Story and Photos By Alex Del Rio |
Transforming The Future is a new project for NEISD. This week’s events were a way to update the education structure in a way that involves the help and feedback of the community. Parents, teachers and students were all gathered to listen about this transformation at meetings that kicked off at Roosevelt on Monday.
“We are in a changing world; we have to continue to advance,” Dr. Brian Gottardy, Superintendent of Schools, said.
Dr. Gottardy spoke about outsourcing and how jobs shift overseas. When this outsourcing occurs it takes a toll on the economy and citizens in the U.S. looking for jobs. It’s much more difficult for them because nations oversea have everything employers are looking for, a diploma and college degrees.
To combat this, teachers and parents need a new way to connect to the students and get them to learn. They realized that today’s generation can’t just sit in one place for so long and focus. Students are constantly moving, evolving and “are more hyper connected than ever before,” Dr. Gottardy explained.
Students are tired of the same sit in teaching, many want more interaction in their studies. Since they don’t get that interaction they end up not paying attention class which causes low grades, or even worse skipping. That’s where Transforming The Future comes along.
This step was to help schools, teachers, parents and guardians evolve to fit the students. So they were encouraged to answer questions like, “What are your highest hopes for students?”, “What skills do students need to thrive in current context?,” “What ideas do you have for systems change?”, and “How would we measure if the system were effective?”
The questions, power-points, and commentary were given to help get an idea of how the parents felt about this evolution, in hopes that this Transforming The Future will become the best thing for NEISD and their students.
