I’ve had a few hours to think over my experience yesterday evening at the Belmont Public Schools’ first ever Community Dialog, so I feel very confident in declaring the event a big hit. I’ll be honest: I tend to be a communo-skeptic. I worried that busy residents wouldn’t be able to break away for a late afternoon, mid-week gathering, or would scoff at the very idea of coming together to talk about their hopes and dreams for the future of Belmont’s schools. A lightly attended Dialog, populated by the “usual suspects” wouldn’t have the same transformative possibilities and would be easy to dismiss, or so I thought.

Attendees waiting to sign in

But there were signs from the start that my fears were misplaced. Maybe it was the  long line of attendees –spanning three generations –waiting to sign in. Or maybe it was the inspirational video of the Black Eyed Peas leading a 20,000 person flash mob through a choreographed dance routine that kicked off the Dialog — a video that, as Superintendent Entwistle explained– illustrated the possibilities of what even perfect strangers can accomplish when they let go of their doubts and inhibitions and work together.

Starting off with an inspirational video

Dialog topics getting registered

The big board of topics

From there, frankly, things got even better: Superintendent Entwistle and his staff at BPS, including Director of Technology Steve Mazzola and crew, did a masterful job orchestrating this BPS be-in: there was a clear process by which dialog topics were generated and disseminated to the assembled. A large schedule directed attendees to numbered, color coded tables where their idea of interest was being discussed, while laptops at each table allowed the fruits of the various dialogs to be captured and posted online for further discussion afterwards. (B2 will post a link to the dialogs when they become available within the next day or so.) Details, right down to a hurry up 20 minute dinner break went off without a hitch — no small feat, given the size of the crowd and the fact that nobody in town had ever done something like this before.

One dialog topic

Topic ideas grouped by likeness

Another dialog topic

I sat in on three separate dialogs last night. The first was about introducing early foreign language instruction in the Belmont Public Schools. There were around eight of us gathered around the table, and the breakdown of participants reflected the diversity of voices at last night’s dialog: there were parents of current elementary and high school students, a current BHS sophomore, a retiree and a current foreign language teacher in the BPS. The discussion — much of it led and informed by the student at the table, not the adults, focused on the critical importance of foreign language training to the long term competitiveness of the U.S., the shortcomings of our existing foreign language requirements and curriculum and ways to get students studying earlier, despite budget and scheduling restraints. I took notes and I think some great ideas came out of the discussion. In the second session, I sat in on a couple dialogs. One, proposed and led by Rep. Will Brownsberger, addressed the idea of online learning and ways that BPS might introduce online coursework as a way to broaden its current curriculum offerings, serve the diverse needs of its students and save money. Again: students, community members, BPS staff and parents filled out the group and the discussion was eye opening and constructive. Clearly, this isn’t the dawn of some educational Age of Aquarius. There are big, hairy, hard to solve problems and obstacles that surfaced in almost every dialog last night: budget and resource constraints, testing mandates from the state and federal government, the structure of the current school day and school year, which leave little room for innovation. But the success of last night’s Dialog now gives Superintendent Entwistle a great resource with which he can formulate his own 18 month plan for the BPS, and subsequent 18 month plans after that. Namely: a grass-roots, ground-up view of what ideas, hopes and concerns animate our community. Without a doubt, there will be low hanging fruit to pick from last night’s Dialog – small ideas and tweaks that might be implemented without much fuss. There are also bigger, more revolutionary ideas out there that might take years to realize, or that may never get off the ground. But the Superintendent and BPS deserve loads of credit for taking a chance with the Dialog and for showing the community that they’re willing to throw open the doors and their minds to any and all ideas for ways to improve the type and quality of education Belmont offers in its schools. As one high school student –looking somewhat stunned — offered in conclusion last night: “It was just cool to hear that adults and teachers were thinking a lot of the same things that we were!” One of the requirements for participating in the Dialog was that you had to leave your “baggage” behind — your fears, preconceptions and cynicism. I think that we all dropped a lot of baggage last night and hope that will make the process of moving forward all the easier. Well done, Belmont!