Professionals And Professionalism

In this column, I often briefly acknowledge staff and the special events that they are involved in, but rarely have the time to honor them.  This column will honor two of our many outstanding teachers and focus on the professionalism in our district.  The Woonsocket Education department and the Woonsocket Teachers Guild are working collaboratively to cultivate professionalism as we move forward together to provide the best educators and education possible for the students in Woonsocket.

Professional Staff    

The first teacher I would like to highlight was recognized in the Dec. 13, 2010 Education Spotlight for the holiday event called "This, That, & the Holidays."  Ms. Maiello is the Woonsocket High School Theater, Dance and English Teacher.  She has been teaching at the High School for 14 years.  Every year she coordinates many theater productions, and music cabarets.  She uses these events to fundraise for students and families related to our Woonsocket community. These generous contributions have been very helpful for families in need. 

Maiello was recognized by the Kiwanis on Tuesday, February 15^th at Savinis Restaurant.  I would like to congratulate her for being named “Citizen of the Year” by the Kiwanis Club of Woonsocket. 

The second Teacher that I would like to recognize is Mrs. Starring who got brief recognition for her outstanding teaching of our technology program at Woonsocket High School.  Her instruction and development of a cutting edge robotics program have positioned our students to succeed in the ever increasing technological world. The technology department has been significantly reduced over the last three years through attrition and the ongoing budget limitations.  As we consider career academies in the future for Woonsocket High School, Engineering and Technology must be stressed so that we can increase the course offerings in this area.

In the February 14, 2011 I briefly mentioned that our students won the "Think Award".  I would like to honor them and Mrs. Starring by explaining the First Tech Challenge in greater depth. The First Tech Challenge or FTC is designed for those who want to compete head-to-head, using a sports model. Teams of up to 10 students are responsible for designing, building, and programming their robots to compete in an alliance format against other teams. The robot kit is reusable from year-to-year and is programmed using a variety of languages. Teams, including coaches, mentors and volunteers, are required to develop strategy and build robots based on sound engineering principles. Awards are given for the competition as for well as for community outreach, design, and other real-world accomplishments.
Students get to: 
 
  Design, build, and program robots
  Apply real-world math and science concepts
  Develop problem-solving, organizational, and team-building skills
  Compete and cooperate in alliances and tournaments
  Earn a place in the World Championship
  Qualify for close to $7 million in college scholarships

The Woonsocket High School Robotics Team - The RoboNinjas - competed on Saturday Feb. 5, 2011 at New England Institute of Technology against 32 high school teams from around the state at the 5^th annual First Tech Challenge international robotics competition. Andrew Brunelle, Jessie Gingras, Narimane Khaled, Nicholas Newcomb, Jared Perry and Kyle Perry received the “Think Award” in recognition of all their effort.  This judged award is given to the team that best reflects the “journey” the team took as they experienced the engineering design process during the build season.

The Engineering Notebook is the key reference for judges to help identify the most deserving team. The team’s Engineering Notebook should focus on the design and build stage of the team’s robot. Journal entries of interest to judges for this award will include those describing the steps, brainstorms, designs, re-designs, successes, and those ‘interesting moments’ when things weren’t going as planned. The Engineering Notebook must demonstrate that the team has a clear understanding of the engineering design process, with pictures or drawings and details documenting all stages of robot design, while following the formatting guidelines provided by FIRST.

The students did a wonderful job on both their Engineering Notebook as well as their team interview and represented the school with pride throughout the entire competition.

Professionalism

The Woonsocket Teachers Guild are members of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals (RIFTHP) as well as the national American Federation of Teachers (AFT).  The AFT has been very progressive and supportive of education reform and the Woonsocket Education Department have been the benefactors of that support.

The Rhode Island Board of Regents adopted Educator Evaluation System Standards on December 3, 2009 in an effort to improve educator quality.  As a work in progress they later adopted the Rhode Island Educator Evaluation System Standards Rubrics.

The RIFTHP understood the importance of these developments and proactively sought national level support.  In September 2009, the RIFTHP was awarded a $200,000 AFT Innovation Fund grant to collaboratively develop a "state-of-the-art" comprehensive teacher evaluation and support system.  This grant was one of only seven grants awarded by the AFT to State Federations and locals working on important, innovative ideas in education. 126 proposals were received, making this award to the RIFTHP a significant accomplishment.  Woonsocket was one of the original six districts to partner on these efforts.  This grant gave us a head start on this initiative.

The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) announced the i3 grant winners on August 13, 2010. The Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals (RIFTHP) applied for this grant in partnership with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) to develop a model for educator evaluation in each state.  The AFT, RIFTHP and NYSUT will share the $5 million award to support their shared and state specific efforts. The DOE required grantees to secure a 20 percent match in order to receive the i3 grants.  The Rhode Island Foundation has committed $200,000 over four years as a partial match to the $5 million Investing in Innovation i3 grant.  Once again, Woonsocket was one of the participating districts and will benefit from this grant.

Because the Woonsocket Education Department and the Woonsocket Teachers Guild have worked collaboratively on these initiatives, we were invited by Arne Duncan, the United States Secretary of Education, to apply to attend the Advancing Student Achievement Through Labor-Management Collaboration in Denver, Colorado.  Of the 250 districts that applied, Woonsocket was one of the 150 districts that were chosen to attend.  The Federal government paid all expenses for the conference and the only stipulation was that the School Committee Chair or Vice Chair, Teachers Union President and Superintendent of Schools attend together and promise to continue to work together in the future on labor-management collaboration.  On Tuesday, February 15th and Wednesday, February 16th Vice Chair Eleanor Nadeau, WTG President Richard DiPardo and I attended the conference.  

We were very impressed by the presentations from model districts and we learned a lot about other initiatives that are currently taking place nationally.  During the dinner, we got to meet Secretary Duncan and have informal conversations about the direction of public education and our work.  Together, our team even created action plans to identify what we have been working on collaboratively and other areas where we can expand our collaboration.  At the next school committee meeting in March, I will do a presentation on what we learned at the convention and what action plans we created.

Sincerely,

Robert J. Gerardi, Jr., Ph.D.

Superintendent of Schools

Woonsocket Education Department

"Professionalism is knowing how to do it, when to do it, and doing it."
Frank Tyger

"If a person gives you his time, he can give no more precious gift."
Frank Tyger

"Progress results from persistence with purpose."
Frank Tyger