MSAD 1 COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS - School Administrative ...

Page 6 • SAD 1 Community Connections • October 2011
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PIMS staff reading ‘Global Achievement Gap’ by Tony Wagner
The staff at Presque Isle Middle
School are doing something new
this year—they’re all reading the
same book and discussing it during
team and staff meetings.
The book is The Global Achievement
Gap, by Harvard University
education professor Tony Wagner.
Maine Commissioner of Education
Steve Bowen has been promoting
the book around the state. PIMS
Principal Anne Blanchard learned
about the commissioner’s enthusiasm
for the book last spring; she
bought a copy, read it, and was so
impressed that she purchased copies
for the entire staff.
Ms. Blanchard said the book was
a real eye-opener.
“We need to look at ways to make
teaching and learning fit the 21st
Century,” she said. “We know that
some of the teaching skills that
used to work simply don’t connect
with our students the way they
used to. For example, students don’t
need to memorize long lists of this
or that, because today the information
is at their fingertips, and it’s
changing daily. They need to have
“survival skills for the 21st Century,
as Wagner emphasizes, such as
Exploratory teachers at PIMS take lead role on student behavior expectations
Students at Presque Isle Middle
School know that they are expected
to behave in ways that are safe,
responsible, and respectful.
But what does that mean in the
hallways?
How are students expected to
behave in the cafeteria?
What does it mean to be safe,
responsible, and respectful in the
bathrooms, or in other areas of the
school?
Clarifying behavior expectations
and communicating them to the student
body is a mission that’s been
undertaken this fall by PIMS Assistant
Principal Barbara Bartlett
and the “X Team”—the teachers
of “exploratory” subjects like art,
music, tech ed, health, and physical
education.
Mrs. Bartlett and the X Team
spent in-service time last spring developing
short, understandable lists
of behavior expectations for each
area of the building—hallways,
stairs, cafeteria, lobby, bathrooms,
7th grade teacher gets another Community Betterment Grant for service learning project
Elaine Hendrickson, 7th grade
English and social studies teacher
at Presque Isle Middle School, has
received a $750 Community Betterment
Grant from the KIDS Consortium
to fund an integrated service
learning project with her students.
The project will involve aspects of
English, science, social studies, and
math.
It’s the second year in a row that
Mrs. Hendrickson has received a
service learning grant from the
KIDS Consortium.
Last year, she and Cindy Cote,
another 7th grade teacher, received
a $16,000 grant for a “Green the
School” project, and her students
responded with a project to replace
the school’s disposable styrofoam
food service trays with reusable
plastic trays.
This year, Mrs. Hendrickson
says she doesn’t know what type of
questioning skills and adaptability,
among others, and their curiosity
needs to be stimulated.”
She said the book is an important
professional activity, and teachers
are responding well.
“In the end, we won’t change
education on a dime, but we must
continually be asking ourselves
what works best with and for our
students,” Ms. Blanchard said. “We
have to be open to the changes in
the world. We can’t keep doing and
delivering education the way were
trained to. This little laptop right
here [the MacBook laptop computer
that all 7th and 8th graders
at PIMS and throughout Maine
receive] has changed the world—
and the way student learn, and are
excited to learn.”
PRESQUE ISLE MIDDLE SCHOOL
Anne Blanchard, Principal - 764-4474
gymnasium, recess, etc.
“We tried to list four
or five things that students
should be doing,
not all the things they
shouldn’t be doing,”
she said. “We want to
emphasize the positive,
not the negative.”
The X Team reviewed
the lists before
school opened in
September and posted
them throughout the
building. Then, on
September 9, the exploratory
teachers used
their class time to take
the students on a tour
of the different areas for which the
lists had been created, and they explained
what it looks like to be safe
and responsible, and what it looks
or sounds like to be respectful.
“PIMS students have been made
aware of what the expectations are
in each of those areas,” says Mrs.
project her students will attempt,
because they haven’t decided yet.
One of the essential components
of service learning is that the students
identify a community need
that they want to address and how
they want to address it.
Mrs. Hendrickson said the students
would be introduced to the
concept of service learning during
the week of September 19.
The next steps would be for them
to brainstorm ideas for a project—
looking through local newspapers
for ideas, identifying problems
that need to be solved, evaluating
potential solutions, and then using
a democratic process for deciding
what project to pursue.
Once a project is selected, the
students will develop an action
plan, put the plan into action and
complete the project, and then collect
data to evaluate the impact of
The first discussion of The Global
Achievement Gap was scheduled for
the staff meeting on September 20.
“We’ll go through the book chapter
by chapter, and discuss it in
small groups,” Ms. Blanchard said.
The subtitle of the book is “Why
Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach
the New Survival Skills Our Children
Need—and What We Can Do
About It.”
Wagner’s thesis is that schools
spend too much time preparing for
mandatory tests, and consequently
lose sight of the “seven basic survival
skills” that students need to
complete in today’s world.
Those “survival skills include
problem solving and critical thinking,
collaboration across networks,
adaptability, initiative, effective
Student behavior exprectations are now posted throughout PIMS.
Bartlett.
Mrs. Bartlett says she believes
most students know what the
expectations are at PIMS, but that
the school has chosen a pro-active
approach of reminding them.
“Having the expectations in writing,
visible to students, is really
the project.
“The students have
to grapple with many
questions and come up
with the answers,” Mrs.
Hendrickson says.
Last year, she said
her students raised the
issue of why 35,000
styrofoam trays were
being sent to the
landfill, and the talked
with the food service
director, Kathy Allen,
about possible alternatives.
The students also
publicized the reasons
for replacing the styrofoam
trays with plastic
trays through an-
nouncements in the morning and at
lunchtime, and they also took steps
to ensure that PIMS students didn’t
put the new trays in the trash.
oral and written communication,
analyzing information, and developing
curiosity and imagination.
important,” she says.
Behavior expectations
have also been
developed for study
halls, for school dances,
and even for students
as they wait for their
buses at the end of the
school day.
“This is the first
time I’ve heard teachers
talking to students
about the expectations
for a school dance,” she
said.
Another advantage
of posting the behavior
expectations throughout
the school is that
everyone—faculty as well as students—has
a similar understanding
of what is expected for student
behavior.
“I’m really thrilled that the X
Team agreed to take on this important
task,” she said.
Presque Isle Middle School student gives the “thumbs up”
sign last May while eating lunch off one of the new reusable
plastic lunch trays.
Mrs. Hendrickson’s class will be
working with another seventh grade
class taught by first-year math and
science teacher Chelsea Cheney.