Think for a minute about your dream job...really think.  For some of you it's easy to bring to mind a classroom full of studious children or perhaps an operating table or even a cramped seat in NASA's newest space shuttle.  Now imagine trying to conjure a vision in your mind of jobs that don't yet exist.  How can we possibly give students all of the knowledge they will need to perform in a job we cannot yet see to solve a problem we do not yet know about?  This is the challenge of education in our current decade.  There are statistics about the percentage of students who will enter careers that are not currently known to us.  As such, our job is to prepare students with a set of life skills, rather than just a collection of content knowledge.  

As we move into innovative instruction, academic knowledge and skills, of course, will be at the core of what we do. However, we will not stop there.  We will assess the skills that our students need in order to succeed in the workforce and in life, regardless of what career choice they make.  Skills such as collaboration, communication, creative problem solving and critical thinking ("Most Likely to Succeed" by Wagner & Dintersmith) must be embedded into the work our students do on a daily basis.  On this website you will find how the curriculum adopted by the Morris Plains School District's Board of Education supports this vision of learning and requires students to engage in performance tasks which require the use of critical skills to show mastery of academic content.  

Please visit this site often for important resources and updates.  If you have any questions, please reach out to me at mcrudele@mpsdk8.org.