To paraphrase Antoine de Saint-Exupery, “If you want to build a boat, don’t drum up people to collect wood but rather teach them to yearn for the sea.”
We have seen that approach – to drive people to greater heights by igniting their imaginations – working in the Manchester School District under the leadership of Superintendent Dr. Debra Livingston. We have members of the business community, educators, the university and community college systems all coming together around the same table to discuss education reform. To watch this is simply unprecedented.
While we’re all proud of our local communities, we must acknowledge that we live in the greater world and this is a world calling for graduates who can work collaboratively to solve problems. The days of rote memorization must be relegated to our memories.
This movement can be seen everywhere. Just last week, a professor at MIT left her position to start a new university without lectures or classrooms. The goal: to prepare students to succeed in a fast-paced, technologically driven world.
This is an example in which the Manchester School District has been one step ahead of the trends at MIT. Dyn and SilverTech, alongside many other community supporters, including thirty businesses and foundations, helped found the STEAM Ahead NH initiative, which is an optional program for students piloted at West High School in the fall of 2014. Over $300,000 in private donations have been raised to support STEAM Ahead. This isn’t endless conversations at late night meetings. This is action that is having a positive impact on the lives of our young people.
Now in its second year, students enrolled in STEAM average about 97% daily attendance, achieve grade point averages 25% higher than students not enrolled in STEAM and are fifteen times less likely to be suspended from school. More than 10% of the WEST High School student body choose to enroll in STEAM. It is truly a diverse cross-section of kids. These students will have external learning opportunities – job shadowing experiences beginning in their junior year and will have opportunities for internships with area businesses during their senior year.
STEAM Ahead has received extensive local, statewide and national publicity because of the innovative educational process that addresses the needs of the business community to graduate students with interests in pursuing career post-secondary education and job opportunities in the STEAM fields. For educators, it’s an exciting development in curriculum delivery, classroom autonomy and has many opportunities for teacher professional development. It has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Fox Business.
These types of headlines are the result of a lot of work behind the scenes. In our own professional lives, we have seen the impact leadership has on an organization. We are fortunate to have leaders in Manchester’s educational system who are moving their schools forward. WEST High School Principal Chris Motika has seen the opportunity STEAM Ahead provides and has embraced it. Parker-Varney, under the leadership of Principal Amy Allen, became a 2015 NH School of Excellence. Our superintendent, Dr. Livingston, is no stranger to that award. During her previous tenure at Fall Mountain, multiple schools received the NH School of Excellence Award. She is now beginning to make that impact here in Manchester. Hats off to her and the district for their success.
Adding to Manchester’s success story, Memorial High School principal Arthur Adamakos was named the 2015 High School Principal of the Year, Northwest principal Sherry Larochelle was named the 2016 Elementary Principal of the Year and Parker-Varney teacher Ashley Preston was named the 2016 Teacher of the Year.
All of this has been positive notoriety for the City of Manchester on a local and national stage and has led to countless discussions with other communities and institutions interested in our models who look to us as innovators and leaders. We can never underestimate the impact of positivity.
On the flipside, negativity can cast a cloud that hovers over far more than our schools. Constant negativity and focusing on what still needs to be done instead of celebrating the progress we’ve made, reflects poorly on our businesses and our city itself.
To succeed there will be many obstacles to fight against. We should not waste any energy fighting each other. We should instead take pride in all that we have accomplished together.
It is easy to complain without offering solutions. It is easy to reject what is new for the comfort of what we know, even if we know it doesn’t work. But we didn’t join the fight to make our schools and community better, because it was easy. We did it because our children are worth it.
Of course, we still have more work to do. Recently, we spoke with someone who does not live in Manchester and has young children. They fully recognize that living in Manchester would highly benefit them professionally but are frankly “scared” of the Manchester School District. The reality is great work is being done under the leadership of Dr. Livingston and her staff, yet the constant barrage of negativity around our schools threatens this progress. There’s always more work to be done but let’s all help in a civil and productive manner.
Jeremy Hitchcock, CEO of Dyn
Nick Soggu, President and CEO, SilverTech
Dean Kamen, Founder, DEKA Research & Development
Frank Wells, Chair, Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce Education Committee
Paul LeBlanc, President, SNHU
Howard Brodsky, Chairman, Co-CEO, CCA Global Partners
Mary Heath, State Representative, former NH Deputy Commissioner of Education
Philip Taub, Partner, Nixon Peabody
Brad Cook, Partner, Sheehan, Phinney, Bass and Green
Peter Ramsey, President and CEO, Palace Theatre
Gray Chynoweth, Executive VP, COO, SilverTech
Susan Huard, President, Manchester Community College
Ray McNulty, Dean, School of Education, SNHU
Will Kanteres, Kanteres Real Estate
Ronald H. Covey, President and CEO, St. Mary’s Bank
Joseph Pepe, MD, President and CEO, Catholic Medical Center
