Greensburg Salem to stress student engagement, library access as fall classes near

Greensburg Salem’s younger students will be spending more time in their school library when fall classes begin, while teachers will be increasing their efforts to engage all students in learning.

Those are among plans Superintendent Ken Bissell has set forth for the 2022-23 school year, which will see students heading back to class Aug. 30.

Bissell told school board members last week students in grades K-5 at the district’s three elementary buildings will report to the library for courses in combined STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics) topics.

He later explained STEAM and library periods had been scheduled separately.

“Now we’ve kind of combined those,” he said. “We’ve moved the STEAM curriculum into the library so the students will also have access to literature.”

Bissell agreed with school board member Emily Miller about the importance of encouraging students to spend time reading beyond what is required.

He said school librarians will help guide students to topics they find interesting. “No. 1 is getting a book in their hands, and a book that they really want to read,” he said.

Students also will have access to makerspace equipment in the library for project-based learning.

Bissell noted eighth grade students, who traditionally have taken a spring day trip to Washington, D.C., have prepared for the trip with a project bridging their math and social studies classes.

“They research a location where they’re going to visit,” he explained. “They may do research about the Lincoln Memorial, about Lincoln and why the memorial is there.

“Mathematically, they have to create a scale model of the memorial and print it on a 3-D printer. It’s a difficult task. That’s a project they haven’t done in a couple of years, but they have access to do something like that again.”

One of the overriding goals for the district is to better engage students in the school community and in learning, Bissell said. It’s particularly needed after recent years when health protocols stemming from the covid-19 pandemic disrupted academic and extracurricular plans, with periods when students had to learn remotely from home.

Bissell said more than half of district students who completed a recent survey indicated they’re “disconnected with the school and the community.

“The focus is on us trying to engage more with (students), them engaging more with the school and trying to get people interacting with each other again,” Bissell said.

He said teachers will share classroom tips with each other and will look to pick up on additional instructional tactics by watching videos prepared by experts. Principals also will be coaching instructors and sitting in on classes.

Bissell noted he recently met with incoming high school seniors, who said they want to become involved at the district’s three elementary schools, mentoring younger students there.

“They remembered seeing seniors when they were in elementary school and idolizing them,” Bissell said. He said such a mentoring program could count toward community service goals for the older students.

On yet another level, Bissell said, he wants to get parents and families more involved in the district, in part by establishing parent advisory committees.

Meanwhile, he said, 77 community members responded to a survey and about 50 attended recent introductory meetings of stakeholders, to begin development of the district’s comprehensive plan update. Bissell said he wants more students to get involved in upcoming meetings.

“The student voice has to be a big part of it,” he said.

In another step of the planning process, the school board and the district teachers union each will select some members for committees that will address such areas as professional development and teacher induction.

One of the primary objectives of the comprehensive plan, Bissell said, is to set “three or four goals that we should be focused on over the next three years.”

A proposed version of the plan is to be submitted to the school board for review in February, followed by a vote in March. The approved three-year plan would go into effect July 1 of next year.