Hello Everyone: I am so pleased to share all of the wonderful things happening in our district this week from my vantage point. I am so proud to share a photo of our new professional development committee. It is such a pleasure being a member of this high functioning working group. The committee is co-led by our Assistant Superintendent Dr. Novak and middle school teacher Dorothy Dwyer. To the right is an image of all of the great committee members. Committee Members Include: Beverly Clark, Audra Kaplan, Joyce Bennett, Emma Blydenburgh, Dorothy Dwyer, Susan Wynn, Kristen Kinneen, Katie Novak, and Myself (not pictured). I had the great pleasure of two school visits this week. I spent Monday morning over at the high school. To the right are some fun images of what I was able to see. I spent most of my time in ELA, world language, and history classes. Lucky me! I also very much enjoyed my visit to Middle School South. It was wonderful to see students engaged in many different subject areas. The District Strategy Committee held its first meeting Monday evening. During this first session we were introduced to all members, defined the concept of district strategy, articulated committee tasks, developed a draft vision statement, and defined next steps. Committee members include:
In regards to supporting our district's leaders, I wanted to share a few images of our work this week. The first photo is of our Wednesday workshop on self-assessment. During this workshop, administrators used the data from a SMART goal instructional data meeting protocol we conducted to inform the student learning section of their needs assessments. The second is a picture of our school leadership team meeting this morning. Today, we had professional development in such areas as effective leadership capacities (from chapters 3 & 4 of our group book study of Primal Leadership), SMART goal training, and discussions on CPI training. Many thanks to the administrators who prepared presentation materials and actively participated in group discussions. In district news, Mr. Luke Callahan (our Director of Technology, Information, and Media Relations) shared the following press release recently titled "Novak to Keynote Annual MRA Conference". http://www.gdrsd.org/District/News/4125-Novak-to-Keynote-Annual-MRA-Conference.html In case you hadn't seen it, I thought I would share! I hope to see many of you Saturday evening (6:30 pm) September 27th at the Harlem Wizards vs. GDRHS Faculty Game at the HS. I look forward to putting on a jersey and MANAGING (note it does not say playing-as my playing would just be a sad sight). Thanks to one of our teachers, Jay Vilagomez, for all his work organizing this event. To the right is photo of me at Grotonfest after seeing a brave crusader sporting the Wizards sign. To kick off the event, the Wizards visited our schools today! Have a great weekend everyone! Dr. Kristan Rodriguez, Superintendent of Schools |
When we had an opening for a new Director of Technology, we took it as an opportunity to make an adjustment to the position. Our recent appointment, Mr. Luke Callahan is our Director of Technology, Information, and Media Relations. The last two parts of his title are not just simple add-ons. With an ever increasing need to refine and utilize data and information in our district, Mr. Callahan will lead these vital efforts. This includes oversight of such things as our district's student information management system, all student and staff state reports (EPIMS and SIMS), all educator evaluation data and assessment gathering, and all state assessment results. It provides us with a center to start to analyze rich data to help us define priorities, celebrate success, and pinpoint areas for growth. An equally important addition to the position is that of managing our district's media relations. During my entry visits, a number of people articulated that they were interested in seeing and hearing more about what was happening in our schools. I began to reflect on this and decided that we needed a media strategy. But, in the ever changing world, the media approach we may have utilized in the past may not cut it anymore. Many parents and community members are used to instant feeds. However, it would be silly to lose sight of the importance of equally important traditional means of outreach. We began to devise a strategy that could maintain forms of communication that people were accustomed to while supplementing it with some new ideas.
Thus, we will continue to send the school's quarterly publication The Barometer to homes in both towns. I am ever grateful for Karen Tuomi's leadership in this. We are also working to develop and refine our website (thanks to Phylis Maynard's hard work over the summer) so that it has pertinent pages and information, along with a user friendly platform. In addition, we will expand the existing use of local media to share good news and school information. Through the leadership of Mr. Callahan, we have developed a press release template and defined a commitment to send out bi-weekly press releases to all local media outlets. Our first press release went out this week and celebrated the High School's recent recognition in Newsweek: http://www.gdrsd.org/District/News/4105-Newsweek-Recognizes-GDRHS-Ranks-No-86.html. We have also started a partnership with a local online publication, where we will post school happenings in and around both towns. Currently, there are no local education television programs running in either Groton or Dunstable. In collaboration with a local television station, we will be producing two school department developed television shows. For the community outreach one, Mr. Callahan and I will co-host a show highlighting the wonderful things happening in our schools. This year's shows will revolve around a theme of global studies, and showcase all levels and schools. The first show will debut in a few months. Through the great leadership of Audra Kaplan (our high school technology integration specialist), we are collaborating with the art and music departments and involving students in the filming and editing of the shows. We still welcome the community to provide us with suggestions for the title of this show! In addition to all of the above, our district has begun to more widely utilize Twitter as a preferred social media platform. I welcome all parents and community members to follow me @Dr_Rodriguez21. I began to really think about the utility of electronic communication at the M.A.S.S. Summer Institute when I heard Nicco Mele speak about the potential role social media can play in a school system. For those of you who do not know of him, Nicco runs a successful digital consulting firm, is a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School, and the author of, The End of Big: How The Internet Makes David the New Goliath. The theory of his speech resonated with me but I felt like I lacked the tools. So, after I heard him speak, I approached him and asked if there was a toolkit for school leaders that may help us learn to successfully utilize digital and social media. To my great excitement, he said that while he was not aware of any, he would love to help create something. We are currently working with Nicco and a wonderfully helpful Harvard graduate assistant, Sarah, to develop this toolkit. Since July, they have interviewed myself, Mr. Callahan, and Dr. Novak about our capacity, needs, and desires. We look forward to continuing to work on this venture and take from it resources and supports to be able to utilize ever growing tools to communicate with our constituents. Our hope is that by defining our needs and offering our perspective, a media toolkit can be created to aid our district. With the expertise of Nicco and Sarah, hopefully this toolkit can help administrators across the globe.
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