March 29, 2018 • 52 mins
When a rural town's only high school is in jeopardy, the community comes together to change it in some very radical ways. And then the school, in turn, changes the community.
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www.ouramericanapodcast.com / www.bothand.fyi
For an ad-free experience or to support the show: www.patreon.com/studiobothand
Written, edited, and produced by Josh Hallmark
Music by Jon Luc Hefferman, Kai Engel, Mike Durek, Squire Tuck, Broke for Free, David Hilowitz, and Lee Rosevere / Courtesy of Free Music Archive
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
If we're going to survive, ithas to be driven by the real community
thought process. And the key isyou have to decide what is the character
of your little community there, andare you willing to be informed, involved
and engaged in the processes of thatcommunity, and are you doing anything for
(00:23):
the youth and the younger people inthe community to have them being actively involved
in those process because that's the futureof your community. This is an Our
Americana Podcast network production sponsored by Podbean. Find out more about the podcast,
how you can support this listener fundedpodcast, listen to other podcasts on the
(00:47):
network, or find out where youcan catch me on tour. Go to
www Dot Our Americana podcast dot com. And before we start the show,
here's a quick word from this week'ssponsor. Sir. There's a brand new
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(01:11):
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dot net. In order to succeedas a whole, we have to bridge
(01:44):
the gaps between individuals. That requireslarge amounts of faith, faith in people
whose ideas are different than your own. Sometimes we have to make radical changes
in order to see change. That'swhat happened in Pittsfield, New Hampshire,
(02:05):
when the town's only middle and highschool was ranked the third worst in the
state. It was suffering from lowtest scores, behavioral problems, attendance issues.
The community, the school district,even the students knew that something needed
(02:28):
to change, but they didn't knowwhere to start until people started looking within
and a revolution in local education beganto occur. People had a negative view
(02:53):
of the schools because the teen reportsof the state testing where school district was
relatively well achieving. What they didn'tsee were some of the data that I
had access to. My name isJohn Freeman. I'm the Superintendent of Schools
for the Pittsfield, New Hampshire SchoolDistrict. One of the things I did,
because it was obvious to me thatsignificant change was in order, because
(03:15):
I went out to community groups,our select board and budget committee and rotary
club and PTO and groups like thatwith new data that they hadn't seen.
Data that was as as I mentioneddropout data and attendance day, but also
student aspirations. We had done somesurveys around student aspirations back at that time
(03:36):
and found that student aspirations were relativelylow, college applications and admissions were relatively
low. And so my message essentiallyto community members and community groups was,
you know you think it's not good, well it's even worse than you think
it is. Bringing that information tothem being I think being honest and open
about the status of school, Ifeel contributed to folks willingness in and take
(04:00):
some responsibility for their school. Andso John, along with other members of
the school district, began hosting weeklySaturday forums where the community could come together
and discuss how to implement changes thatworked for everyone. One of the things
that came out of our work toengage the community in designing emission and vision
(04:25):
statements was that the folks in Pitchafiewho came out and we held it,
we did that. The process bywhich we did that was a series of
Saturday morning forums through the winter thatyear, and people essentially told us they
wanted their kids to be known itwas a small school, and wanted their
kids deficits to be addressed, andthey wanted their kids strengths to be encouraged.
(04:45):
And they wanted their kids in theend to graduate from high school with
a realistic but the ambitious plan forthe next phase of their lives. And
so those were the marching orders aswe began to redesign the high school the
middle high school primarily about a yearafter that, I think it was the
second year the federal government provided whatthey called school improvement grants to the states,
(05:09):
and the states turned around and providedopportunities for school improvement grants for the
district. And at that time theStates came out with a ranking of school
districts and the Pittsfield Middle School andPittsfield High School were among the five lowles
achieving schools and their categories in thestate, and so that titled us then
(05:29):
to apply for a significant school improvementgrant, which we did and was important
in really getting us going in improvingthe academics, improving outcomes for students,
as well as considering some redesign fora more personalized environment that we heard our
community asking for so, through yourSaturday forums and some of these conversations,
what changes in programs did you endup deciding to implement to make the necessary
(05:55):
changes. A couple of the firstthings we did before we did some significant
grant money, was we realized thatthe students had that tremendous leadership potential,
that there was a student voice whathad really been minimized in the school.
And so, in a continuance toinvolve the community, John in the school
(06:15):
district did something so completely obvious andnatural that was somehow totally radical. One
of the first structures that we putin place was a development of what we
call our Site Council and our Sitecouncil as a governing body in the school,
and we wanted to involve students inthe decision making process in school.
(06:39):
So everything that for example, thedecisions that policy decisions that are made by
the principal's office are typically laid outin a student handbook or family handbook,
and we gave all of that overto the Site Council and the Site council.
And we had quite a long debateabout the makeup of the Site council,
but the makeup of the site councilincludes and includes to this day NK
(07:00):
members, ten of whom are studentsselected by their peers, six of whom
are faculty and staff members, andthree of whom are community members. So
students hold the majority vote on oursite council. And that was a very
very significant statement about student voice andstudent leadership and confidence in our students that
didn't exist in particil before that.Another thing we did was change our high
(07:21):
school schedule significantly. And folks whoare involved in high schools for any length
of times will tell you that thehigh school schedule is it's really a controlling
factors that's difficult to change. Butwe were successful in changing our high school
schedule and our and our faculty sothat we developed our small school into four
different teaching teams, so that teachingteams would be able to meet together regularly.
(07:46):
Teachers who had common concerns and commoninterests of a common set of students
would meet together regularly. We werethen shifted the schedule so that we could
allow those groups to meet every day, which was really important to us.
And we also instituted another schedule changecalled late Start Wednesday, which provided an
(08:07):
hour and every Wednesday morning before ourmiddle student school students and high school students
came in for instruction. Our schoolstudents came in and participated in enrichment activities,
but that hour and a half everyWednesday gave us professional development time for
our teachers to receive training, toconduct study groups, to do their own
(08:30):
research, and to improve curriculum,and time really became one of the major
factors in the school turnaround, webelieve. So those were a couple of
the early early shifts that we thatwe made that continues to this day.
Do you think giving the students thishigh level of autonomy and an accountability over
their own autonomy encourage them to makemore responsible decisions for the most part,
(08:54):
yes, but not one hundred percent. So that we had that question asked
of us. So we would goout and talk to folks and other other
school districts and other communities about this, and we had one gentleman asked us
one time, well, what ifthe students all wanted to put obscenities on
t shirts and we have them toschool? You think that would be okay?
And we said, well, wedon't, but our kids wouldn't want
to do that. Most of us, and we have responsibility, we live
(09:18):
up to expectations, and we foundthat to be one hundred percent true really
of our student leadership, might haveto say, and fairly true of all
students. We also have found overtime, and this is one thing which
we didn't calculate at the beginning,that some students did not have the skills
or their dispositions or their perspective tomake the best decisions for themselves. And
(09:41):
so that is requiring some program shiftson our part and some additional supports put
in for student development in those skillareas. So I think for the most
part the answer is yes. Butbut you know, as in most other
most other aspects of skill development,we had kids who are had some deficits,
and we're working to strengthen the mostdeficits. But if i'd really fascinating
(10:03):
and incredibly timely, as if youzoom out nationally, you see a movement,
especially with a younger generation, toreally become more involved in politics and
governance and government and using their voicesand ways we haven't really seen in a
while. And I almost feel likegiving your students this level of autonomy and
(10:26):
encouraging them to participate in the governingof the school is helping that movement and
creating people who feel like they actuallydo have a voice in politics and autonomy
in the national government. I couldn'tagree with you more. One of the
things that I see as important.So let me make a distinction between our
(10:48):
schools goals, our communities goals anddesires, and some personal and hancilary goals
and desires that I have. Sofor myself, I look around at the
low rate of the engagement in thesesmall towns in New Hampshire. So you
know the elections today is an electionday and so it's going to be a
very low voter turnout. We knowwe have positions in these small towns,
(11:09):
important positions select board, school boardwhere there are very few candidates, sometimes
there are no options, and Ifelt, I feel personally that it would
be important to help students really understandwhat it's like to be in those roles,
what it's like to advocate, whatit's like to push back against something
that they don't believe in. Ithink that's important for society and I think
(11:30):
that's important for our community. Iagree with you that it really is timely
in terms of the big picture andI'll give you give you an example of
one of the ways they handled that. The students one year said they were
going to redo the entire school handbookand school where everyone was happy. Of
course, as a former principal,that was an extremely tedious job that I
(11:50):
did, that I engaged in everysummer, and so to have the students
be really interested in this was very, very exciting, and so they came
and in our school district is notuncommon, all handbooks have to be approved
by the school board, and sothey brought their revised handbook to the school
board, and the school board wasvery excited, very excited about the process,
but voted against adoption of the handbook. And the reason they voted against
(12:15):
the adoption of handbook was because ofone rule change that the students wanted to
make, and that would be therule that previously forbid students from wearing hats
in school, and that was theone issue that was a problem for enough
of the board members. It wasa split vote. I think it was
a two to three vote in approval, maybe a four to one one to
(12:35):
four. And so the students listened, listened to the objections, and then
came back to the next meeting witha strong argument they've done some research on
clothing customs and the significant of differentclothing items and logos and that sort of
thing. And the next meeting,the board flipped and voted in favor of
(12:56):
what the students had had sought.I think that's a lesson. Yeah,
that's fantastic. I have to wonder, in an environment that is so built
around encouragement, do you think thatthat vote change was based on their argument
or based on their tenacity and research? Oh no, no, I had
(13:16):
a school for the school were absolutelybased on the argument, and it wasn't.
It wasn't a unanimous vote to accepttheir new proposal was a four one
vote. The one gentleman who votedagainst it said he could never approve of
that because it just flew in theface of everything he learned growing up,
everything he'd known as a as amarine. But the others they acknowledged that
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they hadn't hadn't thought that deeply aboutit. They appreciated the students bringing forward
these arguments and it changed their mindon the issue because of the additional information.
So what the students did was,I mean, if another way they
sort of put out put out aproposal, the proposal was rejected, they
learned about it, they learned theobjections that these visuals had to it,
(14:00):
and they came back to counter specificallythose objections people had, and then carried
the day. I hesitate to callit a microcosm of our current political system,
because I actually think that they aredoing a far better job of having
conversations and voting based on research andpractices. And yeah, yeah, it's
(14:22):
just it's amazing, and I thinkwhat you're doing is not only fantastic for
the students, but in long termwill be fantastic for local government and hopefully
beyond the scope of local Yeah,I think it's great, And you know,
I hesitate to call it a microcosm. Also, Yeah, there are
those who sort of like to workon a large stage and like to work
(14:43):
on large policy issues, and Iadmire those folks. I'm not one of
them. I know most of usaren't at that level. But if we
can work in our own local levelto make the changes that makes sense to
us, that are good for goodfor people, that I think we need
a whole lot more people doing thatsort of thing than we do. By
frankly, at the national level tobeyond the big stage. So another committee
(15:03):
that you created and the change youimplemented was the Justice Committee and restorative Justice.
Can you tell me about that.Yes, well, you know,
we developed this mission vision and itwas very, very inclusive and really sought
to lay the groundwork for every everythingwe do, and we really use those
statements, our value statements as touchstone. And we didn't have the Justice Committee
(15:28):
or any reform to our student disciplineprogram in mind when we when we put
together our long term plan for theSchool of Development. But the issue came
up at a meeting and people said, well, you know, this really
isn't working. You know, teacherswere unhappy about its. Students. Students
say it doesn't work, Teachers saythe system is flawed, and so so
we said, well, let's takea look at actually what the system is.
(15:50):
And so we engage folks, teacher, students, support staff, developing
a process map of what happens ina disciplinary situation from the beginning of the
process, from when a student misbehaves, assuming that's at the ending of the
process, to the ends of theconclusion whatever resolution, And that caused us
(16:11):
to begin to look at alternatives tothe traditional discipline system. And so we
and when I say we, Iuse that And it brought a sense because
I had had nothing to do withit. You know, a group of
students and a group of teachers gottogether and they were really interested in pursuing
this. They learned about restorative justice, they learned about the failings, they
(16:32):
knew about the failings of the currentsystem. They looked at data from from
our system, They did surveys,they did climate surveys in our school,
and then learned about restorative justice fromfolks external to the school, and then
went out and sought professional development.They sought some folks at a local university,
local college took him in and providethem with some learning so they could
(16:52):
learn more about it. So studentsand faculty members together did this research and
eventually developed a scheme of restorative justicewhere you know, certain certain offenses would
be would be allowed to be settledthrough process of mediation. And they brought
this to a proposal to the sitecouncil. Site council approved it, and
(17:14):
the school board approved it. Andif they went and we do have a
justice committee now that's active in mediatingparticularly disputes student on student disputes, but
also open to mediating student and adultdisputes as well. That's fantastic because I
think, you know, and Igraduated twenty years ago, but you know,
when I was growing up, therewas a clear inequity which I think
(17:37):
sometimes can be important, but sometimescan be really damaging in adults perspectives and
children's perspectives. And we're taught thatadults are always right, and I think
by giving them a voice, ingiving them mediation beyond the scope of student
and student interpersonal conflict to student andteacher interpersonal conflict is just amazing. Yeah.
(18:02):
We have a process that begins withwhat we call our community Concern Form.
So when somebody behaves in a mannerthat's disrespectful in some way to a
student or adult, that person oreven if you're not that person, if
you're that person's parent or that person'sbest friend, you can complete a community
Concern form and that concern would bebrought through the process, so that unlike
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the time when you went to school, and even further along back then,
when I went to school, Imean, it was just there was just
nothing you could do if if ateacher or another adult was was nasty or
mean or unfair or whatever negative worldyou want to say to a student,
And we saw it, We sawit pretty regularly, right, But there
was no there was no way toremedy that, or at least seek a
(18:47):
remedy, and we have a wayto do that. How have teachers responded
to this because I imagine that youknow, there is a level of encouraging
student participation and equity, but there'salso a level of maybe feeling like it's
insubordinate. Yeah, well I haven't. You haven't heard that word or words
like that. I mean, thereare certainly among our faculties some folks who
(19:10):
are relatively old school and you know, want to you know, an eye
for an eye and tooth for atooth sort of folks. But you know,
those folks are not the majority rightnow. And those folks, and
you know, it was to bea part of our community need to live
with the systems we have. Andthat's just part of the deal of working
with working in Pittsfield. Because weare a relatively low paying school district and
(19:30):
I'm in our area, we havea high amount of turnover of faculty,
and so we have an unusual numberof young folks who are more progressive,
buying large and liberal in their thinkingabout these sorts of relationships than some of
the some of the old folks.Folks were like my age or not quite
my age. And so we foundthat it is largely and broadly accepted.
(19:53):
It hasn't the system hasn't been challenged. It's been approved by the site council.
And I would think that despite whatreas ovations individuals may have, if
they attempted and brought together or broughttogether put together a proposal to overturn it
and return to the eye for aneye two for two sort of m that
it would be rejected pretty quickly.The culture has changed. The culture is
(20:15):
changed. People have different expectations now, you know, that's the real change.
It's the culture change. The teachersand students now have different expectations about
what school is. And that's that'sthe real important change. That's the real
fundamental change that we've been able tomake. So the school shifted its priorities
to student centered learning. When youput the student in the driver's seat of
(20:38):
their education, you have to alsopersonalize that learning from now and to do
that, you have to build relationshipswith the students so the school developed an
advisory program where every student would havea connection with an adult, and I
think that really started to help thatpersonalization piece. You get to know the
(21:00):
students career goals and their learning strengthsand learning styles, and you get to
help sort of guide them through theireducation, so that idea of personalization becomes
inherent then in the school, andthen you get to help the student find
a learning style that works. Youknow, do they want to do some
(21:21):
online classes, do they want todo an internship? You know, what
other things can you do to engagethem in their learning process. This is
Jenny Wellington, a teacher at PittsfieldMiddle High and the advisor for the school's
Justice Committee. So I've been teachingthat for seven years and one of the
first things that I noticed, Ithink that it was different from any of
the other public schools that I taughtin, is how everybody knew everybody because
(21:48):
it's such a small school where seventhrough twelve we have about two hundred fifty
students are graduating. Classes are betweentwenty and thirty and they fit on the
stage and the gym, which isalso our auditorium, you know, And
I've just never been part of atown not even where I'm from originally from
Pennsylvania. I've just never been ina town that was just that small.
(22:08):
In the course of seven years,I've taught whole families of siblings, and
you know, I've gotten to knowmany of the families there just because again
because it is so small. There'sa nice feeling about that. I think
one of the other nice things aboutteaching there is because I teach eleven and
(22:30):
twelfth grade, I have the studentsfor two years, so I really get
to know them as learners. Socoming into their senior year, I just
get to go, all right,let's pick up where we left off and
get started, and you know,we can just get into work and we
can do some really really cool thingsbecause of that. How do you think
this is empowering them to move forwardwith their education and make decisions for themselves
(22:55):
in their future. You know,as an example, I look back,
and I was a smart kid.I did really well on tests, I
did really well on projects, butI wasn't a homework kid because I didn't
have a lot of accountability at home. So while I was getting a's across
the board, I was not doingmy homework and getting seasoned classes that I
had developed full competency for. AndI feel like a lot of that is
(23:18):
because it wasn't student centered. Weweren't enabling kids to make decisions that we're
going to work for their way oflearning. Yeah, that kind of is
the whole point. And you saidcompetency, And that's another piece of this
learning, which is its competency basedlearning, which means that it probably would
(23:41):
have worked really well for you asa student because you could have demonstrated competency
and been able to move on andnot have to do all the homework.
Right. Because so in a andthis gets sort of complicated with a new
educational theory. But in a traditionalsystem, right, you get graded,
maybe you do some extra credit,maybe you fail a test. Everything all
(24:03):
gets averaged together, and at theend of the year you have some grade
that says this is how you didin the course, right, Yeah,
So sometimes that's sometimes with that system, there's a penalty if you don't do
your homework, even if you geta hundred on the test. Right.
So competency based education basically says thisis what you need to know and be
(24:26):
able to do by the end ofmy course, and there's a lot of
different ways that you can demonstrate thatto some degree, and we can work
with you to find a way thatmaybe works best for you. So it
also says, you know, thepractice of it doesn't mean as much,
although it's important, it doesn't meanas much as demonstrating it continuously and demonstrating
(24:48):
it with proficiency. So you cantry as much as you want, and
you can keep practicing until you getit right, as opposed to maybe you
get a sixty five and that justgets averaged to another test you take.
You this at the end of theyear, you go, oh, you
are proficient, and here is whatlevel your proficient as this has to be
like part of student centered learning andthat allows us to personalize it a little
(25:11):
bit. So as an English teacher, obviously I have students that don't like
to write or read right, butI have a competency in reading that says
they need to demonstrate the ability toanalyze literature. So you can do that
by talking about the literature that you'veread, or you can do that by
writing about the literature that you've read. You know, like, there's no
(25:32):
one way to do that. SoI have a lot of students that are
great at writing literary analysis, andmaybe they choose that way. And then
I have another other students that muchprefer to have a discussion, and maybe
they choose that way to prove thatthey can analyze it. And that allows
a little bit of flexibility for studentsin their learning styles. I think like
probably the most obvious positive impact fromthis is that you're creating confidence in kids
(25:56):
who maybe lacked confidence in their learningabilities prior to this. Yes, and
this empowers them because they can feelsuccessful at certain competencies while they are working
to strengthen other competencies. So Ican hand an essay back to a student
and go, you know, youmade that point solid, you use some
great evidence. We really just gotto work on your grammar. And you
(26:18):
know there's those are two different competencies. So they feel like, great,
I'm successful in this one and nowI just really have to work on this
other one. And that empowers themin their learning. It also empowers them
to decide how they might want topresent their their understanding to you, because
they can choose in some cases,you know, I'd like to give a
presentation, or I'd like to writean essay or I'd like to write a
(26:40):
short story or you know, doa play or whatever it is. And
you know, all of this isto say that I think like we've really
gotten away from the industrialization of education, Like our world is no longer that
kind of factory model, and people, learners and workers need to be a
little more creative and motivated intrinsically todo things. And that's what this kind
(27:02):
of education I think. Does itreally fosters intrinsic learning as opposed to compliance
and regurgitation. I think what's somagical about it is for me, and
I'm not a teacher, but myexperience with school is that there's a lot
of stereotyping that takes place, Likethere's good students and bad students, and
there's not of middle ground. You'reone or the other. And this model
(27:26):
seems to really destroy that stereotyping.Yeah, you know, it recognizes different
levels of competency, not oh,you got a seventy five in English so
you're okay, and you got aninety in biology so you're great. And
besides that, what are those gradesyou can tell us? Like, I
don't even know what those grades mean. You know, they don't tell me
(27:47):
that you know this stuff like they'rejust random numbers that actually penalize you in
the beginning of the year for notknowing something that you may get by the
end of the year. And that'skind of the whole point that learning is
a progression and that within learning youshould be able to fail and not feel
like now you have to dig yourselfout of some numerical whole, you know.
And I taught before I went toPittsfield, but coming to Pittsfield,
(28:11):
the grant that they got through theNellima Education Foundation really helped bring in experts
that taught me there and that reallyrefrain refrained the way I look at education
and teaching. So another thing happeningat Pittsfield and that I think is so
cool because it goes beyond the scopeof traditional education, but I think is
(28:33):
also really empowering for students and reallybuilding them to become the active participants in
their community once they leave. Isyour Justice Committee. Could you tell me
about that in your involvement. TheJustice Committee was started about six years ago.
When I started at the school,there was a group of students called
the Impact Team, which stands forindividuals making positive actions count today, So
(28:57):
it was all about culture in climateand bringing in the community, especially as
the school is shifting its philosophies intothe student centered and competency based system.
Students would hold discussions with new studentsor current students about the changes that we're
happening and promote awareness and understanding,but also reach out to maybe more disenfranchised
(29:18):
students And not sure quite why theystarted, but when I was asked to
take them over, they were withoutan advisor and our principle at the time
had suggested they might want to lookinto restorative justice, So the students were
very interested in that when we talkeda little bit about it, and we
did a community discipline systems analysis wherewe brought in students, teachers, professionals,
(29:44):
parents, and the community just communitymembers at administration. We brought all
these people together and we looked atour discipline system and we said, like,
what's working and what's not working,and what do we want to do
about what's not working. So fora year and a half, these students,
along with myself and our outside providerBrian part Bridge, worked to research
different restorative justice systems and bring theidea back to our site. Counsel,
(30:07):
which is also our student majority governmentbody of our school that passes policy and
procedure, which is pretty amazing,and then makes recommendations to the school board.
So the Impact team decided that restorativejustice would be a way to combat
the uselessness of detentions and suspensions,which unanimously the discipline analysis had revealed everybody
(30:29):
disagreed with. Right. They feltlike they were vacation students in tincom seriously,
and more importantly, behavior doesn't changewith that kind of punishment, and
you remove the student from the learningenvironment, so you know, now they're
not learning with their peers. You'veostracized them, You've created shame and guilt,
and then they come back and theyhave to reintegrate after what three or
ten days into school and what havethey lost in that time period. So
(30:53):
the students came up with the JusticeCommittee, which is a student led mediation
group. Right, So if studentsin our community have a problem with each
other or disagreement or don't understand perspective, they can go to the Justice Committee
and our student mediators with an adultwill sit and they'll talk it out and
(31:15):
try and resolve the situation. Restorativejustice in itself completely asks everybody in a
traditional schools discipline system to shift theirthinking to where it's not about punishment,
it's about reparation. How can thisperson fix what they did to break the
community. How can the community supportthem in fixing that. You know,
(31:38):
you've mentioned community, and I wonderhow these ideas, particularly restorative justice,
are spreading from outside of the schoolinto the interactions in the community in general.
So that mentioned I live out inthe middle of the woods. Is
this my phone giving itself that mightbe it? I apologize, I'm going
(32:02):
to get closer to a window.I mean, I think it's it's hard
for me to judge outside. ButI know that the students that are that
do the mediations and that work withthe Justice Committee will come in and say,
you know, I used this onmy mom. We were having a
fight and I used our script andour conversation and I flipped it on my
(32:22):
mom and you know, we workedit out. And I just think it's
so it's so fascinating. And theydo it with their friends too. They
like resolve conflicts, They solve thedrama or tensions between people fighting, and
they can monitor themselves to when they'rein a situation that's problematic for them.
They could have had that self awarenessto go, what's going on, what's
(32:43):
the perspective here, what might thisperson be thinking or feeling? Or how
am I I thinking and feeling?So beyond that, it's hard to say.
And you know, one of theproblems in a small school where you
don't have a lot of students involvedin the activity, because you don't have
a lot of students. Right now, we maybe have fifteen members of the
Justice committee, which is pretty great, But for a while after I think
(33:07):
our second year, all of thestudents graduated and we had one eleventh grade
or left on the team, andwe realized, well, we didn't plan
for sustainability of this. Here's thisone student left and she's the only one
who knows what's going on, andnow we have to bring up new students
and train them. And I think, you know, that is the hardest
(33:27):
part in a small town is thatconstant messaging that you have to do with
your community, both inside the schooland the parents and the community outside.
So you know, I would saythat that's still a struggle for a restorative
justice and maybe some other programs atPittsfield where you have the turnover of students
and you have new families moving intothe district or new students coming up to
(33:50):
the middle high school, and youhave to keep messaging these priorities. It's
not always easy. My name isMaxwell Tuttle. I am now a senior
at Mmacott College, but I grewup in Pittsfield, New Hampshire, went
to elementary school at Pittsfield Elementary School, and high school right at Pittsfield Middle
High School PMHS. Twenty ten,I started my freshman year at Pittsfield Middle
(34:15):
High It was actually pretty interesting becausethe way the school set up is one
section of the school is actually inthe middle school, so I was there
two years before that. In thebuilding at Pittsfield Middle High School. We
kind of as middle schoolers, weknew what was going on a little bit.
You could see the changes that weregoing on and you heard rumors,
(34:36):
but we weren't always connected necessarily tothe big changes that we're going on.
So going into my freshman year,I had been hearing quite a bit about
the projected changes. I kind ofwanted to be a part of that,
and I thought that it was agood opportunity as a freshman being, you
know, starting at the high schoollevel, to kind of be there through
(34:57):
the whole change of it. Iknow that Pittsfield Middle High was third worst
in the state, and it wasreally a collaborative effort between parents, residents
in the town, and the schooldistrict itself to implement changes that would improve
its standing but also improve the studentexperience. Did you have any visibility to
that on any sort of community level. Absolutely, Like you mentioned, I
(35:22):
think third worst was the number,and that was very evident, whether it
be whether it be in the news, whether it be on TV and the
newspapers online. The news was notour biggest friend. I think they were
looking for some things that was negativeand the education, to be frank with
you, was low. That beingsaid, there was a lot of uproar
(35:45):
throughout the town, but it wasdefinitely even very evident to me as I
was in middle school moving into highschool that there was some things going on
that were negative that the town,the parents, they all wanted something to
happen, but we weren't always surewhat needed to happen, and that is
kind of what drove me to getmyself involved with the changes my parents involvement
(36:07):
and their want to improve the schooland the town and the outlook on the
school and the town really made me, you know, kind of who I
am and allowed me to help withthose changes. And for I believe it
was my fresh summer going into myfreshman year we developed the Site Council and
I actually participated all the way throughmy four years in high school and I
(36:30):
was the first student to start freshmanyear and graduate as a part of the
Site council. Can you tell mespecifically what Site Council was doing and what
the involvement from all the various partieswas. The first, I would say,
probably year was developing our by laws. It was a slow process,
but basically we decided that our scopewas being allowed to make decisions on changes
(36:52):
that weren't governed by the state orschool board policy. So that could range
from anything within the handbook to assimple as dress code to as big as
grading policies. And with the changeof competencies within within grading and project based
learning and things like that, wereally had our hand in quite a few,
(37:15):
you know, quite a few buckets. And we we kind of struct
yourself a little thin at first,and we tried to tackle all of those,
all of the above, you know, the dress code, the grading,
the project based learning, as wellas developing who we were. But
we really came around in our secondyear and we were able to make some
(37:35):
really good changes. I believe inthe school and we're able to turn around
the outlook on the school as well. Now as far as you know,
different groups that were involved and differentstakeholders. We had community members, um
I think there was there was atleast two that weren't parents, and that
was actually required by the by lawsat one point that at least one of
the community members must be a nonparent and one must be a parent.
(38:00):
That way, we made sure wecovered all of our bases. We made
sure that there was people that didn'tnecessarily have kids within the school but they
wanted to make a change, aswell as the parent that really wants to
be involved. That way, youknow, we can cover everything. And
within these meetings that we had weeklysometimes bi weekly depending on the month,
(38:20):
we ran these meetings probably about twohours and everyone was able to give an
update on who they represented, whetherit be a group within the school for
the students, or the teachers,or the community. They could bring updates
from any town meetings that they wantedto bring up. They could bring up
concerns that they've developed by themselves orhurt from other parents, and like I
(38:42):
mentioned, I think it just reallyencapsulated everything that the town had to offer.
What I think is so interesting aboutthis is that it's building a level
of trust in relationships that you don'tsee many school districts even amenable to.
You know, I have never forthis, and that's not to say it's
not out there, but I've neverheard of a school district letting students or
(39:05):
non parents get involved at that level. And I wonder if that level of
responsibility and that level of openness andhumility on the district's side put a lot
of pressure on you to really bringand affect great change and positive change.
Absolutely, I think that the factthat first of all, the students had
(39:27):
a majority vote, I think thatthat really really made a benchmark kind of
And then, like you mentioned,there's non parents that were there, and
then everywhere from the superintendent of schoolsto the principle to the physical education teacher,
there's everywhere in between, and likeyou mentioned, there was a lot
of pressure. I mentioned that wekind of stressed ourselves. Then at the
(39:51):
beginning, while developing our bilas,we decided that we really needed to be
careful about what we wanted to change. We really needed to make sure that
what we were focusing on was important, something that would improve our school,
whether it be atmosphere, community,or performance. Really that that was another
large thing that we wanted to focuson, and if it wasn't within that,
(40:15):
it really we decided that it wasn'tworth focusing on. We didn't want,
you know, this idea of asite council with students having majority vote
and then news get out there thatyou know, we're only always focusing on
a LUNCHMENTHU or a dress code perse. You know, we might have
tackled the dress code, but wemade sure that we weren't spending out all
(40:37):
of our time on something like that. And that was really important because we
knew that we needed to kind ofbe a trend setter within this because we
thought it was a very good idea, and we also really wanted this to
work. We wanted to keep itgoing after the first two years and not
just have it sizzle out and fallapart. Speaking of dress code, tell
me the hats. There was alwaysalways issues with students wearing hats in school,
(41:05):
and this kind of fell within ouridea of making the students feel comfortable
where they are. You know,we get in it at seven fifty one.
I think it's the first bell andtwo forty six is the last one.
And funny that I still know thatsenior in college. But you know,
we spend all those hours there andwe want to make sure the students
feel comfortable, want to be there, and we thought that this was something
(41:28):
that we could do to show thestudents that we were I don't want to
say on their side, but forlack of a better phrase, that's what
it was. That we were therefor them to improve not only their performance
in school, but but improve theiryou know, their want to be there,
to make sure that they felt comfortable. So we decided to pick up
the dress code. We went througha couple of things. The dress code
(41:50):
was kind of outdated, very verystrict, but there was reasons for that
and I think the students on thesite council realized that after going through it
looking at other schools dress codes,we weren't the only one that way.
But the hats are something that wefell on. We decided that all these
hats that the kids were getting takenaway on the daily basis, it's as
(42:13):
simple as something that was wearing ahat as in school. We wanted to
kind of make them think, okay, well, if I can wear the
hat, then maybe I'll be willingto pay attention a little bit more rather
than trying to get back at theteachers and wear it, you know,
if I can focus on my writingmy paper instead of you know, getting
my hat, and were being ableto wear it without them seeing. So
(42:34):
I think I think what I endedup happening was we set certain areas that
you could wear hats within the classroom. We I believe left it up to
the teachers. They were able toset their ground roles within the classroom and
within the hallways. You were alwaysallowed to wear it. If you were
asked to take it off, youhad to do with respect, respectfully,
and then obviously during you know,pledge of allegiance and things like that,
(42:57):
everyone needed to follow you know,the appropriate code and remove that hat.
And we got I think it wasit was accepted very positively. We reached
our goal with the understanding that wewere we were trying to work with them
and not against them. The rootof this entire story for me is that
a school that was not performing gaveits students an active voice in regulating how
(43:23):
they were going to be educated andwhat the school culture was going to be,
and by doing so, they actuallyimproved the school, improved test scores.
What do you think that says aboutour culture and how schools should be
reformed? Throughout this those four yearsat MHS, I really kind of thought
(43:45):
about that exact question, how arewe how are we educating our students?
I believe it was Jenny Wellington thatshowed me a video I can't I can't
even think of the name of it, but basically it was kind of discussing
how some schools are like an assemblyline. You know, kids come in
(44:05):
in the morning, they sit downby the bell, they start their day,
they learn, they do what theteacher says. The bell rings,
you get up and you go toyour next class. You're sitting down by
the time the second bell rings,and then you go home. There's bells
in between. There's there's a lunchbreak that has a bell. And you
think about a big factory that hasan assembly line and they were relating that
(44:30):
to that because these kids are thesekids, and these workers in the factory
are coming in. The bell signifiesthe start of the day, the bell
signifies lunchtime, and the bell signifiesat the end of the day. We
decided that that is not how Pittsfieldwas going to be run. The fact
that students are all different, they'renot the same. They shouldn't all be
(44:51):
on the same assembly line, perse, they shouldn't be on an assembly
line at all. And we decidedthat, you know, personalizing education,
making students feel comfortable, making studentsbe able to voice their own opinion and
have a say in the decisions.The fact that I think the biggest part
of Site counsel and why it wasso different was because students had a majority
(45:12):
vote, and I think that wereally went the opposite direction of how we
believed most schools were going. Andthe test scores and the improvement in the
school really I think reflected what wewere doing as a school, what we
were doing as a community, andthe outlook on town was absolutely amazing.
(45:37):
So oftentimes when I'm working with smalltowns, I find that schools tend to
be the nuclei of the town andits culture in the community in general.
And I wonder here in Pittsfield,suddenly students in the high school are given
autonomy, They're given a voice,they're given power to broker change within the
(45:58):
school, and they're given I guess, the tools and the stage to mediate
their issues and interpersonal relationships, notjust with each other but with students.
And I wonder if that expanded itall out into the community and how the
community was engaging with each other.Absolutely, so, I think one way
to kind of describe how this reflectedreflected the community and how they whether they
(46:23):
what they thought about it, orhow they felt between each other. When
we first started the site council UMthe second year, we tried to go
out and speak to the community indifferent venues. UM there was a group
called Pittsfield Listens, which was,you know, a group of community members.
There was a couple of things thatwe went. We went and spoke
(46:44):
to the rotary in town, andthose were really small venues. They especially
at Pittsfield Listens that which was basicallyan invite to all residents to come and
listen. It was only a handfulof people that kind of at the start
of our second year. That kindof gave us a gut check, you
(47:05):
know, is what we're doing useful? Is what we're doing going to help
two people actually care? And wedidn't stop, we didn't give up.
I think we continue to do thosesmall handfuls of people. And as word
got out, you know that thesefreshman, sophomore, junior seniors were out
here giving presentations of changes going onin the school, that these students were
(47:30):
really involved in positive change, whetherit be for standardized test scores, for
grading systems, or for something likethe Justice Committee and interpersonal relationships. It's
the word got out and those venuesbecome bigger and bigger, and I thought
that that was a representation of thepositive effect of what we were doing.
(47:51):
Community members really got behind it,They really enjoyed hearing what we were doing,
and I think that the outlook onthe school greatly improved. It sounds
like the core of all this iswhen you listen and give everyone the opportunity
to speak and give everyone equal footingin the conversation. At the school level
(48:13):
and now even at the community level, things improve definitely. I'm actually recording
a speech for a dinner that's recognizingstudents at Pitsilmana High School this weekend.
I'm not able to be there,but I just prepared my speech and in
it, I you know, Imentioned while it was hard at times to
get the ideas recorded and get themrepresented, it was really good to hear
(48:38):
that all of these groups had opinions. And I think the representation of each
group was better than our own government. I think they were actually representing their
peers. Are community members weren't alwaysthere for themselves. They were there for
everyone in the community. We hada member from the community. They ran
(48:59):
the local newspaper, the newspaper thatdistributus to the towns around us in our
town, and they were taking opinionsfrom the newspaper, from the opinion articles,
and they really they had been aroundthe town for a while and they
were really representing what the town wanted. And I think that having all our
bases covered, really learning how torecord and represent these ideas allowed us to
(49:25):
move forward in very efficient fashion aswell as effective fashion. What has all
this taught you about community building?It's the most important thing I think in
life. I was able to studyabroad last year in Costa Rica. I
was in a developing country. Ilived with a host family that didn't speak
(49:50):
any English. I went in knowingbasic high school Spanish, but I learned.
I studied their environment, I studiedwhat they were doing. This kind
of open my idea of community.You know, my community, as an
environmental science undergrad is everybody. That'smy large community, that's my group.
I want to improve the world,I want to improve the environment. But
(50:12):
without understanding what people want, whatpeople need, without seeing community or understanding
communities, that none of that wouldwould be possible. It seems so obvious
that the only way to improve abad situation is to listen to everyone who's
involved. But it's not something wellpracticed. When we don't feel heard,
(50:37):
we stop participating. And when westop participating, a community fails. By
listening to the community, to thestudents, to the parents, Pittsfield Middle
High improved test scores, improved morale, improved attendance, and then in turn
(50:58):
improved the community. Since the creationof site counsel and those early Saturday forums,
there's been a year over year increasein voter turnout in Pittsfield. Through
this process of improving the school,people realized they can affect change on a
(51:19):
grander level. While talking to John, Jenny and Maxwell, I couldn't help
but think of Parkland and how thosestudents have used their voices to create change,
and how by giving each sets ofthese students the autonomy and the platform
to speak up, we are creatinga generation of activists, a generation of
(51:44):
people who will be involved, whowill make change. And here's Greensburg Mayor
Bob Dixon. Again. If we'regoing to survive, it has to be
driven by the real community thought process. And I've spoken all over and I've
heard them tell me in major metropolitanareas well, we're not a small community.
(52:07):
And I said, yeah, youare. You are just a bunch
of small communities in a geographical citylimit. And how do you deal with
that? And the key is youhave to decide what is the character of
your little community there, and areyou willing to be informed, involved and
engaged in the processes of that community, And are you doing anything for the
(52:34):
youth and the younger people in thecommunity to have them being actively involved in
those processes, because that's the futureof your community.
If we're going to survive, ithas to be driven by the real community
thought process. And the key isyou have to decide what is the character
of your little community there, andare you willing to be informed, involved
and engaged in the processes of thatcommunity, and are you doing anything for
(00:23):
the youth and the younger people inthe community to have them being actively involved
in those process because that's the futureof your community. This is an Our
Americana Podcast network production sponsored by Podbean. Find out more about the podcast,
how you can support this listener fundedpodcast, listen to other podcasts on the
(00:47):
network, or find out where youcan catch me on tour. Go to
www Dot Our Americana podcast dot com. And before we start the show,
here's a quick word from this week'ssponsor. Sir. There's a brand new
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Dot Blue Sky Vacations dot net.You'll find great rates for any type of
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dot net. In order to succeedas a whole, we have to bridge
(01:44):
the gaps between individuals. That requireslarge amounts of faith, faith in people
whose ideas are different than your own. Sometimes we have to make radical changes
in order to see change. That'swhat happened in Pittsfield, New Hampshire,
(02:05):
when the town's only middle and highschool was ranked the third worst in the
state. It was suffering from lowtest scores, behavioral problems, attendance issues.
The community, the school district,even the students knew that something needed
(02:28):
to change, but they didn't knowwhere to start until people started looking within
and a revolution in local education beganto occur. People had a negative view
(02:53):
of the schools because the teen reportsof the state testing where school district was
relatively well achieving. What they didn'tsee were some of the data that I
had access to. My name isJohn Freeman. I'm the Superintendent of Schools
for the Pittsfield, New Hampshire SchoolDistrict. One of the things I did,
because it was obvious to me thatsignificant change was in order, because
(03:15):
I went out to community groups,our select board and budget committee and rotary
club and PTO and groups like thatwith new data that they hadn't seen.
Data that was as as I mentioneddropout data and attendance day, but also
student aspirations. We had done somesurveys around student aspirations back at that time
(03:36):
and found that student aspirations were relativelylow, college applications and admissions were relatively
low. And so my message essentiallyto community members and community groups was,
you know you think it's not good, well it's even worse than you think
it is. Bringing that information tothem being I think being honest and open
about the status of school, Ifeel contributed to folks willingness in and take
(04:00):
some responsibility for their school. Andso John, along with other members of
the school district, began hosting weeklySaturday forums where the community could come together
and discuss how to implement changes thatworked for everyone. One of the things
that came out of our work toengage the community in designing emission and vision
(04:25):
statements was that the folks in Pitchafiewho came out and we held it,
we did that. The process bywhich we did that was a series of
Saturday morning forums through the winter thatyear, and people essentially told us they
wanted their kids to be known itwas a small school, and wanted their
kids deficits to be addressed, andthey wanted their kids strengths to be encouraged.
(04:45):
And they wanted their kids in theend to graduate from high school with
a realistic but the ambitious plan forthe next phase of their lives. And
so those were the marching orders aswe began to redesign the high school the
middle high school primarily about a yearafter that, I think it was the
second year the federal government provided whatthey called school improvement grants to the states,
(05:09):
and the states turned around and providedopportunities for school improvement grants for the
district. And at that time theStates came out with a ranking of school
districts and the Pittsfield Middle School andPittsfield High School were among the five lowles
achieving schools and their categories in thestate, and so that titled us then
(05:29):
to apply for a significant school improvementgrant, which we did and was important
in really getting us going in improvingthe academics, improving outcomes for students,
as well as considering some redesign fora more personalized environment that we heard our
community asking for so, through yourSaturday forums and some of these conversations,
what changes in programs did you endup deciding to implement to make the necessary
(05:55):
changes. A couple of the firstthings we did before we did some significant
grant money, was we realized thatthe students had that tremendous leadership potential,
that there was a student voice whathad really been minimized in the school.
And so, in a continuance toinvolve the community, John in the school
(06:15):
district did something so completely obvious andnatural that was somehow totally radical. One
of the first structures that we putin place was a development of what we
call our Site Council and our Sitecouncil as a governing body in the school,
and we wanted to involve students inthe decision making process in school.
(06:39):
So everything that for example, thedecisions that policy decisions that are made by
the principal's office are typically laid outin a student handbook or family handbook,
and we gave all of that overto the Site Council and the Site council.
And we had quite a long debateabout the makeup of the Site council,
but the makeup of the site councilincludes and includes to this day NK
(07:00):
members, ten of whom are studentsselected by their peers, six of whom
are faculty and staff members, andthree of whom are community members. So
students hold the majority vote on oursite council. And that was a very
very significant statement about student voice andstudent leadership and confidence in our students that
didn't exist in particil before that.Another thing we did was change our high
(07:21):
school schedule significantly. And folks whoare involved in high schools for any length
of times will tell you that thehigh school schedule is it's really a controlling
factors that's difficult to change. Butwe were successful in changing our high school
schedule and our and our faculty sothat we developed our small school into four
different teaching teams, so that teachingteams would be able to meet together regularly.
(07:46):
Teachers who had common concerns and commoninterests of a common set of students
would meet together regularly. We werethen shifted the schedule so that we could
allow those groups to meet every day, which was really important to us.
And we also instituted another schedule changecalled late Start Wednesday, which provided an
(08:07):
hour and every Wednesday morning before ourmiddle student school students and high school students
came in for instruction. Our schoolstudents came in and participated in enrichment activities,
but that hour and a half everyWednesday gave us professional development time for
our teachers to receive training, toconduct study groups, to do their own
(08:30):
research, and to improve curriculum,and time really became one of the major
factors in the school turnaround, webelieve. So those were a couple of
the early early shifts that we thatwe made that continues to this day.
Do you think giving the students thishigh level of autonomy and an accountability over
their own autonomy encourage them to makemore responsible decisions for the most part,
(08:54):
yes, but not one hundred percent. So that we had that question asked
of us. So we would goout and talk to folks and other other
school districts and other communities about this, and we had one gentleman asked us
one time, well, what ifthe students all wanted to put obscenities on
t shirts and we have them toschool? You think that would be okay?
And we said, well, wedon't, but our kids wouldn't want
to do that. Most of us, and we have responsibility, we live
(09:18):
up to expectations, and we foundthat to be one hundred percent true really
of our student leadership, might haveto say, and fairly true of all
students. We also have found overtime, and this is one thing which
we didn't calculate at the beginning,that some students did not have the skills
or their dispositions or their perspective tomake the best decisions for themselves. And
(09:41):
so that is requiring some program shiftson our part and some additional supports put
in for student development in those skillareas. So I think for the most
part the answer is yes. Butbut you know, as in most other
most other aspects of skill development,we had kids who are had some deficits,
and we're working to strengthen the mostdeficits. But if i'd really fascinating
(10:03):
and incredibly timely, as if youzoom out nationally, you see a movement,
especially with a younger generation, toreally become more involved in politics and
governance and government and using their voicesand ways we haven't really seen in a
while. And I almost feel likegiving your students this level of autonomy and
(10:26):
encouraging them to participate in the governingof the school is helping that movement and
creating people who feel like they actuallydo have a voice in politics and autonomy
in the national government. I couldn'tagree with you more. One of the
things that I see as important.So let me make a distinction between our
(10:48):
schools goals, our communities goals anddesires, and some personal and hancilary goals
and desires that I have. Sofor myself, I look around at the
low rate of the engagement in thesesmall towns in New Hampshire. So you
know the elections today is an electionday and so it's going to be a
very low voter turnout. We knowwe have positions in these small towns,
(11:09):
important positions select board, school boardwhere there are very few candidates, sometimes
there are no options, and Ifelt, I feel personally that it would
be important to help students really understandwhat it's like to be in those roles,
what it's like to advocate, whatit's like to push back against something
that they don't believe in. Ithink that's important for society and I think
(11:30):
that's important for our community. Iagree with you that it really is timely
in terms of the big picture andI'll give you give you an example of
one of the ways they handled that. The students one year said they were
going to redo the entire school handbookand school where everyone was happy. Of
course, as a former principal,that was an extremely tedious job that I
(11:50):
did, that I engaged in everysummer, and so to have the students
be really interested in this was very, very exciting, and so they came
and in our school district is notuncommon, all handbooks have to be approved
by the school board, and sothey brought their revised handbook to the school
board, and the school board wasvery excited, very excited about the process,
but voted against adoption of the handbook. And the reason they voted against
(12:15):
the adoption of handbook was because ofone rule change that the students wanted to
make, and that would be therule that previously forbid students from wearing hats
in school, and that was theone issue that was a problem for enough
of the board members. It wasa split vote. I think it was
a two to three vote in approval, maybe a four to one one to
(12:35):
four. And so the students listened, listened to the objections, and then
came back to the next meeting witha strong argument they've done some research on
clothing customs and the significant of differentclothing items and logos and that sort of
thing. And the next meeting,the board flipped and voted in favor of
(12:56):
what the students had had sought.I think that's a lesson. Yeah,
that's fantastic. I have to wonder, in an environment that is so built
around encouragement, do you think thatthat vote change was based on their argument
or based on their tenacity and research? Oh no, no, I had
(13:16):
a school for the school were absolutelybased on the argument, and it wasn't.
It wasn't a unanimous vote to accepttheir new proposal was a four one
vote. The one gentleman who votedagainst it said he could never approve of
that because it just flew in theface of everything he learned growing up,
everything he'd known as a as amarine. But the others they acknowledged that
(13:39):
they hadn't hadn't thought that deeply aboutit. They appreciated the students bringing forward
these arguments and it changed their mindon the issue because of the additional information.
So what the students did was,I mean, if another way they
sort of put out put out aproposal, the proposal was rejected, they
learned about it, they learned theobjections that these visuals had to it,
(14:00):
and they came back to counter specificallythose objections people had, and then carried
the day. I hesitate to callit a microcosm of our current political system,
because I actually think that they aredoing a far better job of having
conversations and voting based on research andpractices. And yeah, yeah, it's
(14:22):
just it's amazing, and I thinkwhat you're doing is not only fantastic for
the students, but in long termwill be fantastic for local government and hopefully
beyond the scope of local Yeah,I think it's great, And you know,
I hesitate to call it a microcosm. Also, Yeah, there are
those who sort of like to workon a large stage and like to work
(14:43):
on large policy issues, and Iadmire those folks. I'm not one of
them. I know most of usaren't at that level. But if we
can work in our own local levelto make the changes that makes sense to
us, that are good for goodfor people, that I think we need
a whole lot more people doing thatsort of thing than we do. By
frankly, at the national level tobeyond the big stage. So another committee
(15:03):
that you created and the change youimplemented was the Justice Committee and restorative Justice.
Can you tell me about that.Yes, well, you know,
we developed this mission vision and itwas very, very inclusive and really sought
to lay the groundwork for every everythingwe do, and we really use those
statements, our value statements as touchstone. And we didn't have the Justice Committee
(15:28):
or any reform to our student disciplineprogram in mind when we when we put
together our long term plan for theSchool of Development. But the issue came
up at a meeting and people said, well, you know, this really
isn't working. You know, teacherswere unhappy about its. Students. Students
say it doesn't work, Teachers saythe system is flawed, and so so
we said, well, let's takea look at actually what the system is.
(15:50):
And so we engage folks, teacher, students, support staff, developing
a process map of what happens ina disciplinary situation from the beginning of the
process, from when a student misbehaves, assuming that's at the ending of the
process, to the ends of theconclusion whatever resolution, And that caused us
(16:11):
to begin to look at alternatives tothe traditional discipline system. And so we
and when I say we, Iuse that And it brought a sense because
I had had nothing to do withit. You know, a group of
students and a group of teachers gottogether and they were really interested in pursuing
this. They learned about restorative justice, they learned about the failings, they
(16:32):
knew about the failings of the currentsystem. They looked at data from from
our system, They did surveys,they did climate surveys in our school,
and then learned about restorative justice fromfolks external to the school, and then
went out and sought professional development.They sought some folks at a local university,
local college took him in and providethem with some learning so they could
(16:52):
learn more about it. So studentsand faculty members together did this research and
eventually developed a scheme of restorative justicewhere you know, certain certain offenses would
be would be allowed to be settledthrough process of mediation. And they brought
this to a proposal to the sitecouncil. Site council approved it, and
(17:14):
the school board approved it. Andif they went and we do have a
justice committee now that's active in mediatingparticularly disputes student on student disputes, but
also open to mediating student and adultdisputes as well. That's fantastic because I
think, you know, and Igraduated twenty years ago, but you know,
when I was growing up, therewas a clear inequity which I think
(17:37):
sometimes can be important, but sometimescan be really damaging in adults perspectives and
children's perspectives. And we're taught thatadults are always right, and I think
by giving them a voice, ingiving them mediation beyond the scope of student
and student interpersonal conflict to student andteacher interpersonal conflict is just amazing. Yeah.
(18:02):
We have a process that begins withwhat we call our community Concern Form.
So when somebody behaves in a mannerthat's disrespectful in some way to a
student or adult, that person oreven if you're not that person, if
you're that person's parent or that person'sbest friend, you can complete a community
Concern form and that concern would bebrought through the process, so that unlike
(18:26):
the time when you went to school, and even further along back then,
when I went to school, Imean, it was just there was just
nothing you could do if if ateacher or another adult was was nasty or
mean or unfair or whatever negative worldyou want to say to a student,
And we saw it, We sawit pretty regularly, right, But there
was no there was no way toremedy that, or at least seek a
(18:47):
remedy, and we have a wayto do that. How have teachers responded
to this because I imagine that youknow, there is a level of encouraging
student participation and equity, but there'salso a level of maybe feeling like it's
insubordinate. Yeah, well I haven't. You haven't heard that word or words
like that. I mean, thereare certainly among our faculties some folks who
(19:10):
are relatively old school and you know, want to you know, an eye
for an eye and tooth for atooth sort of folks. But you know,
those folks are not the majority rightnow. And those folks, and
you know, it was to bea part of our community need to live
with the systems we have. Andthat's just part of the deal of working
with working in Pittsfield. Because weare a relatively low paying school district and
(19:30):
I'm in our area, we havea high amount of turnover of faculty,
and so we have an unusual numberof young folks who are more progressive,
buying large and liberal in their thinkingabout these sorts of relationships than some of
the some of the old folks.Folks were like my age or not quite
my age. And so we foundthat it is largely and broadly accepted.
(19:53):
It hasn't the system hasn't been challenged. It's been approved by the site council.
And I would think that despite whatreas ovations individuals may have, if
they attempted and brought together or broughttogether put together a proposal to overturn it
and return to the eye for aneye two for two sort of m that
it would be rejected pretty quickly.The culture has changed. The culture is
(20:15):
changed. People have different expectations now, you know, that's the real change.
It's the culture change. The teachersand students now have different expectations about
what school is. And that's that'sthe real important change. That's the real
fundamental change that we've been able tomake. So the school shifted its priorities
to student centered learning. When youput the student in the driver's seat of
(20:38):
their education, you have to alsopersonalize that learning from now and to do
that, you have to build relationshipswith the students so the school developed an
advisory program where every student would havea connection with an adult, and I
think that really started to help thatpersonalization piece. You get to know the
(21:00):
students career goals and their learning strengthsand learning styles, and you get to
help sort of guide them through theireducation, so that idea of personalization becomes
inherent then in the school, andthen you get to help the student find
a learning style that works. Youknow, do they want to do some
(21:21):
online classes, do they want todo an internship? You know, what
other things can you do to engagethem in their learning process. This is
Jenny Wellington, a teacher at PittsfieldMiddle High and the advisor for the school's
Justice Committee. So I've been teachingthat for seven years and one of the
first things that I noticed, Ithink that it was different from any of
the other public schools that I taughtin, is how everybody knew everybody because
(21:48):
it's such a small school where seventhrough twelve we have about two hundred fifty
students are graduating. Classes are betweentwenty and thirty and they fit on the
stage and the gym, which isalso our auditorium, you know, And
I've just never been part of atown not even where I'm from originally from
Pennsylvania. I've just never been ina town that was just that small.
(22:08):
In the course of seven years,I've taught whole families of siblings, and
you know, I've gotten to knowmany of the families there just because again
because it is so small. There'sa nice feeling about that. I think
one of the other nice things aboutteaching there is because I teach eleven and
(22:30):
twelfth grade, I have the studentsfor two years, so I really get
to know them as learners. Socoming into their senior year, I just
get to go, all right,let's pick up where we left off and
get started, and you know,we can just get into work and we
can do some really really cool thingsbecause of that. How do you think
this is empowering them to move forwardwith their education and make decisions for themselves
(22:55):
in their future. You know,as an example, I look back,
and I was a smart kid.I did really well on tests, I
did really well on projects, butI wasn't a homework kid because I didn't
have a lot of accountability at home. So while I was getting a's across
the board, I was not doingmy homework and getting seasoned classes that I
had developed full competency for. AndI feel like a lot of that is
(23:18):
because it wasn't student centered. Weweren't enabling kids to make decisions that we're
going to work for their way oflearning. Yeah, that kind of is
the whole point. And you saidcompetency, And that's another piece of this
learning, which is its competency basedlearning, which means that it probably would
(23:41):
have worked really well for you asa student because you could have demonstrated competency
and been able to move on andnot have to do all the homework.
Right. Because so in a andthis gets sort of complicated with a new
educational theory. But in a traditionalsystem, right, you get graded,
maybe you do some extra credit,maybe you fail a test. Everything all
(24:03):
gets averaged together, and at theend of the year you have some grade
that says this is how you didin the course, right, Yeah,
So sometimes that's sometimes with that system, there's a penalty if you don't do
your homework, even if you geta hundred on the test. Right.
So competency based education basically says thisis what you need to know and be
(24:26):
able to do by the end ofmy course, and there's a lot of
different ways that you can demonstrate thatto some degree, and we can work
with you to find a way thatmaybe works best for you. So it
also says, you know, thepractice of it doesn't mean as much,
although it's important, it doesn't meanas much as demonstrating it continuously and demonstrating
(24:48):
it with proficiency. So you cantry as much as you want, and
you can keep practicing until you getit right, as opposed to maybe you
get a sixty five and that justgets averaged to another test you take.
You this at the end of theyear, you go, oh, you
are proficient, and here is whatlevel your proficient as this has to be
like part of student centered learning andthat allows us to personalize it a little
(25:11):
bit. So as an English teacher, obviously I have students that don't like
to write or read right, butI have a competency in reading that says
they need to demonstrate the ability toanalyze literature. So you can do that
by talking about the literature that you'veread, or you can do that by
writing about the literature that you've read. You know, like, there's no
(25:32):
one way to do that. SoI have a lot of students that are
great at writing literary analysis, andmaybe they choose that way. And then
I have another other students that muchprefer to have a discussion, and maybe
they choose that way to prove thatthey can analyze it. And that allows
a little bit of flexibility for studentsin their learning styles. I think like
probably the most obvious positive impact fromthis is that you're creating confidence in kids
(25:56):
who maybe lacked confidence in their learningabilities prior to this. Yes, and
this empowers them because they can feelsuccessful at certain competencies while they are working
to strengthen other competencies. So Ican hand an essay back to a student
and go, you know, youmade that point solid, you use some
great evidence. We really just gotto work on your grammar. And you
(26:18):
know there's those are two different competencies. So they feel like, great,
I'm successful in this one and nowI just really have to work on this
other one. And that empowers themin their learning. It also empowers them
to decide how they might want topresent their their understanding to you, because
they can choose in some cases,you know, I'd like to give a
presentation, or I'd like to writean essay or I'd like to write a
(26:40):
short story or you know, doa play or whatever it is. And
you know, all of this isto say that I think like we've really
gotten away from the industrialization of education, Like our world is no longer that
kind of factory model, and people, learners and workers need to be a
little more creative and motivated intrinsically todo things. And that's what this kind
(27:02):
of education I think. Does itreally fosters intrinsic learning as opposed to compliance
and regurgitation. I think what's somagical about it is for me, and
I'm not a teacher, but myexperience with school is that there's a lot
of stereotyping that takes place, Likethere's good students and bad students, and
there's not of middle ground. You'reone or the other. And this model
(27:26):
seems to really destroy that stereotyping.Yeah, you know, it recognizes different
levels of competency, not oh,you got a seventy five in English so
you're okay, and you got aninety in biology so you're great. And
besides that, what are those gradesyou can tell us? Like, I
don't even know what those grades mean. You know, they don't tell me
(27:47):
that you know this stuff like they'rejust random numbers that actually penalize you in
the beginning of the year for notknowing something that you may get by the
end of the year. And that'skind of the whole point that learning is
a progression and that within learning youshould be able to fail and not feel
like now you have to dig yourselfout of some numerical whole, you know.
And I taught before I went toPittsfield, but coming to Pittsfield,
(28:11):
the grant that they got through theNellima Education Foundation really helped bring in experts
that taught me there and that reallyrefrain refrained the way I look at education
and teaching. So another thing happeningat Pittsfield and that I think is so
cool because it goes beyond the scopeof traditional education, but I think is
(28:33):
also really empowering for students and reallybuilding them to become the active participants in
their community once they leave. Isyour Justice Committee. Could you tell me
about that in your involvement. TheJustice Committee was started about six years ago.
When I started at the school,there was a group of students called
the Impact Team, which stands forindividuals making positive actions count today, So
(28:57):
it was all about culture in climateand bringing in the community, especially as
the school is shifting its philosophies intothe student centered and competency based system.
Students would hold discussions with new studentsor current students about the changes that we're
happening and promote awareness and understanding,but also reach out to maybe more disenfranchised
(29:18):
students And not sure quite why theystarted, but when I was asked to
take them over, they were withoutan advisor and our principle at the time
had suggested they might want to lookinto restorative justice, So the students were
very interested in that when we talkeda little bit about it, and we
did a community discipline systems analysis wherewe brought in students, teachers, professionals,
(29:44):
parents, and the community just communitymembers at administration. We brought all
these people together and we looked atour discipline system and we said, like,
what's working and what's not working,and what do we want to do
about what's not working. So fora year and a half, these students,
along with myself and our outside providerBrian part Bridge, worked to research
different restorative justice systems and bring theidea back to our site. Counsel,
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which is also our student majority governmentbody of our school that passes policy and
procedure, which is pretty amazing,and then makes recommendations to the school board.
So the Impact team decided that restorativejustice would be a way to combat
the uselessness of detentions and suspensions,which unanimously the discipline analysis had revealed everybody
(30:29):
disagreed with. Right. They feltlike they were vacation students in tincom seriously,
and more importantly, behavior doesn't changewith that kind of punishment, and
you remove the student from the learningenvironment, so you know, now they're
not learning with their peers. You'veostracized them, You've created shame and guilt,
and then they come back and theyhave to reintegrate after what three or
ten days into school and what havethey lost in that time period. So
(30:53):
the students came up with the JusticeCommittee, which is a student led mediation
group. Right, So if studentsin our community have a problem with each
other or disagreement or don't understand perspective, they can go to the Justice Committee
and our student mediators with an adultwill sit and they'll talk it out and
(31:15):
try and resolve the situation. Restorativejustice in itself completely asks everybody in a
traditional schools discipline system to shift theirthinking to where it's not about punishment,
it's about reparation. How can thisperson fix what they did to break the
community. How can the community supportthem in fixing that. You know,
(31:38):
you've mentioned community, and I wonderhow these ideas, particularly restorative justice,
are spreading from outside of the schoolinto the interactions in the community in general.
So that mentioned I live out inthe middle of the woods. Is
this my phone giving itself that mightbe it? I apologize, I'm going
(32:02):
to get closer to a window.I mean, I think it's it's hard
for me to judge outside. ButI know that the students that are that
do the mediations and that work withthe Justice Committee will come in and say,
you know, I used this onmy mom. We were having a
fight and I used our script andour conversation and I flipped it on my
(32:22):
mom and you know, we workedit out. And I just think it's
so it's so fascinating. And theydo it with their friends too. They
like resolve conflicts, They solve thedrama or tensions between people fighting, and
they can monitor themselves to when they'rein a situation that's problematic for them.
They could have had that self awarenessto go, what's going on, what's
(32:43):
the perspective here, what might thisperson be thinking or feeling? Or how
am I I thinking and feeling?So beyond that, it's hard to say.
And you know, one of theproblems in a small school where you
don't have a lot of students involvedin the activity, because you don't have
a lot of students. Right now, we maybe have fifteen members of the
Justice committee, which is pretty great, But for a while after I think
(33:07):
our second year, all of thestudents graduated and we had one eleventh grade
or left on the team, andwe realized, well, we didn't plan
for sustainability of this. Here's thisone student left and she's the only one
who knows what's going on, andnow we have to bring up new students
and train them. And I think, you know, that is the hardest
(33:27):
part in a small town is thatconstant messaging that you have to do with
your community, both inside the schooland the parents and the community outside.
So you know, I would saythat that's still a struggle for a restorative
justice and maybe some other programs atPittsfield where you have the turnover of students
and you have new families moving intothe district or new students coming up to
(33:50):
the middle high school, and youhave to keep messaging these priorities. It's
not always easy. My name isMaxwell Tuttle. I am now a senior
at Mmacott College, but I grewup in Pittsfield, New Hampshire, went
to elementary school at Pittsfield Elementary School, and high school right at Pittsfield Middle
High School PMHS. Twenty ten,I started my freshman year at Pittsfield Middle
(34:15):
High It was actually pretty interesting becausethe way the school set up is one
section of the school is actually inthe middle school, so I was there
two years before that. In thebuilding at Pittsfield Middle High School. We
kind of as middle schoolers, weknew what was going on a little bit.
You could see the changes that weregoing on and you heard rumors,
(34:36):
but we weren't always connected necessarily tothe big changes that we're going on.
So going into my freshman year,I had been hearing quite a bit about
the projected changes. I kind ofwanted to be a part of that,
and I thought that it was agood opportunity as a freshman being, you
know, starting at the high schoollevel, to kind of be there through
(34:57):
the whole change of it. Iknow that Pittsfield Middle High was third worst
in the state, and it wasreally a collaborative effort between parents, residents
in the town, and the schooldistrict itself to implement changes that would improve
its standing but also improve the studentexperience. Did you have any visibility to
that on any sort of community level. Absolutely, Like you mentioned, I
(35:22):
think third worst was the number,and that was very evident, whether it
be whether it be in the news, whether it be on TV and the
newspapers online. The news was notour biggest friend. I think they were
looking for some things that was negativeand the education, to be frank with
you, was low. That beingsaid, there was a lot of uproar
(35:45):
throughout the town, but it wasdefinitely even very evident to me as I
was in middle school moving into highschool that there was some things going on
that were negative that the town,the parents, they all wanted something to
happen, but we weren't always surewhat needed to happen, and that is
kind of what drove me to getmyself involved with the changes my parents involvement
(36:07):
and their want to improve the schooland the town and the outlook on the
school and the town really made me, you know, kind of who I
am and allowed me to help withthose changes. And for I believe it
was my fresh summer going into myfreshman year we developed the Site Council and
I actually participated all the way throughmy four years in high school and I
(36:30):
was the first student to start freshmanyear and graduate as a part of the
Site council. Can you tell mespecifically what Site Council was doing and what
the involvement from all the various partieswas. The first, I would say,
probably year was developing our by laws. It was a slow process,
but basically we decided that our scopewas being allowed to make decisions on changes
(36:52):
that weren't governed by the state orschool board policy. So that could range
from anything within the handbook to assimple as dress code to as big as
grading policies. And with the changeof competencies within within grading and project based
learning and things like that, wereally had our hand in quite a few,
(37:15):
you know, quite a few buckets. And we we kind of struct
yourself a little thin at first,and we tried to tackle all of those,
all of the above, you know, the dress code, the grading,
the project based learning, as wellas developing who we were. But
we really came around in our secondyear and we were able to make some
(37:35):
really good changes. I believe inthe school and we're able to turn around
the outlook on the school as well. Now as far as you know,
different groups that were involved and differentstakeholders. We had community members, um
I think there was there was atleast two that weren't parents, and that
was actually required by the by lawsat one point that at least one of
the community members must be a nonparent and one must be a parent.
(38:00):
That way, we made sure wecovered all of our bases. We made
sure that there was people that didn'tnecessarily have kids within the school but they
wanted to make a change, aswell as the parent that really wants to
be involved. That way, youknow, we can cover everything. And
within these meetings that we had weeklysometimes bi weekly depending on the month,
(38:20):
we ran these meetings probably about twohours and everyone was able to give an
update on who they represented, whetherit be a group within the school for
the students, or the teachers,or the community. They could bring updates
from any town meetings that they wantedto bring up. They could bring up
concerns that they've developed by themselves orhurt from other parents, and like I
(38:42):
mentioned, I think it just reallyencapsulated everything that the town had to offer.
What I think is so interesting aboutthis is that it's building a level
of trust in relationships that you don'tsee many school districts even amenable to.
You know, I have never forthis, and that's not to say it's
not out there, but I've neverheard of a school district letting students or
(39:05):
non parents get involved at that level. And I wonder if that level of
responsibility and that level of openness andhumility on the district's side put a lot
of pressure on you to really bringand affect great change and positive change.
Absolutely, I think that the factthat first of all, the students had
(39:27):
a majority vote, I think thatthat really really made a benchmark kind of
And then, like you mentioned,there's non parents that were there, and
then everywhere from the superintendent of schoolsto the principle to the physical education teacher,
there's everywhere in between, and likeyou mentioned, there was a lot
of pressure. I mentioned that wekind of stressed ourselves. Then at the
(39:51):
beginning, while developing our bilas,we decided that we really needed to be
careful about what we wanted to change. We really needed to make sure that
what we were focusing on was important, something that would improve our school,
whether it be atmosphere, community,or performance. Really that that was another
large thing that we wanted to focuson, and if it wasn't within that,
(40:15):
it really we decided that it wasn'tworth focusing on. We didn't want,
you know, this idea of asite council with students having majority vote
and then news get out there thatyou know, we're only always focusing on
a LUNCHMENTHU or a dress code perse. You know, we might have
tackled the dress code, but wemade sure that we weren't spending out all
(40:37):
of our time on something like that. And that was really important because we
knew that we needed to kind ofbe a trend setter within this because we
thought it was a very good idea, and we also really wanted this to
work. We wanted to keep itgoing after the first two years and not
just have it sizzle out and fallapart. Speaking of dress code, tell
me the hats. There was alwaysalways issues with students wearing hats in school,
(41:05):
and this kind of fell within ouridea of making the students feel comfortable
where they are. You know,we get in it at seven fifty one.
I think it's the first bell andtwo forty six is the last one.
And funny that I still know thatsenior in college. But you know,
we spend all those hours there andwe want to make sure the students
feel comfortable, want to be there, and we thought that this was something
(41:28):
that we could do to show thestudents that we were I don't want to
say on their side, but forlack of a better phrase, that's what
it was. That we were therefor them to improve not only their performance
in school, but but improve theiryou know, their want to be there,
to make sure that they felt comfortable. So we decided to pick up
the dress code. We went througha couple of things. The dress code
(41:50):
was kind of outdated, very verystrict, but there was reasons for that
and I think the students on thesite council realized that after going through it
looking at other schools dress codes,we weren't the only one that way.
But the hats are something that wefell on. We decided that all these
hats that the kids were getting takenaway on the daily basis, it's as
(42:13):
simple as something that was wearing ahat as in school. We wanted to
kind of make them think, okay, well, if I can wear the
hat, then maybe I'll be willingto pay attention a little bit more rather
than trying to get back at theteachers and wear it, you know,
if I can focus on my writingmy paper instead of you know, getting
my hat, and were being ableto wear it without them seeing. So
(42:34):
I think I think what I endedup happening was we set certain areas that
you could wear hats within the classroom. We I believe left it up to
the teachers. They were able toset their ground roles within the classroom and
within the hallways. You were alwaysallowed to wear it. If you were
asked to take it off, youhad to do with respect, respectfully,
and then obviously during you know,pledge of allegiance and things like that,
(42:57):
everyone needed to follow you know,the appropriate code and remove that hat.
And we got I think it wasit was accepted very positively. We reached
our goal with the understanding that wewere we were trying to work with them
and not against them. The rootof this entire story for me is that
a school that was not performing gaveits students an active voice in regulating how
(43:23):
they were going to be educated andwhat the school culture was going to be,
and by doing so, they actuallyimproved the school, improved test scores.
What do you think that says aboutour culture and how schools should be
reformed? Throughout this those four yearsat MHS, I really kind of thought
(43:45):
about that exact question, how arewe how are we educating our students?
I believe it was Jenny Wellington thatshowed me a video I can't I can't
even think of the name of it, but basically it was kind of discussing
how some schools are like an assemblyline. You know, kids come in
(44:05):
in the morning, they sit downby the bell, they start their day,
they learn, they do what theteacher says. The bell rings,
you get up and you go toyour next class. You're sitting down by
the time the second bell rings,and then you go home. There's bells
in between. There's there's a lunchbreak that has a bell. And you
think about a big factory that hasan assembly line and they were relating that
(44:30):
to that because these kids are thesekids, and these workers in the factory
are coming in. The bell signifiesthe start of the day, the bell
signifies lunchtime, and the bell signifiesat the end of the day. We
decided that that is not how Pittsfieldwas going to be run. The fact
that students are all different, they'renot the same. They shouldn't all be
(44:51):
on the same assembly line, perse, they shouldn't be on an assembly
line at all. And we decidedthat, you know, personalizing education,
making students feel comfortable, making studentsbe able to voice their own opinion and
have a say in the decisions.The fact that I think the biggest part
of Site counsel and why it wasso different was because students had a majority
(45:12):
vote, and I think that wereally went the opposite direction of how we
believed most schools were going. Andthe test scores and the improvement in the
school really I think reflected what wewere doing as a school, what we
were doing as a community, andthe outlook on town was absolutely amazing.
(45:37):
So oftentimes when I'm working with smalltowns, I find that schools tend to
be the nuclei of the town andits culture in the community in general.
And I wonder here in Pittsfield,suddenly students in the high school are given
autonomy, They're given a voice,they're given power to broker change within the
(45:58):
school, and they're given I guess, the tools and the stage to mediate
their issues and interpersonal relationships, notjust with each other but with students.
And I wonder if that expanded itall out into the community and how the
community was engaging with each other.Absolutely, so, I think one way
to kind of describe how this reflectedreflected the community and how they whether they
(46:23):
what they thought about it, orhow they felt between each other. When
we first started the site council UMthe second year, we tried to go
out and speak to the community indifferent venues. UM there was a group
called Pittsfield Listens, which was,you know, a group of community members.
There was a couple of things thatwe went. We went and spoke
(46:44):
to the rotary in town, andthose were really small venues. They especially
at Pittsfield Listens that which was basicallyan invite to all residents to come and
listen. It was only a handfulof people that kind of at the start
of our second year. That kindof gave us a gut check, you
(47:05):
know, is what we're doing useful? Is what we're doing going to help
two people actually care? And wedidn't stop, we didn't give up.
I think we continue to do thosesmall handfuls of people. And as word
got out, you know that thesefreshman, sophomore, junior seniors were out
here giving presentations of changes going onin the school, that these students were
(47:30):
really involved in positive change, whetherit be for standardized test scores, for
grading systems, or for something likethe Justice Committee and interpersonal relationships. It's
the word got out and those venuesbecome bigger and bigger, and I thought
that that was a representation of thepositive effect of what we were doing.
(47:51):
Community members really got behind it,They really enjoyed hearing what we were doing,
and I think that the outlook onthe school greatly improved. It sounds
like the core of all this iswhen you listen and give everyone the opportunity
to speak and give everyone equal footingin the conversation. At the school level
(48:13):
and now even at the community level, things improve definitely. I'm actually recording
a speech for a dinner that's recognizingstudents at Pitsilmana High School this weekend.
I'm not able to be there,but I just prepared my speech and in
it, I you know, Imentioned while it was hard at times to
get the ideas recorded and get themrepresented, it was really good to hear
(48:38):
that all of these groups had opinions. And I think the representation of each
group was better than our own government. I think they were actually representing their
peers. Are community members weren't alwaysthere for themselves. They were there for
everyone in the community. We hada member from the community. They ran
(48:59):
the local newspaper, the newspaper thatdistributus to the towns around us in our
town, and they were taking opinionsfrom the newspaper, from the opinion articles,
and they really they had been aroundthe town for a while and they
were really representing what the town wanted. And I think that having all our
bases covered, really learning how torecord and represent these ideas allowed us to
(49:25):
move forward in very efficient fashion aswell as effective fashion. What has all
this taught you about community building?It's the most important thing I think in
life. I was able to studyabroad last year in Costa Rica. I
was in a developing country. Ilived with a host family that didn't speak
(49:50):
any English. I went in knowingbasic high school Spanish, but I learned.
I studied their environment, I studiedwhat they were doing. This kind
of open my idea of community.You know, my community, as an
environmental science undergrad is everybody. That'smy large community, that's my group.
I want to improve the world,I want to improve the environment. But
(50:12):
without understanding what people want, whatpeople need, without seeing community or understanding
communities, that none of that wouldwould be possible. It seems so obvious
that the only way to improve abad situation is to listen to everyone who's
involved. But it's not something wellpracticed. When we don't feel heard,
(50:37):
we stop participating. And when westop participating, a community fails. By
listening to the community, to thestudents, to the parents, Pittsfield Middle
High improved test scores, improved morale, improved attendance, and then in turn
(50:58):
improved the community. Since the creationof site counsel and those early Saturday forums,
there's been a year over year increasein voter turnout in Pittsfield. Through
this process of improving the school,people realized they can affect change on a
(51:19):
grander level. While talking to John, Jenny and Maxwell, I couldn't help
but think of Parkland and how thosestudents have used their voices to create change,
and how by giving each sets ofthese students the autonomy and the platform
to speak up, we are creatinga generation of activists, a generation of
(51:44):
people who will be involved, whowill make change. And here's Greensburg Mayor
Bob Dixon. Again. If we'regoing to survive, it has to be
driven by the real community thought process. And I've spoken all over and I've
heard them tell me in major metropolitanareas well, we're not a small community.
(52:07):
And I said, yeah, youare. You are just a bunch
of small communities in a geographical citylimit. And how do you deal with
that? And the key is youhave to decide what is the character of
your little community there, and areyou willing to be informed, involved and
engaged in the processes of that community, And are you doing anything for the
(52:34):
youth and the younger people in thecommunity to have them being actively involved in
those processes, because that's the futureof your community.
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