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County supervisors Diane Belcher (left) and Kerry Whitlock (top) and School Board member Davd Sulzen (right) talk with state superintendent Billy Cannaday.

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State Supt. to educators: teach students to ‘think critically’

By Roger Mannon
Staff Writer

Faculty and staff of the Floyd County schools started the new school year with encouragement from the top. The very top.
Billy Cannaday, Virginia’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction, was guest speaker at a breakfast Wednesday, August 15, in the high school cafeteria. Cannaday said he identified closely with this area, having graduated from William Fleming High School in 1968 and from Virginia Tech.
“We’re moving forward,” he said. “The world changes constantly….Last year’s graduating class was the first in history that has always lived with the internet.”
Cannaday said, “We can’t always look in the rear-view mirror. There are some things that were good for us then that are still good. But there are a lot of things that have never been developed.”
He observed that “now if you don’t know Algebra II, you can’t work on a car. Now it is all electronics.” He said “we need to prepare students, not for the next career, but how to think critically - how to create new ways. We’re preparing the next generation of adults.”
One of his top priorities is increasing graduation rates. “When I was a freshman in high school,” he told the group of educators, “one of my heroes was a guy named Wesley. He was a great basketball player and I wanted to be like him. But the next year he was gone, dropped out of school. We can’t let that happen any more.”
Floyd County School Superintendent Terry Arbogast said the schools’ mission this year is to “help students feel safe, emotionally, physically and psychologically. It is a barrier to learning if those needs are not met.”
He added, “The way to make sure they feel safe is to treat them fairly, give them an equal footing and equal opportunity.”