Exciting Small Steps for Monomoy Regional High School

The slow process of creating the new regional school district is moving forward. Curriculum task forces comprised of teachers from both Harwich and Chatham have been established and have been involved since December working on merging curricula for the new district. We have just learned that the Provincetown School Committee is interested in either tuitioning its students to Monomoy or becoming a member of the new region. We have recently petitioned the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) for their approval to combine Harwich and Chatham athletic teams under the banner of Monomoy beginning next year since the new district becomes fully operational on July 1, 2012. We expect to receive a favorable response by mid-week and surely this will be the subject of a post in the near future. This past Thursday evening the Monomoy School Building Committee heard a presentation from the newly selected Owner's Project Manager, Skanska Corporation, in which they outlined their role in the planning and construction of the new building. During their presentation they discussed an extremely aggressive timeline which hopefully will result in breaking ground this fall and opening the new school in September of 2014. They also explained that the planning process would include multiple opportunities for all of the important constituencies to be involved and provide input into the design process. Within the next few weeks it is expected that we will have an architectural firm on board and we will finally know which of the model schools will be available to Monomoy for our new building. These are indeed exciting times!

So progress is being made every day, however the most exciting development occurred just yesterday. Faculty from both districts came together in a joint in-service day at Harwich High School. There was a session for all in the morning on the use of technology and social media and people socialized over lunch. In the afternoon, the high school faculties came together to begin working on identifying core values and beliefs for what will become our new school. In essence, this was an interactive workshop to create a vision for Monomoy Regional High School. Harwich principal Kevin Turner and I planned and facilitated an afternoon that engaged a room full of professionals in an exciting exercise that was not only productive and exciting but lots of fun as well. There was an inspirational video presentation entitled Passion and Persistence and a number of questions to stimulate their thinking and provide information for the culminating activity. Instructional leaders at each table masterfully guided the discussions and built consensus around key concepts and ideas. But the best was saved for last. Each group was charged with producing a 60 second evening news type video clip describing Monomoy Regional based on the vision of the school that had emerged from their discussions. I have never seen teachers so happily engaged during an in-service activity but, more importantly, what they all produced was absolutely incredible. There were clips modeled on news interviews, a parody of Father Guido Sarducci's Five Minute University, a song about the new school to the tune of Take Me Out to The Ball Game, and an amazing rap song complete with hoodies, sideways baseball caps and low-slung jeans. There was much laughter and fun, lots of great collaboration, and best of all, a stack of mini-essays that they all wrote as their ticket to leave describing their ideal school. I don't think I have ever experienced a professional development in-service day as positive and as powerful as what we all experienced yesterday.

I might also add that the sight of many of the Chatham faculty arriving at yesterday's in-service wearing their new Monomoy sweatshirts sent a strong message to all that, as much as we love our school and will continue to be Chatham High School for the immediate future, we are also just as committed to moving forward and being part of the exciting new school called Monomoy.

Thank you to all who participated yesterday and made it such a successful, positive, and productive day.