Local Schools Share in Williams College Olmsted Awards

Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., May 9, 2016—Williams College has announced its 2016 Bicentennial Olmsted Awards for Faculty Development to Adams-Cheshire Regional School District, Berkshire Arts and Technology Charter School (BART), Brayton Elementary School in North Adams, Lanesborough Elementary School, McCann Technical School, Mount Greylock Regional School, and Williamstown Elementary School. Each school will receive $5,000 for professional and curricular development projects.

Adams-Cheshire will use its Olmsted Award to hire two consultants and purchase the book Teaching with Poverty in Mind by Eric Jensen for the C.T. Plunkett School. Faculty at the school will work with the consultants to develop a plan to foster a safe, healthy, positive, and inclusive whole-school learning environment that enables students to develop positive relationships with adults and peers, regulate their emotions and behavior, achieve academic and non-academic success in school, and maintain physical and psychological health and well-being. The plan aims to foster positive approaches to inclusive learning and behavioral health that would help prevent dropouts and reduce rates of truancy, suspensions, and expulsions.

BART’s Olmsted grant will support three projects. The first will provide Spanish lessons for 18 faculty and staff members, to enable better communication and help build strong family-teacher partnerships among the school’s increasingly diverse community. The second project will fund workshops for teachers in a technology education program called Web-Enriched Classroom (WEC). The third project will support a new administrator support group at the school to support teachers who are also administrators at the school.

Brayton Elementary School will use its Olmsted grant to support continued training for teachers in the Leader in Me program, which incorporates leadership skills into the curriculum. The grant will allow Brayton to bring national Leader in Me educators and trainers to work with staff to increase student skills and self-confidence, improve academics, and decrease discipline referrals. The curriculum incorporates The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and other leadership tools.

For Lanesborough Elementary and Williamstown Elementary, the awards will help support their collaborative focus on STEM and provide a three-day professional development experience focusing on teaching math. The program will include ways to reinforce a deeper understanding of math, improve number fluency, use a student’s developmental age to increase learning, teach understanding and accuracy in mental and written math, and engage students in active discourse in the Common Core classroom. A portion of the grant also will support stipends for curriculum development over the summer and outside of school hours next year to help the schools transition to the new Massachusetts science standards.

McCann plans to use its Olmsted grant to help add expertise for a computer science and software engineering (CSE) course to its Project Lead the Way program. The CSE course will include computer application development, data visualization, cybersecurity, and simulation. The grant will support comprehensive training for two faculty members for two weeks this summer at Worcester Polytechnic Institute to develop and implement the new program.

Mount Greylock will use its Olmsted award to continue its 9th grade team model, which provides support for the academic, social, and emotional growth for ninth-graders. The school is planning two class trips, including a hike of Mount Greylock and participation in Ramblewild’s tree-to-tree aerial course and low-ropes course. The grant also will provide a stipend for a 9th grade team faculty leader to organize events, collaborate with the peer team and colleagues, and coordinate outside speakers.

The local Olmsted Awards are funded by an endowment from the estates of George Olmsted, Jr. ’24 and his wife Frances. The awards were established in 1993, on the occasion of Williams’ Bicentennial Celebration. They are an extension of the national Olmsted Prizes, which are administered each year to secondary school teachers from around the country, nominated by students of Williams’ senior class. Olmsted, a lifelong advocate of superior teaching, was president and chairman of the board of the S.D. Warren (Paper) Company.

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Founded in 1793, Williams College is the second-oldest institution of higher learning in Massachusetts. The college’s 2,000 students are taught by a faculty noted for the quality of their teaching and research, and the achievement of academic goals includes active participation of students with faculty in their research. Students’ educational experience is enriched by the residential campus environment in Williamstown, Mass., which provides a host of opportunities for interaction with one another and with faculty beyond the classroom. Admission decisions on U.S. applicants are made regardless of a student’s financial ability, and the college provides grants and other assistance to meet the demonstrated needs of all who are admitted.

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Published May 9, 2016