News & Announcements

A glimpse of Valentine's Day fun at Washington School and around the district.

Self-Management is the second of five core competencies of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). It is the ability to successfully regulate your emotions, thoughts and behaviors in different situations, to effectively manage stress, control impulses and to set and work toward personal and academic goals. In this third segment of the district's series of TED-style Talks on SEL, Westfield High School principal Dr. Derrick Nelson outlines the critical importance of self-management in our schools and in our lives.

The first of the Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) competencies is Self-Awareness. Self-awareness is crucial to all levels of success. When we are self-aware, we are able to recognize our emotions and how we respond to them, identify our strengths and weaknesses, and appreciate our self-worth and capabilities. As part of a series of TED-style Talks produced by the Westfield Public School District to explain SEL and how it is being used in our district, K-12 Director of Guidance Maureen Mazzarese focuses on the Self-Awareness competency of SEL, which allows us to live courageously, pursue our individual goals and dreams, and be our true selves.

On any given day throughout the school year, in any of the 10 schools in the Westfield Public School District, there are coat drives and food drives and collections of everyday items for communities in need. There are Two Lunch Thursdays and Extra Lunch Wednesdays where students bring an extra lunch and meet to make sandwiches, donating the lunches and sandwiches to food pantries and homeless shelters. There are dance-a-thons and math-a-thons and many other initiatives to raise money for pediatric cancer research and other charitable causes. And whether observing Kindness Month or taking The Great Kindness Challenge or encouraging Random Acts of Kindness, there’s a common theme taking place this month and last across the district.

The Westfield Public School District has created a series of short TED-style Talks to explain Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and each of its five core competencies, with examples of how they are being used in our district and the research that tells us why they work. We hope this series helps you to better understand the tremendous benefits of Social and Emotional Learning. We start with this introductory overview by Superintendent Dr. Margaret Dolan, to be followed for the next five weeks by a new TED-style Talk focusing on each of the 5 competencies.

The district's series of TED-style Talks on Social and Emotional Learning and the interview process to fill two vacant seats on the Board of Education are among the topics discussed in the February 5 issue of the Superintendent's Synopsis.

The February-March 2019 issue of Arts a la Carte is filled with information and photographs of what's happening in our art studios and music classrooms across the district, along with news of the many honors earned by our talented student artists and musicians. Enjoy!

“We have many wonderful STEAM opportunities for students around the district that let them build on the science skills they develop in their classes,” says Thomas Paterson, Supervisor of K-12 Science. Click the link above for a summary, along with oodles of images, of the many activities surrounding science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics in Westfield Public Schools.

There was a low hum of excited voices in the Washington School library on Dec. 5 as a group of third and fifth graders took part in Hour of Code activities during Computer Science Education Week.

A complete summary of the Board of Education's annual organization meeting on January 3, 2019 at which board members unanimously approved a new president and vice president and the superintendent provided an update on the district's 2018-2019 goals.