Two new assistant principals, Julie Frederiksen and Brixey Painter, are settling into their roles and diving into the community at Kentlake High School this fall.

Frederiksen, who is originally from Amarillo, Texas and moved to Washington in 2005, will be overseeing ninth grade students this year as well as testing school-wide and a transition to standards based grading.

“Probably the thing I am looking forward to most is that connection with ninth graders as they transition to high school,” Frederiksen said.

Frederiksen came to Kentlake from Kent-Meridian High School where one of her duties was overseeing the school’s International Baccalaureate program which sparked her desire to pursue working as an administrator.

“I really enjoyed working with other teachers collaboratively, and I really enjoyed having the opportunity to benefit more students on a larger scale,” Frederiksen said. “Because one of our jobs (as administrators) is to ensure quality instruction and to help teachers get to that point where they’re really delivering excellent instruction for every student every day … I wanted to be able to coach and mentor other teachers along the way.”

As for the shift to standards based grading at Kentlake, Frederiksen said that the system, which is based on a four point scale instead of a 100 point scale, allows greater clarity for both students and teachers when it comes to grading and reflecting what the students know how to do.

“It’s a popular movement in education right now,” Frederiksen said. “I think one of the things that’s nice about standards based grading is that you get a lot more depth as opposed to breadth. We’d rather have you be able to do 27 things very, very well than 56 things shoddily. It focuses the learning much more.”

Frederiksen said that she knew she wanted to be a teacher ever since she was in fourth grade. She saw pictures of Paris in a social studies textbook and made up her mind that teaching French was what she wanted to do. In her free time she enjoys traveling and spending time with her two dogs.

Frederiksen earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of Texas at Austin in French language and literature and started as a high school French teacher in 1994. When she moved to Washington she was hired to teach French at K-M and in 2008 she earned her master’s degree in curriculum and instruction and earned her administrator’s certificate this year.

“I think that one of the things I’m most excited about is watching Kentlake evolve with its own identity because we’re a very strong school academically and sports-wise but we can be a great school,” Frederiksen said. “We want to evolve from good to great and I’m looking forward to being a part of that.”

Painter will be overseeing 11th graders this year as well as the special education and social studies departments and professional learning communities.

Originally from Port Orchard, Painter came to Kentlake from Franklin Pierce High School where she taught social studies and last year was also the dean of students.

“My main passion is instruction so I’m going to be in classrooms and excited to see the kind of learning that is going on in classrooms and see how I’m best able to use my expertise in that way,” Painter said.

Painter said that she was inspired to pursue a career in education by teachers she had that were there for her as she was growing up.

“It was probably a very similar story to a lot of educators, but I had an educator in my life, a couple, a couple of teachers in my life that really impacted me,” Painter said. “Had a couple of struggling moments as a kid and had a couple of teachers that were there for me in a way that was very meaningful and impacted me to the point that I knew I wanted to have that same impact on kids.”

She earned her bachelor’s degree in history at Western Washington University and earned her master’s degree and administrator’s credential in 2012.

Painter taught for 10 years, the first four of those as a special education teacher.

“I really liked it, so I stayed for four years before I decided to go back and start teaching history,” Painter said.

The idea to pursue becoming a school administrator came from getting involved in campus leadership as a department head and being a part of committees.

“The more and more opportunities I had in leadership the more and more I realized what impact I could have on a different level, the behind the scenes level,” Painter said. “An impact on the adults that would trickle down to the students and so about year five I realized there’s a lot going on in education, it’s a really exciting time to be an educator, there’s a lot of change going on and I want to be a part of that change.”

When she has free time, Painter said she enjoys reading — she’s a big Harry Potter fan — and dancing as well as hiking and being outdoors.

“I cannot wait to get to know the students here at Kentlake and get involved in all of their daily activities, sports, seeing how the school runs,” Painter said. “I’m really looking forward to working with teachers and helping everybody become better teachers and that will in turn have a significant impact on student achievement.”