The Wyckoff Board of Education is embarking on an ambitious project to plan for the future of Wyckoff schools, the students and the community.
The promotional flyer, billed as Collaborating For Our Future, is aimed at engaging stakeholders in a collaborative process to discuss, debate, and help determine the direction of education in Wyckoff.
The stakeholders are varied, and not limited to parents. The initial workshops – 3- are broken down into categories for Wyckoff residents to register with: Community, Parents, Teacher & Staff
The Wyckoff Board of Education, working with the school superintendent, has developed a process to engage the community in a “transformative conversation about planning for the future of our schools.”
“During the first phase of this process, separate workshops for key groups of community members will take place. These workshops will involve a guided discussion of significant ideas underpinning the guiding principles for future planning….Workshop attendees will be provided with the opportunity to learn these ideas and then participate in a collaborative critical analysis through sharing of personal views and questions.”
The concept of collaborative leadership has grown in popularity with many private sector institutions who see the model offering an advantage when seeking to address complex problems. But the idea is not new to education.
John Dewey, one of the initial founders of the American philosophical tradition known as Pragmatism, examined the subject in 1916 with his publication of Democracy and Education.
“There is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, and communication. Men live in a community in virtue of the things which they have in common; and communication is the way in which they come to possess things in common. What they must have in common in order to form a community or society are aims, beliefs, aspirations, knowledge—a common understanding—like-mindedness as the sociologists say. Such things cannot be passed physically from one to another, like bricks; they cannot be shared as persons would share a pie by dividing it into physical pieces..”
The job of school district leaders has become a difficult and challenging one, with increasing demands for the success of every child. Tapping into the skills and resources of the entire community holds the potential to prove true that individuals, working together, can make a difference.