Dan Behm, Superintendent
Dan Behm is the superintendent of Forest Hills Public Schools. Since 2006, Dan has been charged with setting the vision and direction for the district. Dan believes in giving teachers and students the building blocks, tools and space they need to achieve their highest potential in the classroom and beyond. With help from education technology specialists, Dan and the Forest Hills administration are able to provide everyone in the district with the tools and skills to succeed in an increasingly digital world. Learn more about Dan’s approach to education and engaging today’s learner in our interview with him below.
What is your vision for the district?
Our vision is to customize education and learning on a mass scale. Our vision statement is five simple words: all learners achieving individual potential. We specifically talk about learners instead of children or students because as adults, we are learners as well. We want to move away from the idea that school is one size fits all. We want to individualize learning.
What are the biggest challenges students face today?
I think kids face a variety of challenges in our world. One challenge in particular is understanding that they are part of a world which is much larger than their current surroundings. Students need to understand that their perspective can be very different from others. It's through that understanding that we can see how much we have in common as human beings around the globe, which then allows us to approach things in new and exciting ways.
I think today, kids also face a challenge of preparing for a world that is highly dynamic in regard to the economy, jobs, and the market place as a whole. We are preparing kids today for careers that haven't yet been created. We're really trying to give students the building blocks of knowledge and skills to use when improvising for whatever economic situations call for and whatever they want to do in life.
What role does technology play in preparing students for the challenges they will face?
I think technology plays a wonderful role in understanding how international our world has become. Everything is so much closer for children that are growing up today than it was a few generations ago.
Technology helps remove the barriers of experiencing cultures and perspectives from around the globe. Our kids can interact with peers across the country and across the world; and not only with other kids, but also experts in the fields they’re studying.
How do you foster an environment that allows learners to explore what motivates them?
I think it's important to provide students with the building blocks of learning. We have to trust and empower our teachers to improvise with students in the classroom. Great educators understand the building blocks of education, just as the great jazz musicians understand the building blocks of music. With those building blocks, jazz musicians can improvise and create melodies that have never been heard before. That improvisation is exciting, and that's what we need to empower our teachers and students to do in our schools.
How do you give teachers and students the freedom to improvise?
Part of creating the conditions for people to feel that they have the building blocks to do something great is to have a clear destination in mind. We need to know where we want students to be by the end of our lessons. That starts with trusting and empowering teachers to find multiple pathways to get students to an endpoint. Great educators know where the endpoint for students should be and how to set the learner on the path that works best for them. By allowing learners to figure out their own path to learning, we create the authenticity, and the engagement, with learning. That's also how we customize learning on a mass scale.
How do you encourage teachers to learn and become more comfortable with technology in the classroom?
We think it's imperative that everyone in our school system is moving along a learning continuum that takes us from teaching and learning in a totally analog way to understanding how digital resources can connect us with a broader world. We’re learning how technology can help deepen meaning and understanding, and can help increase levels of engagement in students. However, we also know as adults that we are all in different places along the learning continuum. It's okay wherever you are in that continuum. It's just not okay to stand still. There are many people along the way that can help you.
What would you say to those who are uncomfortable with technology?
For those who may be reluctant to embrace a new world of technology, I would say that we’re not throwing out everything that we’ve come to understand about education. There is great teaching that happens absent of any electronic device or digital resource.
However, students today are speaking multiple languages. They're speaking a language we all may know and recognize, but they're also speaking in a way that is connected to this digital world. If we never engage in that world, we are setting up an artificial space at school that doesn't look like any other aspect of their world. We must guard against school becoming less and less relevant in students’ lives.
We need to recognize that we are in a time of profound change in education, something that we have not seen in several generations. That doesn't mean everything we have come to understand and know in previous generations is now gone. It means we need to integrate the old and the new ways of approaching education.
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