Possibilities: the what ifs of the next five years…

Good morning and welcome back to the 2011-2012 school year. City Manager Jay Ash, Council President Marilyn Vega-Torres, School Committee Vice-Chairman Rosemarie Carlisle, School Committee representative Morrie Siegal, Chelsea Teachers' Union President Mary Ferriter, staff and invited guests. I am honored and humbled to stand here this morning and serve the students, families, community, and most especially, today of all days, I am honored to serve the staff of the Chelsea Public Schools.

I welcome you back to the year of purpose and possibilities - the year of what ifs. I welcome you back to the school year where our daily practice is the ripple of the imagined possibilities for our students - our families - our community - and our staff. - I welcome you back to a school district where the what ifs, the possibilities, become realities.

Ladies and gentlemen, as many of you know, my roots run deep in Chelsea. My love and passion for our profession goes even deeper. I am a teacher first-in habit, heart, and soul. Even though I serve as an administrator, I never stop teaching. I am simply teaching a different what and how. You have heard me repeat many times my belief that next to parenting, teaching is the most difficult job. I have never stopped being inspired and in awe of the hard work you, my colleagues do, day-in-and-day-out.

I am the story of a Chelsea kid who imagined the possibilities. I am just one of many what if stories of possibility that happen in education.

I grew up in Chelsea. I graduated from Chelsea High School and - I was awarded the Chelsea Teachers' Union academic scholarship on graduation night. I always wanted to be a teacher. If you look at my high school yearbook, "to be a history teacher" is clearly stated next to my picture. Somewhere along the line Chelsea teachers inspired me to want to be one of them. I understood early on that education was the great equalizer and I witnessed how Chelsea teachers opened the doors of opportunity for students. They showed me the nobility of the profession, and the great joy--both given and received when knowledge is shared and futures are planned. I consciously and deliberately made the decision to return to Chelsea to teach. I completed my student teaching and then taught at Chelsea High School. Nine years later I added a license to teach at the elementary level. I taught at the old Mary C. Burke School and the Kelly Elementary School- room 312. I helped open the Clark Avenue Middle School first serving as assistant principal and then principal. The last few years I have served as assistant and then deputy superintendent. - I ask all of us to think of our own what if story and then to think about the what if stories sitting in front of us in our classrooms. Are there future Chelsea teachers in our schools? Are there future City Managers, Police Chiefs, district administrators, principals of the Early Learning Center, Hooks School, or Chelsea High School sitting in front of us? We attended Chelsea schools and chose to return to serve. One of my goals throughout the next few years is to inspire our young people to enter the education profession. With your help, I want to change the perception and reputation of teaching and motivate the next generation of Chelsea teachers to come from Chelsea schools. I want our young people to experience the joy of giving back to our community.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Thomas Kingston and to the School Committee who offered me a contract in December of last year. By signing early with an effective date of July 1st , I was able to put into place a transition plan where I listened and learned from both internal and external stakeholders in our school system: students, current and past; families, those still with us and those who have chosen to enroll their children in a charter school; staff in all schools; union leadership; leaders in our state and local government; community based organizations; and higher education partners here in our city.

With the help of the Community Leadership Team, we administered surveys, conducted focus groups, and held one-on-one interviews. We learned so much about ourselves from the conversations and from the survey results. We listened and learned from you - where you believe we are as a school system, where we need to be, and how we should seek to get there. We sought to include all as a vital resource and a guiding voice as together we write the next chapter of Chelsea Public Schools.

From the listening and learning we used the collective community to identify and articulate our school system's five-year path. I want to thank members of the Community Leadership Team, District Leadership Team, and School Committee who helped draft the final version of our school system's Vision, Mission, Values, and Indicators of Success which you have before you.

The Vision for Chelsea schools pulls us toward our future. It is where we want to be five-years hence. From your feedback a vision emerged of a model school system that shows all others how to work with and leverage on behalf of our students our relationships with our families and our community based organizations such as Roca, Centro Latino, Collaborative, and Jordan Boys and Girls Club, to name but a few. These relationships help to ensure that our students graduate from our high school-college and career ready. In your vision you wanted to commit to reflective practice. Reflective practice is defined by the collaboration and work we engage in together and the work we do within our Professional Learning Communities. It is the deep and honest reflection and trust building among colleagues that support and strengthen our desire to grow and constantly improve as professionals. It is the reflection and collaboration that challenges us to ensure ALL our students achieve at high levels and think critically for the 21st Century. That is the vision you, the staff and community have set forth for us to strive to achieve.

If the vision pulls us toward the future then the Mission is the driver, the mantra for the daily work. And very succinctly our mission is student success. It is our job and we will do whatever it takes. What this says is that each of us matter in the district's ability to complete the mission. The work that we do- our individual and collective work- matters in student success; and, how we do our work matters. The day-in and day-out fidelity and dedication we bring to our practice matters. We each have a role within our system and without any one of us the system does not work smoothly, coherently. So let me stop and say thank you, to all who make the school system work: our custodians, food service workers, crossing guards, paraprofessionals, school clerks, security, school resource officers, nurses, librarians, social workers, guidance counselors, teachers, administrators, school department business office, and Parent Information Center. Let me say thank you to our staff at Central Office: Claudia Acevedo Ziegler, Mary Cosco, Sandra Porrazzo, and Ingrid Colon. And, deep gratitude goes out to my leadership team at Central Office: Tina Sullivan, Gerry McCue, Linda Breau, and Dave Weinberg. All of you, your work is important, your work matters, and we thank you.

Our values on the sheet in front of you are our collective commitments, our core beliefs upon which we stand as educators. We believe ALL children can learn, that the life and mind of each student is precious, that results matter more than intentions and as the adults it is our job to help children achieve academic success and high aspirations. We believe our diversity is our richness-and a resource. The Indicators of Success are the last component of the five-year plan in front of you. It is in the measurement of these ten metrics that we will know if we are making progress toward fulfilling our vision.

What if we are successful? What will we look like? If we are successful then in five years we will have awakened the sense of curiosity in our students; as David Gergen puts it, "a sense of awe." Our students will be ready to compete in this changing world. They will be college and career ready as independent learners in the 21st Century. We will be the school district all others look to emulate. We will have fulfilled our vision.

We have already begun the deep transformational work to meet these challenges on behalf of our students. Some of the work we have voluntarily begun ourselves because we know it is the right thing to do. Chelsea High School you will be entering Year-2 Redesign. The hard work each and every one of you committed to this last year is paying off. Your dropout rate has decreased over the last three years from 10.1 to 9.3, to 6.5. If we continue on this trajectory we are projecting a 4 percent dropout rate this year. And, although the 2011 MCAS scores are still embargoed, I will allude to the fact that Chelsea High School, you will have much to celebrate in the coming weeks.

And you are not alone, exciting initiatives-good things-are happening throughout the district. Wright Science and Technology Academy you are entering Year-1 Redesign and along with the Berkowitz Elementary School you will be embedding technology into daily instructional practices and student learning. Browne Middle School you have successfully been renewed for another year of Expanded Learning Time and you plan to take on a stronger and more collaborative observation and feedback protocol. Clark Avenue School, you plan to build your performing arts program this year as a feeder program to Chelsea High School's drama department and you also plan to deepen Reading Workshop as your schoolwide intervention. Sokolowski you have chosen to dive into the use of Instructional Rounds modeled after the medical rounds method of collaborative learning; while the Kelly School will embrace a culture of reflective practice as part of the daily cycle of teaching and learning. Increased outreach to all stakeholders and working on strengthening communication among and between professional learning teams is where the Hooks School will focus. And Early Learning Center you are doing schoolwide Writing Workshop and refining your Professional Learning Team implementation based on the work you completed with American Federation of Teachers this summer. The energy and excitement is all around us!

Colleagues, across the school district we recognize that if we do not look honestly and deeply at what is going on in the classroom, the instructional core, then we are not growing as professionals. Therefore the District Leadership Team has agreed that our rally cry this year is around the centrality of the classroom; the instructional core where teacher, student, and content meet. But we recognize that to look at and improve our instructional core, the work has to be done collaboratively. We know we need to have deep reflective conversations with each other about practice and student learning. In a nutshell, if students are not learning then as educators we have incomplete practice. Assistant Superintendent Dave Weinberg will be working with school level Professional Learning Communities in the coming year. Although our student improvement scores in the aggregate continue to show steady improvement in ELA and Math, our students with disabilities and students who are limited English proficient still struggle and the achievement gap persists. Assistant Superintendent Linda Breau is charged with working with teachers and administrators to examine practice and student learning outcomes in these areas.

In addition to the initiatives school teams and district teams have identified for the coming year, there are also external mandates from MA DESE we will have to implement. At Chelsea High School we will pilot the new teacher evaluation system. We will also begin our three-year curriculum alignment work to the Common Core Standards. I want to say thank you to the 20-plus members of the Teacher Appraisal Working Group who worked tirelessly this year to draft the Teacher Evaluation tool, professional development training plan, and implementation timeline. As well I would like to thank the 30-plus members of the District Curriculum and Instruction Team for the alignment plan and unit development.

From our surveys and conversations we also discovered that we need to advertise our schools. We need to talk about our successes and market all that our schools have to offer. We exist as a school system in an era of competition. We no longer are entitled to our students simply because they reside in our city. Families have choice and charter schools are the frequent choice. While we as educators know and understand the accomplishments and achievements of our students and schools, the message has not reached our families. So, this summer thanks to the collaboration with Andy Moore, Erika Shorey, and Gabrielle Ramos our intern from Education Pioneers, we worked on a three-year branding, marketing, and communication plan. You have before you the Chelsea Public Schools logo and tagline.

Turning to the logo for a moment, the community felt that the bridge needed to be incorporated as the physical representation of who we are as a city. The red and black colors of the logo represent looking back and valuing our Chelsea history and tradition. The three red lines running under the bridge represent the many pathways and opportunities we provide our students. The star at the end of the bridge symbolizes hope, aspirations, and goals. Please note, there are nine points on the star to represent our nine schools.

Other components of the marketing campaign include a "Did you know that…" campaign going up around the city, so look for the posters and postcards bragging about our schools! Please check out our chelseaschools.com website; this will be our central repository for current information and the superintendent's updates. We will also be in the Chelsea Record, Chelsea Community Cable TV, and coming soon Facebook. Oh, and lest I forget, I am tweeting! Please follow me at CPS_Chelsea.

As educators, we are committed to practicing what we preach. If we want our students to learn about the global economy and compete in a global world then we need to learn about the world too--and traveling is the best way to do that! Our collaboration with Education First has resulted in a seven-year educator professional development international travel plan. Building upon the success of last year's professional development in Costa Rica, we will take 40 educators to China in April 2012. The six years following will see Chelsea educators traveling to: Central Europe-Berlin, Prague, and Munich 2013; Spain 2014; Peru 2015; Costa Rica 2016; India 2017; and Ghana 2018. Since we are only able to take 40 educators per year, we worked with Chelsea Teachers' Union leadership on a fair and transparent application and eligibility process.

I want to thank Mary Ferriter, President of Chelsea Teachers' Union for her feedback, support, and collaboration during these transition months. Our collaboration this summer resulted in AFT Center for School Improvement coming to Chelsea and working with 135 Chelsea teachers and administrators to foster high-functioning school improvement teams who work together in our Professional Learning Communities. I look forward to our collaboration on many initiatives in the coming months. Has anyone noted that the school district is being run by two Marys?

So, let's return then to what ifs, the possibilities. I like the way Heifitz, Grashow, and Linksy talk about possibilities in their most recent book on adaptive leadership: "Not day-dreaming, wishful-thinking possibility, but rather a roll-up-your-sleeves, optimistic, realistic, courage-generating, and make-significant-progress kind of possibility ." That is us, that is Chelsea Public Schools in this time and place in education.

The next chapter of Chelsea Pubic Schools will not be easy to write. We have very real challenges in front of us. But what if the culture of our daily work includes collaboration, conversations, and reflection? What would the possibilities be for our practice and for student learning? What if the next generation of Chelsea leaders in education and government come from Chelsea? Imagine the possibilities, imagine the ripples when the what ifs become reality.

I wish you all the best this school year. I ask you to join me and constantly reflect and challenge yourself, and each other to live in the world of what ifs. And together let's turn what ifs into reality, into student achievement, and into student success for each and every Chelsea student.

Thank you.

Mary M. Bourque
Superintendent
Chelsea Public Schools
Opening Day Speech
August 30, 2011

i,ii, Heifetz, Grashow, and Linksy (2009); Cambridge Leadership Associates. Pp. 1.