E. C. Goodwin is a school that grows better with each successive school year.  We are continue to move positively toward the Technical High School mission:

• ensuring both student academic success, and trade/technology mastery and instills a zest for lifelong learning;
• preparing students for post-secondary education, including apprenticeships, and immediate productive employment;
• and responding to employers' and industries' current and emerging and changing global workforce needs and expectations through business/school partnerships.

As a school under re-construction, we are experiencing notable change.  The building has undergone almost complete remodeling, with the challenges of dust, clatter and inconvenience due to be behind us by Spring 2009.  The community within the school is morphing as well. 

Our efforts to improve our school focus on three goals:

A positive environment is one in which all members of the school community, students, teachers and staff feel safe and respected in all situations. We encourage communication at all levels and have established a progressive discipline model designed to help students address the root causes of problem issues rather than just the symptoms. We hold weekly Student Assistance Team (SAT) meetings to discuss concerns referred to our student support staff. We have developed an exemplary Peer-Mediation model which has proved effective in dealing with many student-to-student concerns. We have introduced anger management training and piloted an animal therapy project in which students learn approachability skills as part of interpersonal development.

At least monthly, as Principal, I meet with a randomly selected group of about a dozen students to determine their levels of satisfaction with our school. We discuss what students and their families need and want. The goal is to make our school more client-friendly while maintaining rigorous learning standards.

We strive for excellence in teaching and learning, recognizing that we all must assume responsibility for the work we do in our nation’s school.  The challenge presented by educational systems in general is permitting students to sit back and let teachers do the work of teaching and allowing students to decide whether they choose to learn. This approach has yielded unsatisfactory results. We believe that students need to be actively engaged so when they make choices about learning, the process as well as the content.  Students and parents must make informed decisions rather than decisions based on casually communicated, inadequately presented inessentials and busywork. We, as a school improvement team, elected to expand the reach of our educational goal to include students and to define the role of teacher as instructor and learner. With an increased sense of shared accountability, we are showing continued growth.

We are here to work together to achieve meaningful goals, goals that will make a difference in the way our graduates lead their lives.  E. C. Goodwin students and their families represent 11 towns.  We have a teaching staff of 70.  Our years of experience at Goodwin range from one to 28 years.  Our demographics show us to be diverse in race, ethnicity, appearance, but we are also different in our interests, abilities, skills, and outlooks.  Through learning together, we celebrate our differences, identify our strengths, pursue our interests and do more than we ever could alone. We are a successful learning community. 

We learn outside the classroom as well.  Our sports program offers excellence and expansion.  Our students participate in football, volleyball, soccer, basketball, baseball, softball, golf, dance competition, Skills USA and wrestling.  We have gone to division the State tournament in baseball, won the conference in volleyball for two of the last four years, gone to the Constitution State conference in soccer in 2007-08, and qualified for the league and CIAC tournament in softball for the second straight year.  Our football partnership with St. Paul’s in Bristol continues to show promise.  At the recent national competition for public speaking, one of Goodwin’s sophomore students placed eighth in the nation.

To those who are considering pursuing their education at E. C. Goodwin, we offer improving test scores, academic electives, small learning communities, highly technical trade skills a strong athletic program and a commitment to students and parents that Goodwin graduates will leave with a rich educational experience and the opportunity to pursue college or work in a chosen trade.

Throughout the year you will see photographs of our students and teachers engaged in teaching and learning activities, recognition events, cultural activities and athletics.

We invite you to communicate with us, visit the school, log-on to our website, attend sports events, join our Parent Faculty Organization and be an active part of our school.

Steve Anderson


Principal