The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Schools think global
Report spearheaded by superintendent sets lofty goals
“(Conner’s) vision is Middletown is going to have the best schools in Connecticut, the country, the world.” Donna Marino, community partnership coordinator
MIDDLETOWN — The head of city schools has embarked upon an innovative and invigorating three-year plan to remake the city’s educational framework to allow its graduates to compete in a global market.
Michael T. Conner, formerly the Norwalk Public Schools chief academic officer, joined Middletown’s school district last November. Over the course of about five weeks, he compiled scores of data and then took three weeks to analyze what he found.
The resulting 17-page report, Explore Middletown, is a synopsis of Conner’s first 120 days as superintendent. It represents the feedback of 1,358 community stakeholders who participated in structured activities focused on five strategic areas, Conner said.
“We’re going to look at how we can improve our internal structures and systems to advance student achievement. We’re going to underscore that with equity strategy, as well as innovative practices and design, to really make Middletown the most progressive educational system in the state.”
From January through March, Conner hosted 15 community conversations two to three nights a week at every school in the city. He spoke with an “astronomical” number of people, said Donna Marino, community partnership coordinator for the Board of Education.
Parents and others were asked what the schools do well, where do improvements and growth need to be made, what do they expect from a superintendent, and other essential questions.
During the process, the administration brought aboard two student interns, seniors at the University of Hartford, who took all the information and summarized it.
“It wasn’t just people coming out and talking and it didn’t go anywhere,” said Marino, who has spent 23 years in education.
“There is a leadership practice from several MIT professors: If you orientate your leadership style around opportunities to solve problems, then there’s a critical mass that want to enhance their capacity to address these problems in an effective manner,” Conner said.
“It’s a true coalition: an innovative, coherent process to develop a learning organization around its core priorities.”
Last week, a strategic team comprising between 25 and 30 parents, community members, teachers and school leadership got together in a productive session to mull over what might be missing from Conner’s plan.
Those folks broke into four smaller groups to brainstorm, Marino said. “He explained, ‘Strategic planning isn’t do this, this and this.’ It’s what are our dreams? What’s our vision?”
Conner not only sets lofty goals for himself, Marino said, he manages to easily inspire others to strive for innovation and meet his high expectations.
“His vision is Middletown is going to have the best schools in Connecticut, the country, the world. He really believes that. He wants to move us and he wants to make sure everybody is involved,” Marino said.
“How do we become global? We want to compete against other schools in Connecticut and across the country, but even internationally. This world is larger than just Middletown and Connecticut and even the U.S. How do we keep up with other countries?”
A lot of interesting information came from the report.
“When we look at one of the data metrics, 23 percent of our students in grade six through 12 don’t feel engaged. Moreover, 45 percent of them don’t feel like they belong,” Conner said.
To address those needs, he said, he wants to shift the learning paradigm to create “collaborative environments that invite deep learning for students” in concert with their teachers. In the process, Conner said, both will become “co-constructors,” rather than the teacher being the one to give “rote information” for their charges to memorize.
He learned young people are asking for this type of learning formula — one that is student-driven.
Conner is very eager to get everyone’s feedback. “I’m going to take it back, and start aligning the research and data to what similar critical themes are to the Explore Middletown report and develop goals and strategies based on that,” he said.
Conner’s leadership style comes from studying the Harvard University Public Education Leadership Project, and Columbia University Strategic Agility in Value Innovation.
Some of these same administrators and longtime educators were schooled in ways entirely different from today’s learning styles. Society, with technological advances constantly taking place, providing students with more and more tools to facilitate their learning process, means the district needs to adapt — as well as pioneer, Conner said.
“There’s innovation embedded within our economy, but one thing that hasn’t changed is education. You’re seeing this junction between education and our current society, because our society is in a 21-century economy — we’re still stuck in a 20thcentury model.”
Today’s students are being taught in a completely contradictory way to the world that they live in, he added. “Education has to embrace these new demands, this paradigm shift to the information age.”
The superintendent offers McDonald’s as an example.
“Twenty years ago, the big innovation was when they had two windows for the drive-thru. Now you don’t even have to leave your house and you can order McDonald’s and have it delivered to your house through Uber.
“Those are the economy shifts that we have to emulate in education,” Conner added.
“We haven’t seen that kind of shift in education in Connecticut. We’re one of the top states in the country for education, but we’re still within a model that’s not conducive to the real world that our students live in.”
He acknowledges this change in thinking will not be an easy one, however, Conner is in it for the long haul.
“This is not going to be a one-year fix — it’s going to be multiple years. This is going to be a heavy lift. Our three-year strategic plan is set for three years, but I infer that this will take roughly five to eight years to be able to achieve what we want.”
“He’s a really intelligent, well-read, informed individual. We’re really lucky to have him,” Marino said.
“I’ve always liked new things, but he’s pushing all of us that work in the district to go above and beyond. He inspires us to want to be better learners through our own profession.”
To read the report, visit middletownpublicschools.org.