Thank you for the phone interview with me on the A&E math program (The News, October 9). I’d like to disclaim one thing and clarify another. My personal support of the A&E program is based on my own children’s experiences and successes, who all want this excellent program to continue to benefit their younger fellow students, with improvement to make it even better.
As a school board member, I care about the social emotional health of our students dearly, and supported more “no homework days,” even though it might be more symbolic than effective given the feedback I got from the community members. A better approach is perhaps to increase the quality of the homework with more critical thinking and problem solving drills, rather than more quantity and labor intensity.
I believe it takes the entire village, including the teachers, parents, and students themselves to work together to address the social-emotional heath issues, and I believe they can be addressed without sacrificing the academic vigor of our excellent school district. With more positive encouragement from the parents and family members, and with stronger care and support from the teaching staffs, I hope our students will learn how to deal with pressure and handle failures through healthy and fair competition from early age, so that they become more resilient and better prepared once they leave the home nest and get into the future world where global competition is waiting for them. And by the way, if and when our students are more motivated to learn, they will be able to turn the external pressure into their internal drive and strength.
Lastly, I believe the district administration and the board of education have a common goal in mind — to make our district better all around. Having different perspectives due to diverse cultural backgrounds and varying angles is only normal and healthy. I’m very happy to see more community members involved in the district’s decision making process. I’m optimistic that together we will make our district better through open dialogue and discussion, and we will build a mutual understanding and common solutions that will serve the interest of all our community members.
Yingchao “YZ” Zhang
The author is a member of WW-P Board of Education from West Windsor
