The second, one-hour Parent/Community Forum hosted by the school district was held on Tuesday, November 11, and focused on rigor in the classroom.

Assistant Superintendent of Schools Linda Gejda led the discussion.

“We’re very excited about having the opportunity to begin the conversation about rigor,” said Dr Gejda, near the start of the evening.

Both Superintendent of Schools Joseph V. Erardi, Jr, and Board of Education Chair Keith Alexander also spoke near the opening of the event. Members of the school board’s Curriculum and Instruction Subcommittee and district teachers were also in attendance for the event, along with district parents and members of the public.

The most frequent comment that Dr Gejda said she heard from parents at the first community forum, conducted September 18, was “For my child to have the very best year this year in school, I need my child to be challenged. We need rigor in our studies and in our classrooms.”

The first Parent/Community Forum was facilitated by Dr Erardi and focused on collecting information from parents on how to facilitate students having the best possible school year.

Given that the forum was only an hour long, Dr Gejda, following the event, explained that one strategy to raise the level of teaching and learning was focused on.

“We wanted to show how teachers (twelfth grade, fifth grade, and first grade) more deeply engage students with the text that they read (both fiction and nonfiction) through more complex questions,” Dr Gejda said in an e-mail exchange after the event. “The level of questions that teachers ask, and students generate, determines the degree to which students interact with the text. The various types of questions were explained (recall, applying, analyzing, evaluating, creating) and then demonstrated.”

Dr Gejda said an exercise was used during the event. Participants were asked to identify the level of questions based on complexity regarding the story of Little Red Riding Hook.

“This exercise was meant to demonstrate how the readers interaction with text can be levied to develop numerous skills such as comprehension, critical thinking, and communication of one’s thinking,” Dr Gejda said.

Video examples of students working on language arts projects were shown during the forum as examples of how students interact with text and their fellow students.

Questions from participants were also answered during the forum, and Dr Gejda said teachers responded to the questions with examples of how they work with students.

“They did a great job,” Dr Gejda said, about the participating teachers. “The final comments were made by Dr Dianna Roberge-Wentzell, chief academic officer of the Connecticut State Department of Education. She congratulated Newtown teachers for engaging in the professional learning opportunities provided by the state and was pleased with the presentation.”

Mr Alexander also reflected on the forum following the event.

“The thing I thought brought the most clarity was the discussion around what elements are done in the Reader’s Workshop,” said Mr Alexander via e-mail. “People who haven’t seen how the classroom works will think back to how we learned as kids where you show knowledge by memorization in that you have to remember what was in the text and retell the story. The new way has much more in-depth questions where students analyze and evaluate what went on including things like giving an opinion or judging motives. Those are things that adults talk about in book discussions but not how I remembered it from school.”

Mr Alexander also said he is pleased at having the opportunity to hold the forums, and he believes they offer people a better understanding of how new teaching ideas benefit students.

“Presentations at board meetings inform us but don’t take people into the classroom to see how it is done,” said Mr Alexander. “I’m glad that parents have a chance focus on the learning that goes on at school since it is hard to see that just by looking at what comes home with the students.”

While the recent forum focused on rigor in language arts lessons, Dr Gejda said she plans to have the district’s math program be the topic of a future presentation. That presentation has yet to be scheduled, but Dr Gejda said she hopes it will happen in January.