Superintendent's Notes - Bethlehem CSD, Delmar, NY

Wasn’t that a tremendous presentation on “Going Global?" Many thanks to Bill Reilly, MS Social Studies and Matt Leon for creating the slide shows and accompanying music for this year’s opening day experience. Also, thanks to our operations and maintenance staff for setting up the screens and to Nick Nealon, our own sound engineer, extraordinaire.

On behalf of the Board of Education, and the community of this school district, welcome to the 2009-10 school year. For those of you joining us for the first time, we will be greeting you in a few minutes.

Last spring I had a unique honor bestowed upon me when I was invited to be the commencement speaker at my undergraduate college, the State University of New York at Potsdam. I wasn’t sure why they asked me. My wife still insists they wanted me to make a long overdue donation to the alumni fund. It was a great experience, standing in the grand auditorium of the Crane School of Music addressing these graduates. Since it was 35 years ago that I graduated from Potsdam I didn’t think any of my then-professors were still around. As I processed into the theater with the President of the college and other college trustees and faculty in academic garb with the pomp and ceremony of a collegiate graduation my eyes fell upon a frail, gray-haired older woman in a wheel chair with an oxygen tank who was let out of her nursing home long enough just to hear me, her student from the early 70’s. When I recognized her I could not resist the opportunity to stop and give her a hug and greet her for the first time in 35 years. As I approached her and hugged her tightly she said to me with a voice of aged amazement: “I wanted to make sure you knew what the word “punctuality” meant after all these years, since you never showed up on time once for one of my 8:00 o’clock classes!!”

As frail and feeble as she looked, she certainly was not suffering from a loss of memory!!

My teacher was right about punctuality, but, to disagree with Woody Allen, life is about so much more than just showing up, even if you are on time. The first video presentation presented a glimpse of what our last school year was like. The second one was about what our future could be. If you were frustrated about having to attend to three screens simultaneously, welcome to the multi-tasking world of your students.

Today’s students are growing up in an age of unprecedented change; heightened economic anxiety; an increasingly interconnected world that sometimes seems to lead to even more global tension; information multiplying by the second; a 24/7 world.

All of this means that more than ever, our students have to be equipped to make the right choices in the situations that come flying at them every day…and that was the theme of my speech to those Potsdam graduates last year: The idea that life is filled with choices and many opportunities, and we all need to make choices, and risk a little bit to continue learning new things. As Heidi Hayes Jacobs told us during literacy camp, we need to upgrade ourselves, and stretch a little further.

It is a time of unprecedented change, but it’s also a time of unprecedented opportunity…our task as educators, more than ever, is to help our students sort through the dizziness that is the modern world and ask the right questions.

What is meaningful?

How should people be treated?

What can we learn from this?

How can my actions further a cause?

What gives meaning to my life?

We have the right people in this room right now to help our students ask and answer these questions. And, why am I so confident?

Because our first role as educators is to be learners… When I was a high school principal I used to refer to myself as the principal-learner. As superintendent, I am now the super-learner, because I am learning something new everyday in my job, in this professional learning community.

We need to focus on learning from our achievements, and successes, as well as from our failures and our mistakes. Throughout the history of this district we have experienced all of these things and many times we have become a stronger community.

Last school year was an especially “learningful” year for not only the District but for the “rookie” superintendent. Ask me sometime if I will ever cancel field trips again? Or, eliminate an elementary librarian to save money? Or, if you are like Peter Rawitch, classroom teacher at Glenmont, have him tell you how he presented the superintendent’s “tiered reductions” to his 1st grade class by having the superintendent dance in his class project to Thriller. Michael Jackson.

Let’s acknowledge that the 2008-09 school year was a major challenge for us at BC. We began the year with an economic melt-down that saw major savings dwindle before our eyes, and real threats to our educational programs. But, there were also great opportunities to manage these crises in constructive and enduring ways:

The District was able to re-shape and re-think our budget priorities by creating the tiered reductions.
We involved the community in actively discussing the educational budget by holding four community forums, brainstorming together how best to re-think programs.

We worked closely with the BCTA to create a renewed contract that not only provided the District with significant savings over the next three years but ensuring the integrity of the contract and supporting the future for our teachers.

We implemented five year strategies in each building and department for the purpose of planning for change with documented expectations and results.

We established the BC@Home web portal for parents and teachers to stay connected about their children's progress and programs.

We committed to a "green" initiative throughout the district where recycling resources, saving energy, and encouraging students and staff to be concerned about their environment was an important agenda.

We started a 21st Century learning initiative that is beginning to take hold in literacy camps, professional development and in moving the instructional experience into a timely direction for students.

And, we finalized our plans to begin full day kindergarten- starting this week.
Through it all the one vision that we kept in mind is that there are no disposable learners, and as a nation we must accept that our future is at risk, so long as we fail to guarantee that all children receive an educational experience that fully supports their intellectual, social, and emotional development.

William A. Alcott, a now forgotten member of that legendary American family of letters, wrote a series of articles for the Connecticut Common School Journal, asking teachers across America to make use of the newest educational technology in 1842 : He wrote: [and I quote] "A black board, in every school house, is as indispensably necessary as a stove or fireplace; and in large schools several of them might be useful."

He continues: "Slates are as necessary as black boards, and even more so. But they are liable to be broken, it will be said, as to render it expensive to parents to keep their children supplied with them."
"[Why] are books necessary at all, when the pupils are furnished with slates? “
Sound familiar?

Is there a parallel with what we are dealing with in our 21st century classrooms?

“Put a laptop in each student’s hands and he/she will not need textbooks.” Heard that before?

“They will have the abundance of information available on the Internet, right?”
Actually, these students we will meet tomorrow already have this information awareness down well. Our charge is to guide them into understanding what is relevant and what is not. Our task is to provide these children not with the abundance of content, but to facilitate their learning, to sift through the content for context and meaning.

A few years ago when I was the Assistant Superintendent I was walking through the MS. At the other end of one hall were three boys looking at a smartphone/cell and pointing to the information they were viewing. Immediately, the "principal" in me started to review the Code of Conduct about cell phone use, and in my mind I was worried that these kids were viewing "pornography". Feeling it was my duty to step in and retrieve the cell phone and protect the student body from perversion and dark moral corruption I walked up behind them and startled them with my question: "what are you doing?" Immediately, the student with the phone handed me the cell and when I looked at it I was shocked, appalled, stunned… they were reading the NY Times update on the testimony Roger Clemens was making to a congressional sub committee, and they were arguing the pro and con of their favorite player's position. Feeling rather annoyed with myself and quite proud of these students, I gave them back the phone and walked away.

Kids know how to use technology, and much better than we give them credit for. Thomas Friedman tells us: "Kids are wired differently these days. They're digitally nimble. They multitask, transpose and extrapolate. And they think of knowledge as infinite. They don't engage with textbooks that are finite, linear and rote." So, if that’s the case, how do we change our instruction? How do we evolve and risk changing?

Like William Alcott and the potential upheaval of his classroom slates and blackboards, Tena Selig, Director of Stanford’s Technology Ventures Program observed…”The uncertainty of life never goes away. ... The world is always changing.” To me, this means, it is up to us as educational leaders and the navigators of our students’ educational journeys to be flexible and optimistic. With a positive attitude and creative thinking, most problems can be viewed as opportunities in disguise..." or choices to be made!

Michelanglo once noted that “every block of marble has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” Freeing what the great Italian Renaissance artist called the “angel in the marble.” Doesn’t that describe the job we have as teachers. We look out each day upon a small quarry of rough-hewn children and we begin the daily attention to carefully and supportively discover the unique adult within each child.

So it is with us, this New Year's Day September 8, 2009. Today we begin with new opportunities and choices to make lasting changes and excitement for the 5,000 students coming to school tomorrow. Whether you are a bus driver, mechanic, teacher, Board member, clerical aide, administrator or support staff, look to the "angel in the marble". Look at each student as an opportunity to change the future for all that is possible and good.

Have a great school year.

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