Teaching and learning is innovative, engaging and rigorous so that students become self-directed learners and achieve academic and personal success.
Goal: Refine curriculum and instruction to address revised New York state standards and regulations.
- A high school committee is looking at expanding the definition of student success and how an expanded definition could change the instructional program. The group surveyed several high-performing districts downstate about their programs and collected and started reviewing course catalogues and school profiles from districts across the state.
Goal: To establish and support redundant internet linkages in order to maintain uncompromised connectivity for daily classroom instruction.
- At the start of the 2018-19 school year, the Central New York Regional Information Center experienced cyberattacks that resulted in several internet service disruptions for school districts across Central New York, including Fayetteville-Manlius. To prevent the likelihood of this happening again, the district added a second service line so that in the event of an internet or power outage, teaching and learning would not be disrupted.
Goal: Support professional development for teachers in an educational environment of accelerated change.
- Eagle Hill Middle School staff focused on collaborating across grade levels and content areas, sharing strategies and student successes in such areas as differentiated instruction, integrating virtual reality, using Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) resources and encouraging students’ individuality.
- Elementary-level teaching staff collectively read “The Curious Classroom,” by Harvey Daniels, which focuses on how to nurture curiosity in students to engage them in curriculum. Staff members followed-up with discussions that delved into what they read.
- As part of its membership in the Innovation and Transformational Leadership Network, a collaborative of select superintendents and members of their leadership teams, Mott Road hosted officials from the Niskayuna Central School District, a high-performing district in New York’s Capital Region. Niskayuna was interested in collaborating and sharing resources related to the inquiry-based learning strategies that all three of F-M’s elementary schools have implemented.
Goal: Expand course offerings, units of study and learning opportunities that promote student engagement and allow for student voice and choice.
- District wide, staff have been implementing new teaching strategies to energize and engage their students. There has been a focus on interdisciplinary projects and inquiry-based instruction, in which students are encouraged to ask questions, “wonder” about topics and then seek out research-based answers to their questions. This is demonstrated through such activities as the elementary and middle school Wonder Walls and events such as the elementary schools’ Genius Hours, where students research a topic of choice in depth.
- To promote student engagement and voice and choice, Wellwood staff members are creating interdisciplinary units and projects within each grade level and examining the schedule for opportunities to promote interdisciplinary work.
- Eagle Hill and Wellwood middle schools implemented a high school credit-bearing course, Agents of Change, in which students envision, plan and carry out an authentic project. The course was a featured presentation at the 2019 Model Schools Conference held in Washington, D.C.