Letter: Getting a Glimpse of the Impressive WHS Offerings that Prepare Wilton Students So Well

To the Editor:

Attending the Wilton High School Open House two weeks ago was a really extraordinary experience.^* The Open House invites parents and caregivers to proceed from classroom to classroom following the eight-period schedule of their own individual student but with the periods reduced to 10-minute blocks, not the usual much longer full-period time, of course. 

Even in those shortened blocks what I saw was really impressive as I received a small glimpse of what Wilton’s high school students are studying in the half-dozen classrooms that I visited and where I met the educators who teach there.

My classroom experiences ranged from English, the Literacy Seminar, U.S. History, and Classical Languages, to Algebra, Environmental Sciences, and Phys.Ed/Health. Along the way, I encountered studies of plays like Macbeth linked to very differing film adaptations of them. I heard described history work that includes a research project embedded within the course for which students choose their own topics within a broad thematic concept that differs each year. As an example of some of the creative topics that students have come up with in past years: analyzing how the popular music of a historical period reflected that period and maybe even helped to create or further propel movements within it.  

I heard reference to the linkages between environmental science and subjects ranging from environmental ethics (concerning, for example, “forever” chemical contaminants in water supplies and the need for their remediation) to working in a classroom garden, among many other subjects covered in that one science course. And I saw the steps being taken in mainstreaming special needs students and how educators team together to give support in the classroom itself with that objective in mind while extending support to all of the students in the class so that none feels (or appears to be) individually singled out. 

I saw an impressive array of math skills all subsumed in one course under the heading Algebra 2, and a seminar program in writing that gives highly individualized support to students who need it. And I got a tour of the Classics classroom of a teacher friend who specializes in that subject and brings it to life for his students in ways that transcend language mastery itself (though with impressive honors in the linguistic field regularly earned by his students in national testing). He does so by reaching into culture and history to make for a full-blown study of ancient civilizations on which successive ages down to our own have been built.  

The range of material covered in these courses is really quite remarkable, and more than a few are ones in which I wish that I could be a student even at my advanced age! 

One of the most unexpectedly impressive (given what I remember of it from the education I received over six decades ago) portions of the evening was the presentation on the Physical Education and Health program. The concept of what is covered in Health is really total wellness in the sense of helping a person in specific ways — providing both knowledge and approaches to wellness — to be the capable and caring adult that the school seeks to foster and that we all hope to have as a key end-product of a good education at whatever level it’s happening.

What I’ve heard multiple times from young fellow parishioners who studied at Wilton High School on their return from college during breaks and for the summer is how well our high school prepared them and how advanced they were in their studies generally (including in that college staple, essay writing) from their fellow students who went to high school elsewhere. That’s something we’ve come to expect, and it’s a huge contribution that we make to the next generation, giving them a great leg up as they move forward academically.

What I’ve also seen is how well Wilton schools at all grade levels work to prepare students beyond their academic studies alone to be good citizens and human beings. That’s certainly not to say that there aren’t a lot of stressors both here and more generally, as a program being held by the Wilton Youth Council at the Wilton Library next week (Tuesday, Oct. 17 at 7 p.m.) will address. The program’s speaker, Jennifer Breheny Wallace, will be discussing her book, Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic — and What We Can Do About It. Her book’s title speaks volumes about this very serious issue. 

Our schools advance their “portrait of a graduate” with the strong encouragement of our Board of Education as a lodestar for the whole Wilton School District. Responding to toxicity, the portrait wisely reflects an effort to envision and encompass education to address the whole person as a “balanced, healthy human being, a courageous ethical leader, and an active socially-sensitive citizen” not solely as a “contemporary multi-literate scholar and a self-navigating expert learner.”   

That’s no small order, but from what I saw at this Open House, it’s very much an active work in progress for all of our students. 

Steve Hudspeth

^*Mr. Hudspeth was asked to attend this Open House by the mother of a WHS junior because after a full day of work she’d been called by her employer to work a second, evening shift; Hudspeth attended as her representative with the student’s own approval and strong encouragement.