After nearly eight years as Head of School at Verde Valley School, Paul Amadio is relocating to the Pennfield School in Portsmouth, R.I. 

It’s a move that has been in the works for the last two years. 

His successor, Ben Lee, will take up the position at VVS on Thursday, June 15. 

Connecting community is a skill Amadio says he honed as an actor before entering education by becoming an acting teacher. He received a fellowship to attend Wayne State University in Michigan, where he received his master’s degree in fine arts.

“I grew up in a family of educators in the Boston area, my dad was superintendent of schools,” Amadio recalled. “The last thing I ever wanted to do was what he did, not because I didn’t have a great relationship with them, but I knew the challenges of being in schools and teaching and an administrator. So I became a stage actor.”

Amadio was cast in tours of “The Fantasticks,” “Grease,” in which he played the role of Roger, and several Shakespearean productions with classic repertory companies.

That changed after he began volunteering in Chicago and Detroit inner city schools, which inspired him to apply to be an acting teacher in a private school when he came across a job posting in the Boston Globe newspaper at home during a Christmas vacation.

“I was kind of a character actor,” Amadio said. “I could dance, and always played the funny fat guy. When I got sixth-graders in a room, and they sat on the floor with me to play theatre games, it was transformational for them. They saw that in community, they could share something in common.”

Amadio was the chair of the art department at one of his early schools before transitioning to school administration in his early 20s, where he has stayed for the last 37 years. He credited his theatrical experience with preparing him for administrative work.

“You can put me in front of a thousand people and I’m pretty comfortable,” Amadio said. “I credit that to some of the discipline of being an actor. Working with people of different backgrounds, it’s helpful from character development to know people and read people and learn how to navigate in a way so that you’re having honest relationships with them.”

Both of Amadio’s parents were educators. His mother later went into business, but his father had a 40-year career in education and passed on some important life and professional lessons to Amadio.

“You have to get used to the fact that 50% of the decisions you [make], people are going to disagree with,” Amadio said. “You have to have that kind of skin where you’re going to make hard decisions … my father was adept at being able to have those tough conversations with people who were upset over a decision he made and [still] walk out the door in unity somehow.”

It’s a life lesson that was put to good use during the COVID-19 pandemic and as social media controversy dogged VVS’s planning efforts leading up to the county’s April 19 approval of the school’s new conditional use permit. The permit is a critical step in VVS’s plans to transform roughly 7,500 square feet of now-vacant buildings that made up Camp Soaring Eagle into classroom space and other improvements.

Amadio will be attending the school’s 75th anniversary celebration over the weekend of Thursday, June 8, through Sunday, June 11. He anticipates attendance of 300 alumni reuniting to complete “work-jobs” on site, such as painting and stonework, to give back to the school community. 

“I get in the car on June 11, and drive with my doggies in one car and my wife in another car, and we’re going to drive out to have a house in Massachusetts … a lot of people thought I was retiring. [But] I was ready to go into another community. I’m going to work with little kids preschool through eighth grade, which I’m wicked psyched about.”

Amadio also expressed his excitement at the prospect of being close to Boston professional sports teams again — however, he still sees education at schools such as VVS as being critical.

“Eight out of 10 jobs that exist today won’t exist in 15 years,” Amadio said. “We’re preparing kids for jobs that don’t exist yet using technology that hasn’t been developed yet. To me, education needs to shift to use what we do [at VVS] using experiential education and using project-based learning.”

Ben Lee

Lee was raised in Buffalo, N.Y., and went on to Yale University for a master’s degree in East Asian studies before receiving a Ph.D. in education from Seton Hall College. He has worked in education his entire life, beginning as an English teacher in China and Japan. 

Lee is currently working in China at the Shanghai American School in Pudong, where he has served as the high school’s principal since 2016 and where his wife Lixue teaches kindergarten.

“The biggest challenge in this school, for me and it will be for him, is keeping the community connected with the hard work that everyone does here,” Amadio said. “We don’t have enough classroom space. Budget is a challenge because the school lost its endowment 15 to 20 years ago, so we are rebuilding that. Recruitment will be a challenge for him … the international population hasn’t returned to the degree it was in the past. He’s going to have a lot on his plate.” 

“Paul will leave behind very big shoes to fill,” the VVS board of trustees’ announcement of his retirement stated. “We are confident Ben will meet that challenge. With his breadth of talent and experience, creativity and forward thinking, Ben will take VVS to new heights.”