Germantown district mulls next steps after education summit

One of two major events in the Germantown School District March 20 and 21 was the educational summit held at a conference center in the village.

The summit — held at the Florian Park Conference Center — was described as “Version 1.0” and included participation by approximately 90 people. According to a draft summit overview from the district, the purpose of the summit was “to bring some definition to the ‘Germantown School District Way’ through what it means to ‘Empower and Inspire Every Student to Success.’”

“The Germantown Way” was the title given by district officials to develop the district’s own curriculum and standards after the School Board decided against accepting the Common Core Standards in December 2014.

The summit was subtitled “Moving beyond standardization into the future of learning for our students.” Standardization was mentioned in one of the first subject areas in a summit overview that was prepared by district staff following the summits.

“Through the Industrial Age to today, standardization has increased the ability to efficiently produce the quality and quantity of things we need and want in our lives,” a draft of the summit overview stated. “The problem is that the business and manufacturing mentality of standards and standardization impedes our work to help children grow, learn and develop into productive, capable, caring, thinking, creative human beings — all with unique talents, strength, interests and overall persona.”

In area of standardization, two ideas were suggested, according to the summit overview: that “the mentality of standardization could be one of the biggest challenges facing education today given that there is nothing ‘standard’ about our kids, nor do we want to make them all the same” and possible benefits of “shifting our focus on standardized academic content acquisition as the end of schooling” to engage students in learning academic contents as a means to which they learn how to think deeply, produce quality, collaborate well, and other items mentioned in the report.





Rick Grothaus, principal at Amy Belle Elementary School, thanked the School Board during the March 23 meeting for the opportunity to hold the summit.

“This isn’t happening anywhere else at all that I know of, where we’re able to sit down and examine closely what’s most important to this community of what they want for the education of their children — I’ll say — in spite of all the external demands that are being placed on schools these days,” Grothaus said.

Grothaus explained that during the summit, 10 tables of participants were tasked with creating a statement of what the Germantown district “was all about” based on a series of questions. A committee of four people then took the responses from the 10 tables tables to come up with one statement. The final statement created from that process says the Germantown School District is “committed to cultivating the whole child. We will identify students’ passions and meaningfully co-create opportunities for students to pursue these passions. From these experiences, they will develop their strengths in order for them to reach their fullest potential and become productive members in an ever-changing world.”

“I think you really set the direction for us, we can really build on this now. The next step is to figure out what we can do to further this idea in all that we do for the kids in this school district,” Grothaus said.

Brenda O’Brien, director of teaching and learning, added she was pleased with the participation of students at the event.

“I loved seeing the students participate in the summit. They were working alongside us asking some questions, they were very well spoken, well articulate. They could speak to what was getting in their way currently and what they would like to see for the future school,” O’Brien said.

School Board President Robert Soderberg said he liked the panel discussions with parents, teachers and children.

“During the summit, it was nice just to sit back and listen to what people were saying. I truly learned a lot and I’m excited about the future of Germantown. We’ve got nothing to worry about, we’re going on the right path,” he said. Board member Michael Loth asked how students were selected to the summit.

Grothaus replied that district staff visited with middle school and high school student and explained what the summit was all about. He added that one of the factors was determining which students would not be attending the state basketball tournament in Madison that weekend, where Germantown advanced to the Division I title game.

“I’m hoping we can have more conversations with kids, get in and do some focus group sessions and talk to lots of different kids,” Grothaus said.

Source: scribd.com

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