Superintendent's Letter

Summer 2010

Dear Parent or Guardian:

As we enjoy the summer vacation and rest from the recently completed school year, I would like to bid farewell to our newly graduated seniors and extend an early welcome to our incoming kindergarteners and other new arrivals. Our graduates are happily preparing to begin the next stage in their education, with perhaps a few nostalgic  glances at the many memories of their years spent at Mystic Valley. They made quite a good impression on this year’s commencement speaker, Harvard Professor Paul Peterson, while garnering substantial scholarships and gaining entry to some of our nation’s finest colleges and universities. It is probably not easy for them to imagine themselves in first grade or kindergarten, where the foundation stones of later academic achievement were laid. So many changes occur in the formative years between six and eighteen, that it requires a real act of imagination to picture oneself learning to vocalize the symbols of the alphabet or carefully inscribe numbers on a page. But we all know that there was a time when these tasks were challenging-- a time when the concentrated effort of learning to read was a new adventure that would open up unsuspected worlds of vicarious experience. When we consider the long-term effect of this effort, it is clear that learning to read well is the single most important academic achievement in a child’s life. The Massachusetts poet, Emily Dickinson, expressed it beautifully when she likened the power of reading to a voyage of discovery: “There is no frigate like a book, to take us lands away…”

Learning to read is of such vital importance that our school has devoted considerable effort to researching the very best methods for giving all of our students the greatest opportunity to achieve mastery as early as possible in their schooling. Direct Instruction, the reading program implemented throughout our early grades, is the only approach to teaching reading that has been consistently proven to work best with students of all backgrounds and experiences. In fact, the most extensive federally-sponsored scientific study of reading programs ever undertaken, a decades-long effort known as Project Follow Through, established Direct Instruction as superior to any other program.  At Mystic Valley, we are proud to offer such a proven program for our students and families.

The members of our fifth graduating class are reaping the rewards of their efforts and the willingness to take full advantage of the opportunities offered to them, not only by the Direct Instruction program in their early years, but also in the rich curriculum offered throughout the school. And if the experiences of our first four graduating classes are any guide, most of them will return from their first college experience with the news that they were fully prepared and more. As we continue to relax during the summer, I would like to encourage you to spend some time reading with your child or perhaps make an occasional  trip to the local library. The habit of reading good books is well worth the effort.

Sincerely,

Joseph R. McCleary, Ph.D.
Superintendent/Director