On Tuesday all of our students will again be back at school to start another school year. As I have done in the past on this first day, I will visit several of our central peninsula schools to say hello to our returning students and staff and to wish them a good year. Whenever I visit a school I am both impressed by the welcoming climate and struck by how familiar each of the buildings is. For in some ways, our buildings are very much like the schools that I attended when I was a child. But if you look beyond the facility, you will find that our teachers are approaching their jobs in a much different way than did the teachers of my youth.
Our staff recognizes the need to be a part of a learning community by regularly devoting time to collaboration. The outcome of this time working together is implementing improvements that are leading to a greater degree of student learning. Examples of this include our Seward schools ensuring that the K-12 experience is fluid and not a disjointed stop at the three buildings and Homer High School raising the bar a notch by eliminating the letter grade D-you now need a C to pass. It is great to see that each of our schools is using collaboration to free itself of some of the constraints of traditional education. So while our buildings may look similar to schools of forty year ago, what is going on inside is, in many cases, much different.
Beyond The Familiar Buildings
On Tuesday all of our students will again be back at school to start another school year. As I have done in the past on this first day, I will visit several of our central peninsula schools to say hello to our returning students and staff and to wish them a good year. Whenever I visit a school I am both impressed by the welcoming climate and struck by how familiar each of the buildings is. For in some ways, our buildings are very much like the schools that I attended when I was a child. But if you look beyond the facility, you will find that our teachers are approaching their jobs in a much different way than did the teachers of my youth.
Our staff recognizes the need to be a part of a learning community by regularly devoting time to collaboration. The outcome of this time working together is implementing improvements that are leading to a greater degree of student learning. Examples of this include our Seward schools ensuring that the K-12 experience is fluid and not a disjointed stop at the three buildings and Homer High School raising the bar a notch by eliminating the letter grade D-you now need a C to pass. It is great to see that each of our schools is using collaboration to free itself of some of the constraints of traditional education. So while our buildings may look similar to schools of forty year ago, what is going on inside is, in many cases, much different.