By James Lomuscio
Imagine preparing students for jobs that do not yet exist. To use technologies that have not been invented. To solve problems that are now unknown.
Panelists at tonight’s Community Conversation at Bedford Middle School. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com
As vague and as futuristic as it sounds, that was the thrust of a community conversation that drew an estimated 425 parents to the auditorium at Bedford Middle School tonight.
The goal: preparing Westport students to be creative, critical thinkers in order to solve real world problems globally in the future.
The more than two-hour presentation titled “Westport 2025: Meeting the Global Challenge” was co-sponsored by the school system and the PTA Council to showcase what local educators are doing to develop strategies for students to compete on a global scale.
“It’s about how well they will succeed in the world they will inherit,” said Schools Superintendent Elliott Landon who initiated the 2025 goal in the fall of 2010, working with consultants from Columbia University’s Teachers College, Landon’s alma mater.
Tonight’s event brought together school department heads and principals who contrasted the old way of problem solving with more creative, across-the-curriculum strategies for getting students to think.
According to presenters, the focus is now on student-initiated, creative thinking and teamwork to solve real problems versus abstract ones that were not even problems but merely exercises, to hear one department head tell it.
Westporter Deborah Sawch, a former Staples High School English teacher now working for Columbia, stressed that while Westport’s schools were top tier “complacency is not okay,” and that continued improvement to compete globally is imperative. She cited an international student assessment test showing that U.S. students “are woefully behind.”
“It was a Sputnik moment, a wake up call,” she said. “Are we really preparing students for the world?”
Staples High School Principal John Dodig addressed the crowd, rhetorically asking “why on earth would I buy into this,” noting he was 68, well paid and heading into retirement. Then Dodig recounted his own high school experience, being handed a list of dates in a history class, and remembering nothing about the Battle of Hastings except that it took place in 1066.
“We have to nurture the (creative) right side of the brain,” he said.
Julie Heller, head of the district’s Language Arts and English curriculum, gave an example of a different approach to teaching Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol.”
The approach goes beyond literary analysis to incorporate nonfiction and social studies. One question today’s students get besides the plot, theme and character development is, “Did society do enough to addess the social problems during that time period?”
Such an analysis involves historical research, she said, as well as a creative exercise writing dialogue between two minor characters.
In math, Saugatuck Elementary School Principal Janna Bell and Frank Corbo, who heads the district’s math department, showed a video of first graders trying to determine how many handshakes would take place among five “Winnie the Pooh” characters if each character shook the other’s hand once.
John Bayers, principal of the Greens Farms Elementary School and Dr. A.J. Scheetz, science department head, underscored the fact that the problems given to challenge science sudents are based on real ones, one of them being “the pros and cos of land development,” said Scheetz.
At the end of the presentation, parents were invited to attend break-out sessions for elementary, middle and high school students.
“It was fabulous,” said PTA Co-President Sheila Flinn.
Co-president Ginny McGovern agreed.
“It’s just really good to see parents interested because they will be having these discussions at home,” she said.
