A Superintendent's Reflection:

Fostering a Positive Culture for the New School Year

Just over a month ago, the familiar hum of school buses signaled the end of summer and the start of another exciting academic year in Region 12. As we enter October, we find ourselves fully immersed in the 2024-2025 school year, propelled by our shared commitment to fostering a positive and productive culture for students, staff, and families.

Our Region 12 Strategic Plan is grounded in four key priorities: Powerful Learning, Family and Community Engagement, Diversity, Belonging, and Well-being, and Innovation and Delivering Value. A common thread running through these priorities is the importance of building strong connections within our classrooms and with the school community. The relationships we cultivate as educators and leaders are essential to enhancing student learning, supporting growth, and strengthening partnerships with stakeholders in our towns and surrounding communities.

Building Relationships and Student Connections

In Region 12, building meaningful relationships with students is central to our mission. At Shepaug Valley School, the Link Crew program welcomed the Class of 2028 with peer-led orientation activities, ensuring that our freshmen had a positive, safe, and supportive start to their high school experience. Across the district, teachers have made it a priority to create welcoming classroom environments from day one, using icebreakers and "getting to know you" activities to help students feel comfortable, valued, and supported. Teachers and leaders established clear academic and behavioral expectations, including the continued enforcement of our cell phone-free policy during instructional time, helping leaders and staff sustain an emotionally safe and distraction-free learning environment.

Safety and Security: A Foundation for Learning

Ensuring the safety—both emotional and physical—of our students remains paramount to maintaining a positive culture throughout the district. At Shepaug Valley School, our School Resource Officer (SRO) works in close collaboration with newly appointed Armed Security Officers (ASOs) at our elementary schools. Together, they monitor campus safety, conduct annual safety drills, and work with leadership to ensure preparedness for any situation. Their ongoing partnership with our local authorities will help to make certain that our schools remain safe and secure places for learning. I still recall the first day when our youngest students were arriving on buses and being dropped off by parents.  Students were curious about the new security officers and were eager to greet them with a smile or a handshake.  A young student asked one officer, “Are you really tough?” The smiling officer responded appropriately, “When I need to be!” 

Celebrating Engagement and Learning

When I visit schools and observe classrooms in action, it is clear that strong relationships fuel student engagement, build confidence, and inspire learners to explore their passions. At Shepaug Valley School, students have already begun diving into academic projects that deepen their understanding of core subjects and involve the community. One such project, in partnership with Steep Rock Preserve, celebrates the preserve’s 100th anniversary. Students are creating a “Passport to the Trails,” featuring maps, artwork, poetry, and non-fiction writing centered around six of Steep Rock's trails. Students made their first trip to the Preserve on September 12th.  Steep Rock representatives led 6th graders on a walk of their group’s trail, where they examined the flora, fauna, and terrain. Ultimately, visitors will be able to use the booklet created to guide them as they meander the trails.

At the elementary level, our students have embarked on a variety of engaging hands-on activities. For example, fifth graders at Booth Free and Burnham Schools participated in a "Principles of Flight" program presented by FLYRC of Southbury, where they piloted drones, flew planes via flight simulators, built gliders, and even launched rockets several hundred feet into the air. Through this program, students explored the history of human flight while learning about key concepts such as thrust, drag, lift, and the Bernoulli principle. Quite a blast for our young learners!

At Washington Primary School, students have been learning about responsibility through CARES (Cooperation, Assertiveness, Responsibility, Empathy and Self-Management) from the Responsive Classroom program. Students understand that responsibility means knowing what to do and doing it right away. Whether through self-care, maintaining workspaces, or staying focused on learning, students are developing a sense of pride in their work by striving for accuracy and excellence. Looking ahead, fourth and fifth graders across the district will participate in enrichment opportunities in Earth and space, horticulture, and animal science through a Primary Partnership pilot program with Shepaug’s high school teachers. These hands-on learning experiences will take place throughout the year, providing students with access to high school labs and classroom settings to further deepen their skills in scientific inquiry, communication, and understanding.

Professional Learning and Staff Growth

Integral to our Region 12 Strategic Plan, staff development that supports teaching and learning remains another priority in the months ahead. Over the summer, teachers wrote and revised curriculum in a variety of academic subject areas. Inspired by noteworthy speaker and educator Ron Berger in August, teachers recently explored instructional strategies that would integrate learning targets and student assessments into their classrooms—key tools for promoting powerful learning and academic growth. Teachers utilized the time at a recent staff development session to review articles and videos from his platform of resources. Collaboratively, they engaged in dialogue about these instructional practices and refined their understanding to facilitate and support student learning in their own classrooms with greater integrity. Our students might be asked to use thumbs up or down, respond to random student responses, share with a peer, or write a reflection on exit slips to illustrate their learning. 

As William Butler Yeats once said, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” As we move forward into this new school year, we hope the "fire" we ignite reflects our collective commitment to ensuring a positive and successful year for all students, staff, and families in Region 12.

 

Dr. Lorrie Rodrigue

 

 

Interim Superintendent