September 1- Opening

September 1, 2010
Opening Remarks


Welcome Back! It is nice to see everyone rested and ready for another great

school year. We were lucky this year to enjoy wonderful summer weather.

One of the many things I love about the months of July and August is the

slower pace which means more time for summer reading. I read some fun

books; bestsellers such as Cutting for Stone; required reading; Tales of a Fourth

Grade Nothing, from the fourth grade list; Tangerine, and House of Scorpion;

from the eighth grade list, and Copper Sun from the high school list – all good

choices.


I also read some professional books which I highly recommend, Mindsight

by psychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel. It’s about changing habits of mind to be more

flexible, adaptive, and energized. I read Daniel Pink’s Drive about his theory of

motivation. He believes that it’s not the carrot and stick approach that motivates

us for high performance and satisfaction but 3 things: autonomy, directing your

own life, mastery, learning and creating new things, and purpose , to do better by

ourselves and our world. I also read 21st Century Skills by Trilling and Fadel,

and of course I reread Dr. Wagner’s Global Achievement Gap.


I’m convinced that education and schools have to adapt to the major changes

brought on by the technology revolution, global economy, environmental issues,

and community needs. And I agree with Trilling, Fadel, and Wagner that the

“knowledge economy” requires high levels of imagination, creativity, and

innovation to continually invent new and better services and products for the

global marketplace as well as solve the great problems of our times – economic

recession, global warming, poverty, war, terror, and diseases.

What I’ve been thinking about as we start this school year are the following:

How do we better prepare our students to be problem solvers, communicators, collaborators and innovators?

AND

How do we shift our practices in our Concord schools to meet these demands?



I’m excited to begin this school year with thoughtful district wide and school wide

discussions in response to these major questions. In Global Achievement Gap,

Dr. Wagner suggested several major questions to begin our discussion:

What do we think all CCHS graduates need to know and be able to do to be well prepared for college, career and citizenship – in the next decade of the 21st century?

Since we can’t teach everything, what is most important?

How might Concord’s definition of academic rigor need to change in the age of information explosion?

What are the best ways to know whether our students have mastered the skills that matter most?

What do we need to do in our schools to motivate students to be curious and imaginative, and to enjoy learning for it’s own sake?

How do we both support Concord educators and hold them more accountable for results?

What do schools where all students are mastering the skills that matter most look like and what can we learn from them?


I’m thrilled that Dr. Wagner is here today to begin our discussion. He is the Co-Director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the author of the “Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need---And What We Can Do About It”. He was a high school English teacher for twelve years; a school principal; a university professor in teacher education; cofounder and first executive director of Educators for Social Responsibility;project director for the Public Agenda Foundation in New York; and President and CEO of the Institute for Responsive Education.

For the past few years, many CPS/CCHS administrators, teachers, and technology specialists have attended Dr. Wagner’s keynote speeches at professional conferences and/or have read his book, so we are thrilled he is here today to share his ideas about the seven survival skills for the “net” generation with the entire faculty and staff as we begin the new year.

For more info see Wagner's website www.schoolchange.org