The WW-P school district is looking for community volunteers to help judge projects associated with the eighth grade exit exams the district began last year as part of its continued strategic plan.
During the school board’s meeting on May 24, Superintendent Victoria Kniewel explained the district’s vision for carrying out its mission statement and that strategic plan, which was developed eight years ago and revisited two years ago.
In creating the plan, officials and community residents who participated in the process were “very careful that the district wasn’t just focused on academics,” but on the development of the student as a whole. While many of the district’s achievements reflect academic excellence — consistently high test scores are an example — students can demonstrate the ability to be lifelong learners and engage in 21st century concepts, as pointed out in the mission statement.
To demonstrate, the board heard from two students on May 24, who spoke about their own projects. The first, Aparna Rajesh, a third grade student at Wicoff Elementary, made a presentation about laughter, a project she has undertaken at school. The PowerPoint presentation described scientific research into laughter.
The second presentation was made by Mariae Kim, a senior at High School North, who described her involvement in the senior options program, which replaces a typical classroom elective. “I like the idea of an out of classroom setting,” she said, adding that she was able to apply her skills in a real workplace environment to gain insight about what she would like to do in the future.
Kim was placed into an event planning role at the Mercer County Bar Association, which holds networking events and provides continued education for over 1,200 attorneys in Mercer County. She went to work at the bar association Monday through Thursday during a scheduled time and worked on E-mail communications, newsletters, and online marketing initiatives. She also learned how to use Constant Contact, an online marketing program.
Kniewel said these projects allowed students to make choices and follow their interests and to apply their learning in different ways, part of what the strategic plan envisioned.
One of the goals, as demonstrated in the students’ presentations, was to get them to discuss what they are learning in front of different audiences.
The district also began conducting eighth grade exit exams in each of the district’s middle schools. Every eighth grader is given a social problem, and students are asked to come up with a project that utilizes and reviews everything they have learned from middle school and before.
The district is looking for anyone who is interested in judging the students’ solutions. Board president Hemant Marathe said the volunteers will also have “an opportunity to see what the kids are learning other than in the textbooks.”
“We don’t just want to concentrate on test scores,” he said. “This is a way of testing and finding out what the kids are learning. It would be great if a lot of the people in the community participated.”
He said community members do not need any special qualifications, just the ability to listen to students’ presentations.
Interested participants should be available on Friday, June 10, from approximately 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. If interested, contact Mark Wise, the supervisor for curriculum and instruction, at Mark.Wise@ww-p.org. He will follow up with a confirmation E-mail and assign community members to a particular school.
