This past week, we launched ThoughtExchange in order to gain insight and to guide our strategic planning efforts. So far, the response has been great. Many of our community members and families have participated and have provided some very interesting feedback as to how we can make our communications effort even better. If you haven’t yet participated, I would encourage you to visit the site and give your opinions. And, if you have already participated, you can go back to the site to see what others have contributed. In a few weeks, we’ll do a thorough analysis as to what are the topics of greatest interest to the community and use this information to guide our strategic planning in the best interest of educating our students.
We started our community discussion with Focus Area C which addresses our ability to communicate and engage with our families. This seemed like the logical place to start. So, we asked the question, “what are the strengths and areas that we can improve upon in our district’s communication and community engagement efforts?” I read though many thoughtful responses that will be helpful to set goals and objectives to improve communications. To this end, we intend to incorporate all feedback into the planning process. However, during my initial screening of responses, one response in particular caught my attention immediately: “It would be nice for parents to have more access to curriculum info, what is expected from students…Kids do better academically when families are involved.” I absolutely agree with this and this aligns nicely with my working definition of family engagement which is that, “every parent should understand what their child is expected to know and be able to do by the end of the grade in which their child is enrolled.”
Along those lines, the best way to be engaged is by reviewing the curriculum maps for SOCSD. Dr. Brian Culot, our Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction and the instructional coaches have made these curriculum maps accessible to all families as a resource. Please click on the link below if you would like to have a better understanding of the work that our students are doing at each grade level:
We will be doing a series of ThoughtExchanges with the community in the coming weeks in the other strategic focus areas. ThoughtExchange is a great way for us to “open a window of understanding” as to what truly matters to the community and, of equal importance, is our ability to listen to each other. Together we can!
