‘What hasn’t changed is the magic that happens between the teacher and the student,’ said Deborah Low, who’s retiring after 37 years in education, the last eight as Ridgefield’s superintendent of schools. —Macklin Reid photo
Looking back on nearly four decades in education, retiring Superintendent of Schools Deborah Low sees lots of changes, from the revolution in communication and research wrought by computer technology to the livening up of classrooms with student-centered approaches designed to engage children in thinking and learning, not just load them up with knowledge.
But some things remain.
“Our strategies around instruction and teaching — that has changed tremendously. What hasn’t changed is the magic that happens between the teacher and the student,” Low said.
“The art of teaching has not changed. How do you reach kids? How do you make a connection? How do you motivate? How do you discern if there’s an issue? That’s really the art of teaching.
“The thing that really hasn’t changed is the importance of the relationship between the teacher and student, their interaction,” she said.
Does Low have plans?
“No, not really. I’ve always known what I was going to do next in life, and now I don’t,” she said.
Low and her husband, Vin Tufo, executive director for the Charter Oak Condominiums in Stamford — “he’s not retiring,” she said — are eagerly awaiting the birth of their first grandchild.
“We’re expecting the arrival at the end of August and, of course, that’s just beyond words,” Low said.
Their son, Seth, 32, and his wife are in Chicago, but have a house they bought in Ridgefield before he was transferred by G.E., and hope eventually to move back with the family they’re starting.
Low’s younger son, Stephen, 25, also works for G.E., on the corporate audit staff, and has been moving around — Kansas City, Paris, Dubai.
Low isn’t looking far ahead. “We have a small house on the Cape and we’ll go there, and I’ll enjoy a longer than usual summer vacation,” she said.
“I’d like to find some ways to keep active and purposeful and contribute, but I want to spend some time searching for what that is.”
Binghamton beginning
Low has spent 37 years in education, the last eight as Ridgefield’s superintendent.
“I began as a middle school English teacher — back then it was called ‘junior high’ —in upstate New York, near Binghamton where she went to college,” she said.
She taught for nine years out in Michigan, where she started in administration as an assistant principal, and moved back East in 1987 to be a dean at Wilton High School.
She moved up the administrative ranks in Wilton — assistant principal, principal, assistant superintendent — and came to Ridgefield as superintendent of school in 2007.
“In eight years there’s been a lot of change. Looking back on a whole career it seems education is always changing. We say ‘Here comes the common core, and the new testing, and changing technology.’ ”
Much of the change has been for the better, leaving behind attitudes and assumptions of a past age.
“Girls were very rarely expected to be good at math. We had girls in ‘home ec’ and boys had ‘shop.’
“We did a horrible job with any kind of minority education,” she said. “…Quality education for all.”
Special needs students got much less attention, time and thought — the system’s expectations for them were low.
“Special education was just starting,” Low said.
“We didn’t hold very high expectations … Students were kind of off by themselves, in a separate wing.”
All around there was less effort to reach and accommodate students who were outside the mainstream — whether for economic reasons, family troubles, or because of developmental problems and special needs.
“If students didn’t want to finish high school — OK, they didn’t,” Low said.
“That idea — that we ensure all kids access to quality programs — that was a lot of change. And some of it slower than you might like.
Tracking, labels
“We used to ‘track’ all kids. People were labeled, early on: These are the smart kids, and the middle kids and the kids … you could just kind of shrug your shoulders about.
“That’s one way we’ve changed, that whole idea of labeling and holding totally different standards and expectations depending on those labels. We’ve come a long, long way. That ‘equal access, quality and high expectations for all kids’ has taken a while, but certainly represents tremendous change.”
It’s one of the best changes Low has seen in education.
“Getting rid of those labels was huge,” she said. “But the most positive movement was to structure the classroom, set up the learning, so kids are meaningfully engaged.
“They’re active. They’re thinking at a high level. So it’s not memorization. It’s not repetition. It’s not isolated facts. It’s not who can absorb the most. It’s not who can get through things the fastest. It’s not working in isolation.
“It’s understanding how each kid learns, so it’s not like the teacher is delivering one-size-fits-all,” she said. “I think we’ve come a long way.
“We’re trying to have rigor in higher level thinking — they need to analyze, compare and contrast, make conclusions, support arguments, and work with others.
“So there’s interaction in the classrooms now. When you go into them they’re much more lively. It’s sort of asking kids to think, to make meaning, to question.
“And I think it’s now OK for classes to be noisy — have some fun — but still thinking hard.
Schools and parents
The relationship between schools and parents has changed tremendously.
“There was a distance between parents and the schools,” Low said.
“I remember you’d have parent conferences in the evening once a year. You had an open house, perhaps, at the beginning of the school year. You might have to answer phone calls once in a while. And you had report cards. That was pretty much it.
“The home-school connection was not as strong. The idea was: You send your kids to school, we’ll do our thing, we’ll send them back.”
It’s good — mostly good.
“The movement toward more knowledge on the parents’ part, more partnership, can help kids learn,” Low said. “I understand there can be a down side. People become overly involved, where a student isn’t allowed to be independent, isn’t allowed to make mistakes, advocate for himself or herself. That’s the down side.
“But overall, parent knowledge, parent involvement with the school, parent partnership, supports learning.”
Computer revolution
The most surprising has been the way computer technology and the Internet have revolutionized communication, research, information gathering.
“How we can communicate and the access to information is just astounding,” Low said.
“When I was a grad student and having to get a copy of the research documents and having to sign away your life to get access — you had to go into the stacks and it took hours. I remember that world.
“Now all of that is at our fingertips, and it’s just astounding to me,” she said. “Now the information piece is just literally in your pocket. You can just access everything. That moving from a print world to the wireless is nothing short of miraculous.
“That’s why it’s been exciting, the last eight years, to bring in a wireless environment and have that infrastructure added,” Low said.
Ridgefield changes
There have been many changes over the last eight years, reflecting Low’s commitment to a planning process that continually seeks suggestions and ways to improve at the grass-roots level — parents, teachers — studies them, prioritizes, and pushes change along, even in tough times.
“It’s a tribute to the Board of Education — and a little bit to my nagging — that every year we’ve pushed forward,” Low said. “It’s been slow but steady, constant, and it’s been affordable.”
The changes are big and small, spread around the schools and the different levels of the system.
“I’m so excited about full-day kindergarten,” Low said.
“The recent adoption of the new math program” is another change, she points to, as is adoption of the “readers’ workshop” model for literacy.
The “responsive classroom” initiative in the elementary schools has focused on student behavior, interactions, citizenship.
“We’ve taken that very seriously, and that has help with setting a foundation for a safe school climate,” Low said.
The middle schools continue with programs focused on positive behavior by kids.
“Students are recognized for helping other students, standing up for other students, being kind, thoughtful,” she said.
The “advisory program,” started at the high school and now in both middle schools, has kids discuss among themselves life and issues that concern them, with teachers facilitating.
Other changes are in the academic realm. World language is now taught every day starting in sixth grade at the middle schools. The high school graduation requirements have been increased, and a revised rotating schedule opened up more instructional time.
Courses and programs have been added at the high school, including the three-year science research program that has kids reading deeply on science areas that interest them, choosing a topic, finding a mentor — often a college professor, or someone from industry — and designing and conducting original research.
The RISE, or Ridgefield Intensive Special Education, program started in the elementary schools and moved to the middle and high schools.
Progress with technology has been continual.
School security
And, there’s the school security initiative, with roots in the dark day of Dec. 14, 2012, when a deranged young man with a gun took the lives of 26 students sand staff at Sandy Hook School in Newtown.
“The sad thing we’ve had to do, we had to respond to the Newtown tragedy,” Low said.
“When I think of the whole effort to increase security, the school board and the whole community have been very supportive and understood we needed to implement increased security in the wake of that tragedy,” she said.
“Now we have security guards at every school, We have the visitor ID system, Then there’s the school resource officers. We now have three, we formerly had one.
“And, just as important, putting an increased emphasis on mental health,” she said.
This includes changes such as adding more school psychologists staffing, and programs aimed at parents as well as students.
“Just to better, better, better ensure that no kids falls through the cracks — that’s the goal,” Low said. “We’re not necessarily there yet, but there are a lot more supports than there had been.”
Low is proud of the school system she’s leaving, but doesn’t claim credit for it.
“Looking back eight years, I walked into a great district and I hope I’ve kept that reputation and moved it forward,” she said.
“I think there’s a great team of educators here.”
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