They are one of 35 schools in New Jersey to receive this certification.
Indian Mills Memorial School recently received its bronze certification as a future ready school.
At last week’s Shamong Board of Education meeting, Superintendent Christine Vespe and District Technology Coordinator Nelson Vasquez led a presentation on the future ready school initiative and how they achieved this certification.
Future ready framework is about the personalization of learning, student-centered learning, 21st century skills to gain a deeper learning, college and career readiness, digital citizenship, technology skills, and anywhere, anytime learning.
The framework is broken into three categories: leadership, curriculum and technology, to which each category has indicators the school must reach to become certified. All indicators are ranked by a point system.
The school was introduced to the future ready school initiative through IMMS media specialist Anastasia Hanneken, who is on the task force for future ready librarians.
Administrators then watched a webinar about the initiative and realized they met a large majority of the requirements to apply.
Phase one, district commitment, was completed last fall when Vespe signed the future ready pledge, the board passed a resolution to continue on with the process, a future ready team was established, self-assessments were done and the pre-application was submitted.
Phase two, school participation, consisted of collaborative meetings within the future ready team and the submission of the school participation letter.
Vasquez said that during the self-assessment portion, he sat down with Director of Curriculum and Instruction Laura Hoffman to pinpoint their strongest and weakest areas.
“The great part of future ready is it also allows you to view where you’re weak at, and then it provides avenues to continue to grow,” Vasquez said.
The last phase is school certification, in which the team develops a plan of action to receive the certification. This includes evidence of success, such as examples of activities and lesson plans.
The school also submitted a video where educators and students of IMMS showcased the different aspects of the school that make them future ready. These include makerspaces, a 3D printer, robotics, coding and more.
“I am proud to oversee a district that is rooted in tradition, embraces community involvement and prepares our students for success in high school and beyond,” Vespe said in the video. “Digital learning strategies are imbedded in the curricula and opportunities to stretch our students’ abilities exist throughout the school, preparing our students to live and work in a global society.”
IMMS ended up having enough points to gain silver certification, however future ready schools requires all schools to receive their bronze certification first.
“We are one of 35 schools to receive [bronze certification] this year in the state of New Jersey,” Vespe said. “We’re very proud of this initiative and it took quite a few people to get there — we thank all the teachers, all the staff, administrators, tech support and board members who supported this along the way, it was a nice challenge.”
Next month the board will vote to approve the elementary school’s first steps in becoming a future ready school.
In other news:
- The National Junior Honor Society at IMMS will be collecting blankets, towels and other supplies to help recently rescued dogs from a location in Shamong.
The next board of education meeting will take place on Dec. 18 at 7 p.m. at Indian Mills Memorial School.
