From Our Principal

September 15, 2007

Dear CMS Families,

While it might be a sign of old age, I was excited to see summer come to an end as I anticipated a new school year. With all of their tremendous energy, insights, and noise, the students have not disappointed. We are off to a great start. As our school continues to evolve through increasing and decreasing enrollments, changing budgets, and the retirements of valuable faculty members, the CMS staff has felt that it was critical to identify what our highest priorities and hopes were for our students. After much thought over the last few months, we have drafted three core values that we will share with the School Advisory Committee during 2007-2008. Our three great hopes—values—for our students are that they achieve, they develop into good citizens, and that they become life-long learners.

At this time, I would like to focus on what we mean by our first core value, "high achievement." We measure an aspect of high achievement through test scores and grades. (Next month, I will use this space to discuss the 2007 MCAS scores.) We cannot, however, adequately express our expectations for our students' achievement through test scores. CMS teachers work during the summer and throughout the school year to develop curricula and teaching strategies that encourage students to develop intellectual independence. Throughout the year, teachers exhort students to use the basic skills they are learning to mold their own perspectives as mathematicians, scientists, or historians. Our belief is that with the increased resourcefulness and self-confidence that come with expressing their own point of view, our students deepen the mastery of those basic skills. As a result you should see them fulfill their potential on standardized tests as well as become deeply engaged with, and offer sophisticated insights into, their studies.

Nowhere is our vision for the flexible, curious, independent, and communicative student better articulated than it is in the art classes of Concord Middle School. Over the past four years, Linda Anderson, Cheryl Shea, and Rachel Plante have transformed our visual art program. Beginning in sixth grade, even as they are introduced to the elements of design, students discover that they have a powerful "visual voice." In seventh and eighth grade they pursue specific conceptual themes, developing skills that enable them to make thoughtful choices about, for example, how to express their perception of the imagined and natural worlds, explore many ways to think about portraiture, or pursue bookmaking as an art form. For those who wish to investigate further, the art teachers have created woodworking and pottery electives and after-school studio programs. Unlike all middle school art curricula that I have seen, our students do not parade through a mix of sculpture and painting projects, with the final products—and their varying degrees of beauty —the centerpieces of their achievement. CMS student-artists do produce inspired work, but, more importantly, their art teachers nurture their observation and communication skills through thoughtful assignments and supportive critiques that free them to act as true artists.

Next month, as I report to you on our performance on the 2007 MCAS, it is critical to remember the impact that "nonacademic" subjects have on our students' achievement.

Thank you.
Sincerely,
Arthur Unobskey, Principal

From our Principal: September, 2007 | October, 2007 | November, 2007