Middle Gate Elementary School Principal Christopher Geissler welcomed parents in attendance for the special Principal's Coffee event, which he called "The State of the Gate," on Wednesday, January 27.

Mr Geissler conducts Principal Coffee events throughout the school year to speak with parents about different aspects of the school, but The State of the Gate event was formatted a bit differently.

Mr Geissler said the day would give the parents the chance to learn firsthand about what the school has accomplished and where efforts are headed.

"So we are going to do today a little bit differently," said Mr Geissler, standing in a circle with parents inside the school's cafeteria. "I want to present some items of our highlights… but then I want you to get a behind the scenes look at some of the great work that our staff does and what children are doing in the classroom."

Mr Geissler said the parents would witness a lesson being taught to students through the Second Step program, which he said teaches students life skills.

"You'll see behind the scenes professional development happening," Mr Geissler continued. "We have… a cohort of teachers from across the district at the elementary level who are working with a technology professional development expert in how to use iPads, how to use them in the classroom, how to use them for student performance, and student engagement."

Parents were also sent to see kindergarten students being taught Spanish in the district's world language immersion program, piloted for kindergarten students this year and proposed to expand to first grade for the 2016-17 school year in the Board of Education's current operational spending plan.

"It is all en Español," Mr Geissler warned the parents about what they would be witnessing, smiling before he added, "There is not a word of English muttered."

Volunteer fourth grade students also demonstrated personalized learning, which Mr Geissler described as "children choosing a topic, researching it, and then picking a medium for them to present to then be able to teach others."

The parents were led to the school's library before being separated into groups to visit the different areas of the school.

The fourth graders worked on their personalized learning studies while attending a once-a-week enrichment program called "Genius Hour." According to the presentation, students work in the program for six weeks.

Students worked on a range of projects while parents milled around the tables and spoke to individual fourth graders about their work. Ashley Guerrera said she researched how penguins survive in the wild, Morgan Harrison said she researched how touch-screen technology works, Jared Ku said he researched atoms and was working to diagram a plutonium atom, and Evan Chaudhary studied sea salt and why it is in the ocean.

In another classroom at the school, kindergarten students were singing along to the song, "Hands, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" in Spanish led by the district's Foreign Language in Elementary Schools (FLES) kindergarten Spanish program teacher Marianne Grenier. The students then sang another song and danced under Ms Grenier's guidance to show which part of their body they were singing about.

In first grade, teacher Shannon Pierce's class students were learning a Second Step lesson on how to solve problems. A video was shown demonstrating how students handled an issue during recess, before Ms Pierce read details on how students could follow the "steps" to solve similar situations.

After seeing each of the rooms, Mr Geissler had the parents meet back at the school's library to talk more about school programs and answer questions.