Dr. Patrick Ward is the new Director of Curriculum and Instruction for the Mayfield City School District. He manages all of the learning and teaching that goes on in grades pre-kindergarten to twelfth grade.

Dr. Ward came to Mayfield City Schools as a student in second-grade then returned to the district as a teacher.  Later Dr. Ward served Mayfield High School as an assistant principal, and finally he was drawn back to the Mayfield district as the curriculum director.

In all of his sixteen professional years, he has been at Mayfield City Schools for fourteen of them, in addition to his twelve years as a student. So as a total, Dr. Ward has contributed to Mayfield City Schools for twenty-six years and therefore calls himself a “a life-long wildcat.”

Dr. Ward has several degrees from John Carroll University; he earned a bachelor’s degree in biology and sciences, as well as a teaching certificate for the secondary level, grades seven through twelve. He also holds two master’s degrees, one of them in Curriculum Instruction and Assessment and the other in Education Administration. Dr. Ward also went on to earn a doctoral degree in K-12 Educational Leadership.

He described that while earning these degrees, he learned “the dynamics of how you change schools, in particular how you build capacity for teacherly leadership and really transform the way we do schooling.”

Dr. Ward’s previous professions in the district are teaching science, being an assistant principal of the eighth, ninth, and tenth grades, and being the associate principal of curriculum instruction and staff development. All of his roles were at the high school level.

When asked which past position helped him the most with his current responsibilities, he responded, “Every position that you were in contributes to the position you’re holding… You try to learn as much as you can from every experience that you have.”

Dr. Ward says that his current role is to make sure that the entire curriculum is being served in its proper place and that content is being implemented and taught accurately to the students.

Dr. Ward says the greatest personal challenges of his role as the Director Curriculum and Instruction is that he doesn’t get to be in contact with kids anymore, and that is why he says, “Change is hard.” Dr. Ward loves children and students and therefore is always trying to make an effort to visit the school buildings whenever he can.

He identified another challenge of the profession as the fact that students don’t always enjoy the given curriculum; therefore teachers sometimes “meet resistance” with students. And because sometimes students’ needs and interests don’t align with curriculum, Dr. Ward thinks that changes should be made where they can be–getting kids to follow the curriculum but in “an innovative manner.”

To define his role in his own words, Dr. Ward says, “How do we assure that every lesson and every kid in every classroom has access to quality instruction?”