Susan Stevens didn’t last long when she stepped outside the Chilmark School to greet incoming students on their first day yesterday morning. Her thin cardigan and long, flowing dress provided little warmth for the recent Florida transplant. But back inside the school, with doors closed against the crisp Vineyard late summer weather she hasn’t yet grown used to, the new principal seemed right at home.

She greeted students by name as they shuffled through the front doors with their parents, a personalized bonus that she probably wasn’t able to offer at her last school, a Palm Beach magnet middle school where she counted close to 700 students under her guidance and supervision. The Chilmark School, on the other hand, has 43 children in the entire student body.

“You can get to know kids, and get to know what’s going on,” said Mrs. Stevens, when asked about the benefits of an administrative position in a small school fed by a tightly-knit community.

The ease with which Mrs. Stevens has assumed the head of school role is unsurprising considering her history as an educator. She worked in the Palm Beach school district for 33 years before permanently relocating to the Island to join her husband, John Stevens, who started his third year as principal of the Edgartown School yesterday.

She has all the tools necessary to engage the impressionable kindergarten through fifth grade students, tools which she calls “conversation starters” set up throughout her new office. There is the stuffed skunk puppet named Scarlet who does not smell, and another lizard puppet named Izzy that unrolls a plastic tongue when you open its mouth. There is the heavy doorstop in the shape of a pair of legs dressed in striped stockings and ruby slippers, just like the Wicked Witch. And then there is the alphabet poster displaying photos of found letters, an S carved into the side of a violin, an X formed by two trees that have tangled into a cross as they’ve grown.

Kindergarten and first graders filed into the room with awed expressions as they tried to take in all of the curious books and toys and pictures on the walls. This youngest group of students is the most likely to have difficulty making the first day separation from their parents, but minutes after their timid arrivals, they were completely preoccupied with their new administrator and her office treasure trove.

Her use of props to engage the students reflects Mrs. Stevens’s general teaching philosophy. “They do a lot of active learning. Not just talking, not just lecturing,” she said, describing her preferred teaching methods. The comfort that comes from employing toys, books and other props to connect with the kids helps to guide them through the learning process in general. “That’s really my philosophy, that you have to find their niche,” she said.

The first day of school officially began with a school-wide assembly in the foyer of the building. Students, parents and teachers stood in a circle to welcome their new principal and recite the pledge of allegiance before making their way to one of two classrooms. The fourth and fifth grade students were absent, spending the week aboard the schooner Shenandoah, an annual tradition in all the Island schools.

Mrs. Stevens formally introduced herself, but remained mostly quiet and smiling for the remainder of the assembly, observing her new students in their new surroundings. People in the community keep asking her what she’s going to do as principal, what changes she plans to make. For now, she said, very little. “I really need to just listen, look around, see what’s going on. The only time I would [make] any kind of change is if there was a safety issue . . . but otherwise, I’m just going to watch,” she said.

She continued: “It’s a pretty well-oiled machine here . . . they run very well.”

She will also work part-time as a reading teacher. And she will approach the task as she does everything else, with patience and personalized instruction, finding a way to appeal to individual interests. “You’ve got to find the key to unlock the door for them,” she said.