Winnisquam Regional School District

Moving Forward at WRSD

What an exciting time to be a part of WRSD. For years, we have been working to develop a vision and plan for engaging everyone in building an amazing community here in Northfield, Tilton, and Sanbornton, NH. Over the past few years, we have seen the creation of many new initiatives, the revamping of existing initiatives and improved communication and collaboration throughout the three towns and schools. With all of this groundwork laid, we are about to embark on the next evolutionary step for this community where everyone can find meaningful ways to engage in activities to further enhance the lives and well being of every member of our community through participation, pathways to success, community involvement, and connections never before thought possible. Like I said before, what an exciting time to be a part of WRSD.

For over a year, hundreds of members of this community supported the development of our vision and three year plan for the district and each individual school. Our vision, Engaging Our Community For Brighter Futures, is simple, yet complex all at the same time. Simple in that it can easily be remembered and is something most all of us want, yet complex in that it does require folks to give of their very valuable time and extremely busy lives. In order for us to fully engage our community over the next three years, we will all need to look for what we can do to get involved in our community and support the engagement of our friends, families, neighbors, and most importantly, our children.

To support this effort, our schools are working to develop engaging, hands on opportunities for all students. We will look to find business, community, and family connections to our many activities and to get both the community to come into our schools and for our schools to go out into the community. By building these relationships, our young people will learn from experts in the field through direct interactions with the materials, people and equipment with which they will someday be working upon graduation from WRHS. Some of our more significant undertakings include developing engineering opportunities K-12 through Robotics, Project Lead the Way, the Huot, internships, ELO’s and more; developing agriculture K-12 through beekeeping, greenhouses at all three levels, outdoor classrooms, Internships, ELO’s and more; developing individualized plans for all students through interest inventories in elementary schools that lead to exploration of interests in middle school and finally allow students to apply their interests to a more customizable high school experience that includes learning and application both in and outside of our school buildings. Once again, a very exciting time to be part of WRSD.

So what about academics? Are we still focused on reading, writing and arithmetic? Absolutely, probably more than ever. We have highly qualified experts fully dedicated to seeing more young people develop these skills to an ever higher level. The biggest difference as we move forward is to recognize that reading, writing and math must be embedded within all aspects of education, not just a stand alone activity. When students are engrossed in robotics, they will be reading, writing and solving math problems right along with enhancing skills and abilities within science, social studies, and the arts, and throughout the process, developing their skills and abilities for collaboration, communication, and problem solving. WRSD is committed to ensuring our graduates have both the core academics (ELA, Math, Sci, SS, UA’s, & ELO’s) and what is often referred to as “Soft skills” by industry or “Habits/Work Habits” by our district. Both are required for our young people to find success in their lives after public education, whether that be college, apprenticeships, military, or work opportunities, our students will be prepared to dive right in and find success.

 ...