Melissa Dean to lead way at Bammel Elem.

Melissa Dean is the new principal at Bammel Elementary School. Photo by Jerry Baker

By ANNETTE BAIRD
CHRONICLE CORRESPONDENT
New Bammel Elementary School Principal Melissa Dean is heading the school she once taught at and is thrilled to be doing it in new digs with new furniture and equipment.
It's new. It's beautiful. It has a lot more natural light," Dean said of the two-story facility, located at 17309 Red Oak.
Dean, who taught in what was the district's oldest school building, for three years from 1999, said the replacement facility is ideally designed for today's ways of teaching students, especially in the area of technology.
The campus is conducive to small group learning," Dean said.
Each classroom features a SMARTBoard, an interactive electronic white board, while kindergarten classrooms also have SMARTTables, interactive learning centers. Classrooms also are equipped with four computers.
The school, for the first time, will have a dedicated science lab, big enough to hold all the equipment needed to run experiments, and there is a large art room, complete with a pottery kiln, as well as two computer labs.
Dean most recently served as an assistant principal at Hirsch Elementary School. She has spent her entire educational career in Spring ISD teaching at Ponderosa, Bammel, Winship and Hirsch elementary schools since 1996 when she began teaching third- and fourth-grade language arts, science and social studies at Ponderosa Elementary.
Since then she has served as a kindergarten through fifth-grade reading intervention teacher, first-grade English as a Second Language teacher, second-grade self-contained classroom teacher, instructional specialist and summer school principal.
Dean received her bachelor of science in elementary education degree and her master's degree in education administration from Sam Houston State University.