduate degree at the University of Rhode Island and her master’s in education at George Washington University. After teaching elementary for five years in Virginia, Bolano returned to Rhode Island in 1990 as principal at Wyman Elementary where she was for seven years. In 1997 she moved to Scott and has served as principal there for the past 19 years, the longest tenure of any principal in the city, and hopes she will be able to stay there for the remainder of her career.

Most of her faculty and staff have also been at Scott with Bolano for at least 10 years.

“We all have the same philosophy and work ethic,” Bolano said. “We all believe that students can and want to learn. Our job is to help them succeed in that and we do it as a family.”

Scott School had the highest PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) test results, scoring 52.7 percent proficient in English and 49.3 percent in mathematics. Bolano believes that part of this success comes from the family atmosphere of Scott and that the team has been together so long.

Although she didn’t make comparisons to other schools, Bolano did say, “What is key here, at least, is that we are all on the same page, myself, the teachers and the parents. We all know how important it is for us to work together for our students. We have these scores because of teachers’ strength in instruction, students’ desire to work and parents’ dedication to their children.”

As a principal, Bolano feels it is her job to bring parties together, and keep them motivated, to ensure teachers have the resources and tools needed to support their students.

As a principal in Warwick for more than two decades, Bolano has seen a lot of changes to education, technology and the delivery of instruction being some of the biggest.

She said technology has become critical and “completely influential” to the classroom. She said classrooms now are expected and need to be up to date on technology to keep up with 21st century skills and learning, and although Warwick may not be there yet, the district is working in that direction. Scott does have Chromebooks, although, like other Warwick schools, it has not reached the point where every student has their Chromebook.

Scott is also taking steps to help increase the use of technology in the classroom, using Feinstein funds as well as money from their Justine Sherburne Technology Fund to supplement the technology coming from the district.

Gone are the days of “sitting in rows and doing dittos,” now students are presented problems and expected to work collaboratively to find solutions as well as be able to explain their processes.

The teacher’s role has moved from dictating lessons to “coaching and facilitating” a student’s learning.

“Students are more involved in their learning; they are earning and owning their education. It’s our job to see how we can best help each student in their path to learning and their future,” Bolano said.

Overall, though, Bolano believes “kids are kids,” curious and excited to learn.

“That’s never changed,” she said.

A change Bolano will see in the coming years is the move of 6th grade to the middle schools. Having found a love for elementary in 6th grade, Bolano says, she will hate to give up her 6th grade students and teachers, but the trend nationally is that 6th grades are moving to the middle school level and it is “best practice” for students.

What won’t change is Bolano’s drive to foster goal-oriented students.

Bolano often shares their own goals with students, and encourages her staff to do the same.

“We talk a lot about goal setting,” Bolano said. “It’s important for them to see others work to achieve a goal so they can, too.”

As an exampled, when she was training for a marathon, she said students would ask what that took, why she wanted to do it and kept tabs on her progress.

Although some may argue elementary aged children may be too young for goals, Bolano reasons that goals don’t have to be grand; it can be simply to learn the ABCs, learning to write their name in cursive, or to finish a book that’s bigger than they are used to.

“It gets them to see what it is to accomplish something and that feeling they get inside, no one can take that away from them,” Bolano said. “They think, ‘If I can do that, what else can I do?’ It opens their eyes to other possibilities. Everything is out there for the taking; it’s just how hard your willing to work for it.”