Don't Forget Your Books

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." 

Norwich takes great pride in its schools and in the achievement of its students and, as measured by the Connecticut Mastery Tests (CMT)even as the costs to achieve that success continue to escalate. 

We have learned well the lesson that public education doesn't merely educate a public, but also creates one, as our schools have become the centerpiece of their neighborhoods, regarded the same way the fingers of the hand look to the thumb. We may have thirty-plus languages in our community, but we all only have one school.

In the Industrial Age, mill operators looked for rivers to power their factories. In the Age of Technology, companies sought rail, air, and highway connections to ship raw materials and finished products to and from markets. 

Today, in the Knowledge Age, with the convergence of technologies and applications, business, be it government, art, commerce, or science, can be conducted from anywhere, and a successful education becomes essential in creating agile, life-long learners who can constantly and consistently adapt and adopt.

If this doesn't sound like the schoolhouse we attended as children, that's because it isn't. In our day, schools and the communities they served were separate worlds, but today, everything, in many ways, has become everything else. 

Our children enter schools designed for a different world and a different time, where events happened sequentially and not simultaneously; where rote learning was group learning and progress could be precisely mapped and measured.

Today's students bring different learning styles that require flexibility of instruction and classroom interaction as a minimum. What else is needed will be discovered as all of us across the community sit together, and with educators and other key members of our city, to build the next school system, not just from bricks and mortar, but from skills, tools, techniques, and opportunities that both reflect and simultaneously shape the world in which our children and theirs will live.

We have both a new City Council and Board of Education, whose members will grow into their roles and responsibilities. There will be discussions, dialogue, and probably no small amount of acrimony in developing the budgets both for the city and for our school system. Happens all the time. 

There will be a lot of hard work because tomorrow cannot be built in a day, but rather, will be lived one day at a time for the rest of our lives. We all want it to be tomorrow today, but none of us wants it to start at this moment.

-bill kenny

Define Your Terms

You might think it's early to mention the November elections for six seats on the City Council and nine on the Board of Education. Maybe. 

Usually, I spend much of my time considering choices for City Council but as the son of a lifelong schoolteacher, I want to write about the importance of choosing wisely for the next Board of Education. 

The buzzword this election in these post-pandemic times is “parental rights” in relation to schools, children, and education, The phrase is on everyone's lips, even here as Matt Grahn reported recently in The Bulletin. The trouble is, I can’t seem to find a definition of exactly what are “parental rights.”

Nevertheless, one of the two parties' slates for the Norwich Board of Education makes it a prominent plank in their election platform. Their Town Committee Chairman says, "Parental rights is a strong concern, even for people who aren’t parents yet or won’t have children, as they recognize the impact “hands-on” boards of education can have on children locally and all over the country.' (My emphasis added.)

That's as may be, but an article in Chalkbeat which calls itself, 'essential education reporting across America' reports 'Most Americans aren't satisfied with public schools-but most parents like their child's school.' It would seem the difference in evaluations by an adult with children in a public school (a parent) and an adult with no children is startling, to say the least.

Let me offer some personal perspective: Our two children were products of the Norwich Public Schools, attending Buckingham (now a grassy knoll), Kelly (then Middle) School, before enrolling in and graduating from Norwich Free Academy.

Our daughter, the younger of the two, graduated from Kelly in 2001 so my frame of reference is more than a bit dated, but my memories are still fresh about our involvement at parent-teacher conferences, as well as participation in the TPO (or was it PTO?) meetings for one or the other and I or my wife spent many, many evenings enjoying coffee and conversation at Board of Education meetings in the Kelly library (all before the renovations and expansion).

What I do NOT remember is swarms of grown-ups exercising their “parental rights” by attending parent-teacher conferences, participating in PTO meetings, or getting engaged in many, to say nothing of any, classroom activities their child's schools and teachers organized throughout the school year.

I can also recall Board of Ed meetings with fewer than six parents in attendance for a school system with thousands of children enrolled. I'm assuming the meetings too often conflicted with nights Seinfeld was on TV, or a Massachusetts sports team was playing.

Sorry for the snark. Not.

“Parental rights” must be inseparable from concomitant obligations and responsibilities which in our house meant making sure homework was completed (looking at you, Patrick), the next day's assignments were prepared (Michelle), and accomplishing everything my wife and I could do to help our children succeed. 

Between us, I fear that definition of “parental rights” went the way of the dodo and clean air, but I strongly urge everyone who is a parent, or anyone thinking of becoming a parent, to demand of every candidate seeking a seat on the Board of Education a definition of “parental rights” and how they would foster and further involvement and engagement of all parents which is critical to the success of every child in Norwich Schools. 

Do not let them offer you a cliché-make them define their terms.
-bill kenny

It's Always Up to You

The big story in January around here was the snow job we got from Mother Nature. Big headlines about snowdrifts taller than ponies and suddenly none of us are fond of the color white, anymore. Suspect we're going to have a little more of the stuff rather than a little less before this winter ends. But somewhere among the falling snowflakes, speeding plows and scraping shovels was the great month January proved to be the Norwich Public Schools and the children it educates.

We tend to fret at budget formulation time about the relationship between "our" schools and Norwich Free Academy and, because NFA is a regional asset, we sometimes lose sight of its hometown/homegrown emphasis and origins. The Board of Trustees' decision earlier last month to hold the line on next school year's tuition costs was good news for communities whose children attend NFA, including Norwich, but even better news was the debut of the Norwich Free Academy Enrichment Academy.

The program allows Kelly Middle School and Teachers’ Memorial Middle School students (grades six through eight) an opportunity to attend classes at Norwich Free Academy.

Offerings include a range of subjects, to include Spanish, French and Greek, through instrumental and vocal music as well as modern dance, drawing, journalism and creative writing, through culinary arts like cooking and baking.

Rarely has the word enrichment been better used to describe not merely a preview of high school for our children but an opportunity each will now have to look farther down the path of their lives and begin to develop a sense of who they are and (more importantly, I think) who they can become in the world.

William Butler Yeats saw education as the lighting of a fire. We should strive to see our children become beacons who will light the way as the second decade of the twenty first century unfolds and the NFA Enrichment Academy is a marvelous beginning.

Speaking of beginnings and academies, a New London neighbor, the US Coast Guard Academy and the Norwich Public Schools have embarked on a Partnership in Education Program that will see an upgrade in the computer technology currently in our schools but more significantly will allow Norwich school children to work with and learn from the Coast Guard Academy cadets.

Providing our children and grandchildren with access to tools and opportunities to interact with the talent to more extensively model successful behavior will go a long way to enriching not only the lives of students and adult volunteers but also our own as we cease measuring education as something we buy by the pound but rather learn to celebrate life-long learning as a critical component of our community.

-bill kenny