School prepares to install a Promethean white board
By Angela Greiner Contributing Writer

PHOTO/ANGELA GREINER (l to r) Julie Parcel and Martha McCook of Immaculate Conception School

Marlborough - William Butler Yeats said, "Education is not the filling of the pail, but the lighting of a fire." Immaculate Conception (IC) School in Marlborough has started a fire in its students that has led to its middle school students receiving the most awards in a national writing competition for middle and high school students.

"Math Moves U" was a nationwide competition held in the spring: students in middle school and high school were asked to write an essay about math. The winning participants in the Raytheonsponsored competition each received a scholarship for $1,000 and the school received a matching $1,000 for each student. IC middle school, grades six through eight, had 20 students who won, more than any school in the country.

Julie Parcel, a parent, and Martha McCook, IC principal, attributed the students' success to a program in the school called "Writing Across the Curriculum." The program, McCook said, has been run by a writing consultant for the past 10 years and the students start writing about various subjects in kindergarten and continue to build each year.

"With a few props, the students can write in all genres," McCook said.

The $20,000 the school received will be used to purchase and install a Promethean white board, a hand-held Activote Response Unit, computer software, and new math textbooks. The white board will be installed in the math classroom and will be primarily used on a daily basis by the math and science departments, but also be available for the use by all the middle school teachers.

McCook explained that they picked the Promethean board because it is geared specifically for the classroom. The board is an education tool that allows teachers to create digital quizzes, text, images, test, web, video and audio content.

The classroom will also be equipped with an Activote Response Unit for each student, which will allow the students to individually answer questions. This will allow the teacher to instantly evaluate who is, or is not, comprehending the lesson. McCook said she envisions that this will be an excellent resource for teachers to evaluate if they need to repeat a lesson or to move ahead more quickly.

McCook believes that it is important to move forward and to bring technology into the classroom, she said, and hopes that parent groups will see the value of the white board and raise funds so that other classrooms can be outfitted with them.

IC School focuses on small class sizes, foreign language classes, the arts and a core academic foundation. Parcel attributes the school's success to excellent leadership and a highly qualified and dedicated staff .

"A Catholic school can not always compete with public schools in physical plant," Parcel said, "but what goes on inside the walls of IC [School] is second to none."