News & Announcements

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jenna Larson, 
Communications Coordinator
jlarson@cheneysd.org

MAILE ADEN SELECTED AS ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL FOR 
SNOWDON ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 
Pending Board Approval
June 29, 2026

After an extensive interview process, Cheney Public Schools is pleased to announce that Maile Aden has been selected as Assistant Principal for Snowdon Elementary School, pending Board approval. Aden replaces long-time AP Katie Scott, who accepted a principal position with the Central Valley School District.

The interview was a comprehensive process that included representatives from several key stakeholder groups including district leadership, school leaders, staff, and classified directors. Following the evaluation of feedback, Aden emerged as the best candidate for the Assistant Principal position.

“We are so excited to welcome Maile to the Snowdon Elementary community,” Principal Shawna Coerver said. “She has incredible experience across K-12 levels, and I am looking forward to working together to continue fostering a culture of inclusiveness, belonging, and success at Snowdon Elementary.”

Aden arrives at Snowdon Elementary following nearly three decades of K-12 experience, both as a teacher and as an administrator. She spent the majority of her early career with the Mead School District, beginning as a teacher at Farwell Elementary. Aden segued into administration as a Principal Assistant at Midway Elementary in 2006, and she has served in various administrative roles across the region over the last 20 years. Most recently, Aden was a Principal on Special Assignment with Spokane Public Schools, serving as the lead substitute administrator supporting elementary, middle, and high schools in the district. Over the course of her career, she has collected experience in school operations, student behavior systems, staff development, community and family engagement, school improvement plans, as well as school- and district-wide collaboration. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education, Theater Arts from Whitworth University, as well as a Master of Education in Educational Administration, also from Whitworth.

“I am so excited to join the Snowdon community and work collaboratively with Shawna and the entire building team,” Aden said. “I am grateful for this opportunity, and I look forward to continuing to build upon the culture of inclusivity and student success already in place at Snowdon. I can’t wait to get started!”

 

In Erin Ray’s first grade classroom at Snowdon Elementary, there is a lot of talking. Not by Ray herself, but by her students. It is an intentional, structured learning strategy that the veteran elementary school teacher has fine-tuned over years of implementation.

“You will see all the students talking with each other, and it really builds off that concept that whoever is doing the talking is doing the learning,” said Assistant Principal Katie Scott. “And in Mrs. Ray’s classroom, that is definitely the students.”

Starting with the foundation provided by a Kagan teaching strategy, Ray has created a system that has proven successful in her classrooms year after year: Purposeful Partners. It is a multi-faceted turn-and-talk strategy that engages all students in every part of a lesson. Using data collected from her class’s iReady diagnostics, she intentionally groups students based on learning levels and personality traits, among other things. Each student has a shoulder partner, face partner, and carpet partner. It takes the guesswork out of classroom engagement.

“It’s always the same person,” first grader Emily Clendenning said. “Like, every day, I do [shoulder partners] with Jacob H. He’s my shoulder partner.”

In Ray’s classroom, there are five tables grouped with four students, each with an assigned number. Students numbered One and Two are seated next to each other, and students numbered Three and Four also sit side-by-side. Ray then has organized tables so that students numbered One and Three are face partners, and students numbered Two and Four are also face partners. The purpose is to group students based on their learning level and encourage open communication.

“When they’re talking to their shoulder partner, they’re talking to someone that‘s pretty much on their same level,” Ray said. “When they’re talking to their face partners, then that’s going to be somebody that provides a different level of support for them.”

Lessons will open with some ‘Right There’ questions between shoulder partners, helping to essentially warm students up for deeper thinking. ‘Right There’ questions allow students of similar learning levels to bounce ideas off each other and open their minds to learning. Deeper-thinking questions come later in the lesson and are targeted toward face partners; these questions tend to be more open-ended, like, How did the characters change? or What was the moral of the story?

“So, those types of questions are going to be face partners so that they can really scaffold for each other and support each other,” Ray said. “Then the bigger thinking questions where I want everyone contributing is what we call ‘Heads Together’. So, they all have to huddle in and everybody has to share something.”

As a result, there is a respectable volume of tiny voices heard across Ray’s classroom during the bulk of her lessons. Students are engaging with their shoulder partner, face partner, or table group, and it is having a noticeable impact on learning in her classroom.

“The thing about the magic that you see happening in Mrs. Ray’s classroom is that it is not on accident,” Scott said. “There’s a lot of time and energy she puts into partnering students both at the carpet and at their seats. The benefit of that is that it really maximizes the student learning, and it maximizes the student engagement.”

“It takes time,” Ray said. “You really have to lay the groundwork a lot in the beginning of the year and get them comfortable with just talking to each other…Really just getting them over the hurdle of being scared to stand up and share a thought, and then share a complete thought, and complete sentence. I really see a lot of gains with writing and reading when they can speak in complete sentences and share their thoughts with their class.”

There are a collection of hand signals that students use to communicate their ideas, including I Agree, I Respectfully Disagree, I Want To Add On, I Have One Answer, and I Have More Than One Answer. Another facet of Ray’s classroom engagement is the culture of encouragement she has built. To make participation feel accessible and low-pressure, Ray uses a spinner to randomly select students to share their ideas, further reducing the guesswork of engagement. Whenever a student stands up to share a thought, a chorus of ‘You’ve got this!’ echoes throughout the room.

“I think it really helps just make it a safe space for learning, and everybody feels comfortable,” Ray said. “If they are perhaps the more introverted that don’t like to share, students pick up on it right away and they really are the first to step in and say, ‘I’m proud of you! You’ve got this!’ So they really encourage each other, because everybody knows. Once everybody has had a chance to do it, they all know how nervous it can make them. They’re really empathetic with each other, and they really support each other. They’re very sweet.”

Throughout her classroom lessons, Ray has found students enjoy being encouraged by their peers, enjoy encouraging their peers, and really enjoy offering support to each other.

“They really look for opportunities to try to be helpful and encourage each other,” Ray said. “And they like talking [laughs]. We all know first graders love to talk, so if I can leverage that to work in my favor, I’m all about it.”