Wyman Says Goodbye to Principal Paul McQuilkin and Long-Time Kindergarten Teacher Patricia Bosia

Guitar in hand, Paul McQuilkin sang an end-of-the-school-year song he wrote a number of years ago and updates each year using events at the . He mentioned, for example, a teacher who had cut her hair for Locks of Love and some students’ memorable moments.

One of the lyrics is, “See you in September.”

But McQuilkin won’t welcome students and staff to the Wyman School in September, as he has for the past 11 years, as their principal.

Patricia Bosia won’t greet kindergarteners on the first day of school, either, which she’s been doing since 1973 in Woburn, since around 1983 at the Wyman.

Both McQuilkin and Bosia are retiring.

Wyman students and teachers gave both a rollicking send-off Thursday with songs, a guitar and drum performance, a poem, an American Idol-like presentation by a group of fourth-graders about their trip to Washington, D.C. and gifts the principal and teacher had to unwrap.

McQuilkin started his career in education in 1968, as a teacher, he told Woburn Patch before the long-time principal and teacher’s sendoff. He’s seen changes, he said, in the way teachers approach teaching. Teachers now focus on students individually, he said, recognizing different ways each student learns.

Teaching was “simpler when I started,” he said.

Over the course of his career, “I enjoyed this school most,” he said of the Wyman, and has worked there the longest. He came to the Wyman from North Andover, where he had been a principal, he said, for five years.

After he retires, he plans to work part-time, maybe teach a college course. His master’s degree is in literature, he noted.

But not at least until the end of summer.

Retirement will hit, he said, “when the school buses roll” in the fall.

McQuilkin and his wife, Bernadette, are building a new house in Hollis, N.H. Bernadette taught middle school science. She retired four years ago, McQuilkin said. She now edits science publications.

Bosia started to teach kindergarten at the Hurld School in 1973.

“I said I’d stop” teaching, she said, “when I can’t get off the floor.”

Bosia doesn’t know what she will do in retirement. But, like McQuilkin, she said she’s been advised to be somewhere else on the first day of school this coming fall.

Students focused on some of Bosia’s favorite things, including the Maurice Sendak poem, “Chicken Soup with Rice,” which they paraphrased.

“We’ll miss you once. We’ll miss you twice.”

Teachers also got up and sang to both McQuilkin and Bosia.

A number of parents, grandparents and other relatives attended the just-over-an-hour-long ceremony. Nana Gail Metivier and Poppa George Metivier came from Burlington to hear their granddaughter, Sophie Metivier, a kindergartener, sing.  So did Sophie’s aunt, Michelle Griffin, and Michelle’s daughter, Hailey, from Methuen. Sophie’s parents, George and Stephanie, both work, Nana Gail explained.

Tad Baxter, who said he’s served on the Wyman PTO for five years, said what he’ll remember most about McQuilkin is that the retiring principal knows Wyman students by name. McQuilkin said he tried to weave the names of fifth-graders, who will be going to the Kennedy Middle School in the fall, into his song this year.

The audience also applauded Wyman School custodian George Tesniere, who retired earlier this year.

By contract, McQuilkin said he will be at the Wyman for five days after students leave Monday.

The School Committee has already welcomed new Wyman Principal Michelle Zottoli. She expects to start at the Wyman later in the summer, she told Woburn Patch at a recent School Committee meeting.

There’s no way, McQuilkin said, that he’d get his office cleaned out by the middle of the first week of July.

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