Thoughts from our Head of School, Joseph Vorbach:
Last week, I wrote a bit about the links between the current students' experiences of Homecoming and those of the alumni returning to the school for our awards dinner and other events. There is a continuity from which a rich tradition has emerged and continues to be nurtured.
At the alumni awards dinner, I heard our Distinguished Alumni Award winner Dr. Joel Schmidt '76 express his gratitude to former O'Connell teacher Tom McNichol for encouraging him to take the National Math Exam. Hall of Fame inductee Dana Bredice Smith '82 thanked the same Tom McNichol, her cross country and track coach, for helping her recognize that life begins at the edge of your comfort zone and for giving her the love of running for life. Two-time Olympian and former world record holder, swimmer, Kate Ziegler '06 thanked O'Connell for extending and nurturing her Faith. The entire evening was wonderful and these comments from the award recipients, just a sampling, reflect the impact of positive, student-centered high school experiences.
On Monday and Tuesday of this week, I attended the AdvancED Virginia annual conference in Portsmouth, Va. AdvancED is our accrediting body and some of the conference was focused on the way in which data about student engagement is being captured and used to improve the learning experience. A lot of research has gone into the way in which accreditation visiting teams spend time in classrooms observing the students, focusing on student engagement. Obviously, the strongest evidence that learning is taking place is direct observation of students who are engaged in the process.
As I listened to the sharing of best practices at this conference, I was very encouraged by the alignment between what I was hearing and what is going on at Bishop O'Connell. We have a great deal of peer sharing going on among our faculty regarding strategies that maximize student engagement. Teachers are even posting signs outside their classrooms to encourage their professional peers to come in and observe. Teachers are also using a peer observation tool to capture generic data about practices being used in the school to engage students. Our instructional coaching program is supporting teac hers as they experiment with new strategies.
Modeling life-long learning is another gift that educators can share with their students and I am very encouraged by the degree to which our learning community is embracing approaches that value continuous improvement and student engagement. Twenty-five years from now, an O'Connell graduate from the class of 2017 will be standing at a podium receiving the Distinguished Alumni Award and thanking one of his/her mentors, a current faculty member, for making learning fun and meaningful and inspiring in them a lifelong interest in science, or engineering, or math, or history, or art, or theology, or literature, or language, or politics, or wellness....