The Greater Portage Chamber of Commerce held their monthly luncheon on Thursday August 20, 2015, and the theme was appropriate for the school year that just began this week for many Northwest Indiana students.
The speaker for the August Luncheon was Dr. Richard Weigel, superintendent of Portage Township Schools. Dr. Weigel spoke on the changing generations and how we need to be thinking differently about how our children are gaining and using knowledge.
“The question we want to ask ourselves is, ‘Are we preparing our kids for their future or are we replicating what we’ve always done?’ We accepted old educational design because it promised kids a job, but now everything is changing because technology is changing,” Dr. Weigel said. “But we need to ask ourselves what the promise of tomorrow is.”
What Dr. Weigel refers to when he said “old educational design” is the educational structure that was in place during the Industrial Revolution. It was created when child labor laws were going into effect and it was meant to give kids basic skills that they could use in the workforce when they got older. We had gone from an agrarian society to an industrial society, and now we are going from an industrial society to a technological society.
Technology is advancing faster and faster every day and we need to keep up. Many of us have grown up without computers or cell phones in our hands but our children and grandchildren didn’t, and they are hardwired to understand things concerning technology since they were born into a world of smart phones and wireless everything.
Dr. Weigel shared that the Portage Township School is implementing new ways of educating our kids. He talked about:
- Educators no longer helping students find the facts but helping them learn how to utilize those facts
- Teaching kids how to think and to ask questions instead of just being talked at
- STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math. Many countries are concentrating on STEM, but the arts are so important. People who have made the biggest impacts in history have the arts in their lives whether it be playing an instrument, painting, dancing, singing, ect. The arts utilizes whole brain teaching
- Whole brain teaching – this is a technique that combines direct instruction with sharing of that instruction using physical movements. This helps the brain to retain knowledge better.
- More technology in schools. Portage Township Schools has a goal of giving every child grades 6-9 an iPad to use for school
- Using new skills that they learn in schools, kids will be able to transition into the workplace easier
And Dr. Weigel spoke of nine core values that kids can use while they’re learning: Zest, Grit, Self-Control, Optimism, Gratitude, Social Intelligence, Curiosity, the 4 C’s (Critical Thinking, Creativity, Communication, Collaboration), and Employability Skills.
“A year ago I said that we were going to go from good to great. Today I stand before you and I can say that we’re not doing that anymore. We’re going from great to excellent. We have great teachers, great administrators, great board members, great kids and our achievement is excellent. We are an ‘A’ school district,” Dr. Weigel said. ‘We feel that we are going in a very positive direction.”