I am inviting our community to what I think is the most important meeting of the year. On Monday, May 12, in the high school, we will be holding a Student Success Summit.

At this session, scheduled for 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., we will be working to define what we mean by a “successful student.” We know that we all want all our students to be successful. But defining what that means to us, as a community, will help shape a lot of decisions we make in the coming months.

The meeting is open to any interested residents, to parents, to our school district employees, and to older students. (We’re not setting an age limit…if a student wants to come and contribute, that’s all that counts.)

Our district’s administrators will be there, but not to lead the conversation. We’ve hired an outside facilitator to do that, so that we can concentrate on listening to what people who come have to say.

We’ll be talking about what part test scores, grades, extra-curricular activities and life outside of school should play in defining student success. We want to discuss how student success can be quantified and measured. We want to look at the challenge in teaching critical thinking skills and complex problem-solving skills. What should the role of vocational education be? It has long been an important part of district. How will the role of the teacher change in the coming years?

The role of technology will likely be a major focus. We know that dizzying changes in technology are a major force in shaping the way our world is changing. We need to talk about how our teachers will use technology, how our students will use it, and how we will teach technological skills themselves. But at the same time, we can’t lose sight of fundamental educational concepts and the core courses of our curriculum, in which a successful student by any definition must be proficient.

One way to summarize the question is this: For today’s younger student, what will high school look like?

In the past, students learned about the rest of the world in a social studies or history or geography class and it was easy to think about foreign places as far away and not really part of our lives here. Globalization has changed that. To use the phrase that has become popular, the world is flat now. India and China may be on the other side of the globe, but their daily lives and jobs and economies are now inextricably woven together with our own.

We have to provide an education that will send our students out into this new world prepared and confident.

There is an announcement on our district website (www.fairfieldcityschools.com) about the summit. It includes a video about how the changes in the world around us will challenge our students. There are some incredible statistics cited in the video. I encourage you to visit the website and watch it. And then, please join us at the high school on Monday at 6:30 p.m. for this very important discussion.

Published in the Fairfield Echo, May 8, 2008.