Substitute teaching

One of the occupational hazards of being an administrator is getting called on to sub on short notice, when no other sub can be procured. The likelihood of this increases dramatically during the winter months, when various colds and flues have a tendency to strike. In the last three days, I have twice stepped in to teach in these circumstances.

Last Friday I subbed in 8th grade Spanish. Students were giving presentations in English and Spanish on culturally-based subjects of their choosing; one group presented on Selena (the famous Tejana singer), another on Shakira, and a third on Pan Dulce, Churros, and Horchata. In each case, the students spoke in front of a powerpoint presentation first in Spanish, and then in English, using note cards only for reminders about the order of their ideas and the occasional difficult word to remember or pronounce. At the end, other students asked questions, and applauded the hard work each classmate put into the activity.

Today I subbed in 6th grade Spanish. Students were working on combining sentences, a grammatical activity that teaches students to write compound-complex sentences and increase the complexity of their writing. Students first analyzed a model sentence for its component phrases, and then took three or four or five new sentences and combined them in a way that mimicked the underlying grammatical idea of the original. For example, one model sentence read "The children, shouting and screaming, came running into their homeroom." The three sentences that followed, which were meant to be combined into a new single sentence following the model, read "The ponies were neighing. The ponies were pawing. The ponies went barreling into their barn."

In both cases, what was so wonderful - besides helping the teachers feel ok about missing their class - was the opportunity to delve into student thinking, to ask them questions about their work, and come to know their understanding of the topics at hand. This is the magic piece of teaching that motivates all teachers; there is little as satisfying as being able to connect with a student's intellectual state, and to subtly advance his/her understanding to the next level of complexity. It was a little holiday gift that reminded me, paradoxically, of the importance of the job I have now in supporting teachers to have the time, resources, skill, awareness, motivation, and pedagogic tools to do the same.

Social dynamics

Today I watched a 4/5 class struggle with resolving a difficult issue - exclusion during play and recess. One student had brought up the issue of exclusion through the notebook that serves as a place to log topics students want to discuss in class meetings. The class gathered in a circle, and using a koosh ball as a talking object, systematically gave everyone the chance to speak on the topic (only a few chose to pass). The class generally fell into two camps - a small group of students, perhaps four or five, who are concerned that exclusion occurs regularly during playtime, and a much larger group that wanted to protect their rights to play with whomever they chose during recess and free time. The conversation, while not a back-and-forth dialogue because of the speak-once mechanism of the meeting structure, still traced an arc of movement; the first group acknowledged and agreed with the view of the second group, but was still able to point out that having to ask to be included, as had been suggested, led to hurt feelings when the answer was "no". Going around the circle once took 15 minutes; they agreed to continue the conversation at a later time. There is no easy answer to this topic, of course, which is why I was so pleased to see them wrestling with the hard answer - to process different perspectives and experiences, and experiment with the modes of their peers.

NY TIMES: Rethinking teacher evaluation

I just read an interesting article in the New York Times, in which researchers are attempting to develop a model for teacher evaluation that uses a multi-faceted scoring system, rather than the "value-added" model in which only the impact on standardized test scores for students in each class is calculated. The work is being funded by the Gates Foundation, and spearheaded by Educational Testing Services - the publishers of many of those same standardized tests - with a focus on using videos of teachers in the classroom to create scoring norms. Watching videos and conducting critiques, either in groups or in a self-reflective manner, has been an aspect of faculty evaluation for some time - just last week, the TBS faculty study group looking at student conferencing within the Positive Discipline framework used a video that Jed had shot of himself as the basis for their conversation - and to hear about an attempt to create a broad platform for using it is exciting (even if the article is a little short on specifics about what the criteria are that are being applied to develop the scoring rubric).

"When we stop playing, we start dying." - Dr. Stuart Brown

Mitch, Andrea, Paula and I are reading a wonderful book about play right now by Dr. Stuart Brown called Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, as part of our preparation for the second preschool director luncheon we will be hosting this year, in January. The book is based on a huge body of original research by the author, including over 6000 "play histories", as well as research by zoologists, neurobiologists, pediatricians, and scientists in a range of other fields. He begins by defining play, why it occurs, and its role in human development. He then examines how play differs for children, adolescents, and adults; the relationship of play and work; how play fosters social relationships and connections; if there is a "dark side" to play; and concludes with a chapter of advice for living a play-full life. A few of my favorite quotations so far - either for their strikingness, or for the implications for our work.

"I don't think it is too much to say that play can save your life."

"...active play selectively stimulates brain-derived neurotrophic factor (which stimulates nerve growth) in the amygdala (where emotions get processed) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (where executive decisions are processed)."

"As children, the reward for play is strong because we need it to generate a rapidly developing brain."

"The work that we find most fulfilling is almost always a recreation and extension of youthful play."

"...during play, the brain is making sense of itself through simulation and testing. Play activity is actually helping sculpt the brain."

"Sometimes running is play, and sometimes it is not. What is the difference between the two? It really depends on the emotions experienced by the runner. Play is a state of mind, rather than an activity."

"When we stop playing, we start dying."

If this has caught your fancy, you might also be interested in this video, and this website.

6th Grade Buddies; 7th Grade English

Today I met with Marcella and Norman to talk about the nascent 2/3+6 buddy program, and how to give it stronger legs. Right now 6th grade students are working with the 2nd graders in Temescal Creek on a volunteer basis, reading to and with, and being read to, once a week. Our conversation focused on two parts: the pragmatic and the philosophical. On the former, we talked about arranging the logistics, the impact of giving time to this compared to other curricular elements, when and how the planning needed to happen, how to manage conflicts, and other program-management aspects. On the latter, we talked about some possible goals for the 6th grade students, focusing on three draft topics; 1) developing empathy and understanding of younger students, 2) developing the self-esteem and self-confidence that comes from being seen as highly capable, and 3) developing leadership understanding and awareness. We also talked about how to make the program effective without being a major curricular initiative; how to establish it as an integral part of how the 6th grade program is meeting the needs of students; and how preparation for middle school and high school must go beyond the academic and into the social and emotional lives of students.

Last week I observed in a 7th grade English class. The students are reading "The House on Mango Street" by Sandra Cisneros, a powerful book of short vignettes about the growing adolescent identity of a young Latina from a first-person perspective. In a previous class, Emma had tasked the students with creating dramatic interpretations of one of the vignettes, which she then filmed. This class began by watching and writing in response to four different video clips of the same vignette, and then a discussion about those choices, and how they influenced the viewer's experience and understanding of the text. Later, Emma displayed a piece of original writing that she had done in the style of Cisneros, and asked students to critique it based on Cisneros' use of imagery, metaphor, personification, and other rhetorical devices, as well as diction and word choice. The period ended with extended time for students to consult with each other and peer-edit their own vignettes, or begin working on new ones.

Parent Step-Up Tours

This week we hosted two step-up tours for current parents. On Wednesday we had parents of current K-7 students; as luck would have it, all of the student from 2nd through 6th grade were doing math first thing on Wednesday morning! After the tour and faculty panel, the parent of a current 1st grade student pulled me aside to tell me the following story: When her group made it up to the 6th grade classroom, the teacher was called out of the room for 10 minutes. Without prompting, the student who has the Teacher's Aide position stood up and began class - reviewing the homework, and organizing the students to begin discussing the assigned reading. As the parent told me, "What could have been an utter disaster was instead an incredible moment."

On Thursday we had hosted 30 current ECC 4 families. Thursday's tour started with 40 minutes in the K/1 classrooms. In one, students were celebrating "cake day", and doing a variety of math and cooking activities. They created bingo charts, an activity that combined mathematics and literacy; they worked on separating three cakes into equal slices for 18 students; and they used color charts to design the color of the icing they wanted for their own cupcakes, before actually creating that icing and using it (and other toppings) to decorate their cupcakes. In the other classroom, students made a Y-chart (What does it sound like? Look like? Feel like?) about jazz while listening to Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk, and then moved among several different stations to make art in response to different types of jazz.

After a tour of the rest of the classrooms, parents returned to the K/1 level for 30 minutes of conversation with the K/1 teachers, followed by 30 more minutes with a teacher panel of K-8 faculty. Questions ranged from "How do you address differentiation?" to "Are you happy teaching here?"

Faculty meeting on Learning Outcomes

At today's faculty meeting, the topic of conversation was our ongoing process to define learning outcomes for the school. After a brief reframing of why, how, and what we are doing, the faculty considered the following definitions of "competency", in continuation of our discussion of proposed core competencies that all students would develop while at TBS:

1) possession of required skill, knowledge, qualification or capacity

2) the condition of being capable or able

Some faculty liked the first one more, while others liked the second. Both "possession" and "required" were thoughtfully challenged (I added "for success in a future that is un/known" in response to the thread of discussion about "required"). Differentiating the competencies from personal character traits was brought up, along with many other ideas.

Faculty were then asked to engage in the Circle of Viewpoints thinking routine by taking the perspective of a faculty member at a different level from their own, which lead to another round of discussion, including the question of whether these are all present at all times in all children and therefor we need to talk about the relative development of each one - similar to how we talk about both the diverse intellectual profile of each child, and the idea of each child's gifts and challenges.

It was a complex, nuanced conversation about important educational philosophy, to say the least!

7th Grade Business Plans

Today I sat in on a 7th grade math class in which students continued working on the development of small-group business plans, a 7th grade math project now in its fourth year at TBS. Besides the interesting ideas for businesses - such as pet care and coffee, or video-game delivery service - and the lessons that come from working in groups, two content dimensions jumped out. First, learning to write business plans calls for skills from a variety of disciplines beyond the mathematical calculations and modeling; students were also learning the language of business (revenue and profit), as well as how to create compelling narrative pitches in writing and advertising, and how to present these to their peers. Second, students were learning to use spreadsheet software to calculate formulas and graphs, and being introduced to the professional and practical life use of technology as a tool to assist them in their problem solving. At the end of the class, despite repeated notices, Sima still had to go around the room to each table and convince the children to stop and transition to the next class!

Fifty Nifty United States

Today I stopped by Cerrito Creek to see a mixed 4/5 Cultural Studies lesson. The 45-minute period was broken into several chunks of time. In the first activity, lasting 5 minutes, students gathered at the SmartBoard and sang along to the Fifty Nifty United States. In the second activity, lasting 10 minutes, students worked in pairs (set by the teacher) to label a map of the United States of America with all 50 states. Students then had 5 minutes to compare their maps with another pair's work, and make any corrections or additions they needed. In the third activity, lasting 10 minutes, students again worked in pairs, this time to identify skills of the head, heart, and mind possessed by the adventures they would take with them if they were to set out on a Lewis & Clark style expedition, building on the homework assignment from Friday. In the fifth activity, lasting 5 minutes, students played a version of musical chairs in which they tossed two balls around the circle; when the music stopped, whoever held a ball had to name a "push" (poor economy, etc) or "pull" (untapped resources, etc) reason that people immigrate or move (lists of which adorned a classroom wall from a previous discussion). And in the sixth and final activity, students were read-aloud to from Scott O'Dell's Streams to the River, River to the Sea, "a work of historical fiction based on the journey of Lewis and Clark from the perspective of their Indian guide, Sacagawea" (I'm quoting from Mike's blog there).

Two aspects of the classroom jumped out at me during this observation. The first was the use of varied groupings, tasks, and modalities to engage students - singing as a group; labeling in pairs; comparing in small groups; analyzing and assigning in pairs based on individual work; throwing and catching as a whole class; speaking to the group. Each student was drawn into a rich learning experience that was teacher-directed while also honoring the independent and interdependent learning needs of the students. Perhaps students increased their ability to identify which states are located where on a map; perhaps some began thinking about the abstract ideas of individual qualities and how an individual affects a group; perhaps others started to think about how history has affected their lives, and how they were creating personal and group history in the moment of class - whatever it was that each child was learning, his/her motivation to learn was activated, awareness of learning moments was heightened, and knowledge/skill was being grown.

The second dimension that stood out about this lesson was the rapid pacing of the sections, for two reasons. First, no single idea was sat with for more than 10 minutes, and the tempo of the lesson met the children's needs for late afternoon activity. Second, by approaching the discipline from a variety of entry points, rather than simply a textbook reading of the Lewis and Clark expedition, the students experienced history as a complex, multi-faceted discipline.

Sir Ken Robinson

Besides being a fantastic thinker and advocate for a revolution of educational paradigms, Sir Ken Robinson is a wonderfully droll speaker. Here are a few choice bits to whet your appetite.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9LelXa3U_I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

The TBS Library

Yesterday I met with MaryBeth Ventura (4th-8th grade Learning Support Coordinator), and volunteer parent Jean Marstens and Jenny Scholten. The three of them have been doing amazing work on the TBS library in the Depot this year, and with MaryBeth about to go on maternity leave for three months, I am getting involved as the staff contact. Together MaryBeth, Jean and Jenny (who holds a Masters in Library Science) have created a three-part plan with short, medium, and long term objectives. Short term goals almost complete include reorganizing the north end of the library for younger and older readers; next steps include new signs and organizing tours for teachers and students. Some of the longer term goals already underway include labeling all books with the Dewey decimal system, considering implementation of an electronic cataloguing system to replace the clipboard sign-outs we currently use, and investigating online information databases for middle school students.

In addition to those goals, we agreed upon a few other concrete goals for this year, including creating a map of the library, making new acquisitions to promote the classroom curricula, and most importantly, creating a vision for the library. The basis for a library vision statement seemed to rest on three main ideas: giving students what they want to read, promoting the teachers' curricula, and teaching information literacy. Here's the very first draft of the vision statement, as written by Jenny:

In support of The Berkeley School's mission, The Berkeley School library seeks to

inspire, inform, and delight students as we prepare them to be lifelong learners;

to reflect and to enrich school curriculum; and to promote information literacy.

The library's mission is accomplished by:

• collection development to meet students' educational, informational, and

recreational needs.

• collaboration with teachers and administrators to provide informational materials

that support the school's curriculum and philosophy.

• orientation to library use so that students can find and use information relevant

to them.

4/5 Artwork at the Mission Cultural Center in SF

Last week the 4/5 classrooms went to San Francisco's Mission Cultural Center to install some artwork as part of their celebration for Dia de los Muertos. Congrats to Julianne and all the student artists for having their work accepted into the show!

Sugar Skulls and Snap Cubes

On this morning's admissions tour I lead a group of prospective parents into the Laurel Creek classroom during what turned out to be Project Time. In one corner, Middle School Spanish teacher Tanya Madrid-Campbell was sitting with a table full of K/1 students making sugar skulls to celebrate Dia de los Muertos. A few children sat at a nearby table doing a coloring activity with sugar skull designs. Julia and Lyssa were working with two more tables of children doing three-addend addition with a Halloween theme (the children drew skeletons, pumpkins and candy, counted up each group, and then added them together to a single total). And in the block area, two children were animatedly talking and putting together dozens of snap cubes into large blocks. At the time, I wondered to myself why everyone in the class seemed to be engaged in the projects provided, except those two children, but the structure of the tour didn't allow me to check in with the teachers.

Later in the day, during the ECC-3rd grade faculty meeting on Core Competencies after school, Lyssa brought up those two children as an example of the competency of initiative. She explained that after they had finished the other pre-set activities for the day, the two had decided to try to build sugar skulls out of snap cubes - great examples of the "awareness" and "motivation" components of the disposition of learning that we talk about at TBS. They had come up against some challenging design problems that spoke to the "skill" component of the triangle of learning disposition; how to create indented eyes, as sugar skulls have, and how to create the curves of the skull using the cube shapes? The discovery of these questions was itself a critical learning moment that directed the next step in the children's visual-spatial development, and arose at exactly the right time and in just the right way - from their excitement in building on the activities provided by the teachers, and applying their own creativity to the central idea. Hearing her retell this incident, I also reflected back on my jump-to-assumptions, and how important it is to sometimes be able to see without thinking, and ask before assuming. Wow!

Teachers For Social Justice

On Saturday, October 9, several TBS teachers attended the Teachers for Social Justice conference at Mission High in San Francisco. Two of them wrote brief reflections on their experiences, which we're happy to present here.

"Hearing about the 2010 Teachers for Social Justice Conference

from both my colleagues at the Berkeley School and via an email

from a respected local book publisher boded well for the T4SJ.

I remained skeptical, however, at this conference's ability to

offer tangible strategies towards social change through education

and the organization of schools – I feared more rallying cries

than information and more talk of standardized testing than 

discussion of the teacher's roll in school and society. My

skepticism was proven unfounded multiple times over. The

conference was fantastic. Along with two of my friends and

fellow educators I attended a morning workshop on the roll

of the teacher as an authoritarian and how breaking down 

that tradition can lead to stronger relationships with students,

stronger community-mindedness, and greater confidence amongst

learners young and old. Elizabeth Simms, an art teacher in San

Francisco and a member of the Bound Together Bookstore Collective,

did a wonderful job of facilitating. My time at the conference was

capped off with a presentation by Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond on the

 state of organized education in the United States that was both

depressing and positively motivating and a spirited discussion

amongst my group of friends and TBS colleagues. A well-spent

Saturday indeed."

-Stephen Cahill, Temescal Creek aide

"During the morning session, I attended a workshop called "Making Change vs. 
Making Due" in which we were presented with practical lesson plans and ideas 
of ways that other teachers have incorporated social justice themes in their 
elementary classrooms.  The workshop provided a framework for thinking  about 
and formulating lessons and units using six elements: (1) self-love and knowledge; 
(2) respect for  others; (3) exploring issues of social injustice; (4) social movements
and social change; (5) raising awareness; (6) taking social action.  Each element
is meant to build upon the prior elements, and the presenter, Bree Picower, 
emphasized the importance of establishing a strong sense of community through the
first two elements before broaching such hefty elements as taking social action.  She
also made a strong distinction between charity and social justice action, which was 
particularly striking to me.  She highlighted the popular activity of having students 
collect coins for a penny drive or donate canned goods for those in need as teaching
kids to be more comfortable with the injustice around them rather than empowering
them to take real action to make change.  She proposed that instead of asking, "How
can we help the homeless?" for example, we can ask, "Why do some people not have
homes?" in order to get to the systemic injustices that exist in the hopes of inspiring
new ideas for change.  This workshop was inspiring and effective, and I left with 
many valuable resources to use in my teaching practice."
-- Kyla O'Neill, Blackberry Creek teacher

Two videos I watched today

I watched two very different, very powerful videos on gender identity today, and I thought I'd link to them here.

http://tv.gawker.com/5663083/this-is-the-most-touching-it-gets-better-video-you-will-ever-see?ref=nf

http://jezebel.com/5664165/meet-princess-boy--his-awesome-family

One of the ideas I am most proud of at TBS is our consciousness about gender identity. We weren't always as aware and accepting about gender variance as we have become in the last two years with training and help from the good people at GenderSpectrum. From rethinking the use of the terms "boy" and "girl" as a way to divide students, to creating non-gendered bathrooms, to conversations among students, parents, and faculty about the concepts of gender, we've slowly made in-roads in developing a culture and climate that are structured to be more accepting of gender variant individuals, and creating a space where children are comfortable expressing their gender variance. The importance this has in making our culture and community safe for all members is highlighted by the tragic teen suicides that have unfolded in Marin county and other places in the last few weeks.

I also wonder how to bring about a similarly raised awareness in our community about issues of race, class, and other seemingly taboo subjects.

Preschool Director's Luncheon: School-Parent Communication

Today we hosted the second of a series of luncheons for preschool directors and teachers, dating back to last spring, designed to provide a professional community for preschool directors (raising awareness of TBS being a secondary benefit, of course). The topic of today's conversation was school-parent communication, with an emphasis on understanding how neurobiology influences our communication patterns. The half-dozen attendees relayed anecdotes of scenarios in which they had successfully and unsuccessfully talked to parents about difficult issues as they ate a vegetarian meal. Head of School Mitch Bostian then delivered a quick presentation called "Neurobiology .101", in which he went over the various process and tasks for which different regions and structures of the brain are responsible.

For the final 1.5 hours, special guest Amy MacClain (www.amymacclain.com) lead the participants in an investigation of the struggle parents today face given the structures and values of modern society, and methods administrators and teachers can use to acknowledge their own emotions heading into and during conversation, as well as how to safely hold a space for parents to feel heard. Strategies were discussed to help attendees ground - and stay - in a reflective, rather than reactive, frame of mind when in a potentially loaded conversation. As is wont to happen in a lively group, the conversation also strayed into other topics, such as the perils of enforced sharing; suggestions for future luncheon topics by the participants include multicultural education, cultural inclusion, and classroom management.

Friday's In-house Professional Development Day

We talk a great deal about the importance of professional development here at TBS, and spend a lot of time and energy sending our teachers to seminars, workshops, conferences, and other events that grow their practices. We also have a few days a year set aside for in-house

conversations and activities, and this past Friday was the first of those days.

Faculty met in three groups in the morning, from 8:30-11:00. The ECC faculty met with Andrea to discuss how the playground is used, elements of the program that are targeted directly to the youngest (2.7) students on campus, and other site-specific topics. The K-3 faculty met with Mitch and Laurie Schaeffler, the K-3 Learning Support and Curriculum Coordinator, to talk about how reading is being taught and assessed in those classes, and to introduce the DRA2, a new assessment tool we are implementing in the level. The 4th-8th faculty met with Zaq to continue the conversation about learning outcomes begun at the all-faculty meeting.

Three groups met during the 11-1:30 time in the middle of the day, working during and around the lunch provided by the administration. First, the middle school team met as a faculty. Second, the ECC and K/1 teachers met as a combined group to talk about what the K/1 program looks like, and to begin work to align expectations about where our ECC-4 students are when they leave the ECC, and how both ECC and K/1 teachers can begin adjusting their programs - as well as collaborate and observe each other. Third, the K/1 and 2/3 team briefly met with Mitch for a similar conversation around the K/1 and 2/3 alignment.

From 1:30-3:00, the entire faculty met and walked through the Tuning Protocol, which is one of the methods by which the faculty will be working together in developing their understanding of assessment. This protocol was generated by Allan and McDonald at the Coalition for Essential Schools; along with the Collaborative Assessment Protocol, it is contained in the book "Looking Together at Student Work" by Tina Blyth and other researchers at Project Zero. The protocol has several steps: an introduction by the facilitator; a presentation by a teacher on the assignment that includes focusing questions; an opportunity for participants to ask clarifying questions; a silent time for teachers to look at the example(s) of student work; a period of "warm" (commendations) and "cool" (ongoing questions) feedback that do not offer solutions; a reflection from the presenting teacher on what s/he heard; and a process debrief by the facilitator. While we did this first one as a full faculty, in the future we'll be doing them in small groups. Many thanks go to Mike Sinclaire for bravely offering to be the presenting teacher.

For some background information on this collaborative work, look here. Or, read more about the tuning protocol here.

Tour season has begun

Yesterday (10/6) we hosted the first prospective parent tour of the year on the University Campus. Today we hosted the first one on the Early Childhood Campus.

Like other aspects of school life, the rituals of tour follow a certain seasonal consistency - they happen almost every week from October through January - and there's only so many things to say or do on a tour - talk about school mission and philosophy, see the classrooms, have a chance to ask questions, and explain the application process. Right?

In order to try to have our tours reflect our school's emphasis on constructing understanding in the context of lived experience, and even be an educative experience for the participants, a few weeks ago Mitch, Andrea, Paula and I began working on revamping our University Campus tour. We started with the throughlines that we have for the school - "How is learning together different than learning alone?" and "What do rigorous thinking, learning, and understanding look like?", and discussed how a tour could be structured to engage the participants in the ways faculty engage our students in the classrooms. The result was a restructuring of the event that shortened the standard introductory conversation to a quick framing of the key ideas of throughlines and thinking routines, and then having participants engage in the See, Think, Wonder thinking routine about a first round of classroom observations. Only then did we have a longer administration-driven conversation about the school's philosophy. Administrators and Parent Ambassadors then together guided groups of parents around campus and into various classrooms, winding up back at the Depot for a conversation with a panel of teachers - which we know, from feedback in previous years, is always a highlight. The result, at least based on the feedback on the exit surveys, was that the participants felt activated and engaged as learners, and not just observers, and that they walked away with not only insight, but also understanding, of how we are trying to put our school's mission into action, and our views on the educative process.

Thanks to Ann Kim and Helen Yoon for volunteering as Parent Ambassadors. Please talk to Paula if you'd like to get involved.

Learning Outcomes

Mitch, Andrea and I have been putting our heads together about the process to develop Learning Outcomes and review the curriculum over the course of this year, and we've arrived at an approach that really excited me!

We began by thinking about how to conceptualize Learning Outcomes. Right now, the school's outcomes are embedded in two places - the K-8 curriculum guide, and the criteria that are assessed in the twice-yearly progress reports that teachers send home. We want to have a more explicit presentation of TBS' learning outcomes that can be interacted with at different levels, from more abstract to more concrete, and that contains both qualitative and quantitative metrics or benchmarks to define whether those outcomes are being achieved by our students. Our framework has five sections, which we've arranged in a pentagon - the lines around the outside have arrows pointing in both directions, and each point has two-directional interior lines to the other points as well. At first we played with a pyramid visualization, but we decided that we wanted to a) represent the systems-nature of the outcomes we develop, as opposed to emphasize a hierarchical nature among the components, and b) liked how the five-pointed system mirrors the Cycle of Connection (play, practice, mastery, recognition, connection) that Mitch has been talking about with parents and faculty all year.

Moving from more abstract to more concrete, our model of learning outcomes begins with the Disposition of a Learner (skills, awareness, and motivation) and the Cycle of Connection (as mentioned above). We want TBS students to develop their understanding of what it means to be a successful learner, and these two ideas capture the foundation needed for that to occur. The second point in the system is one of core competencies - ideas like "effective oral and written communication across cultures" or "the ability to find and synthesize information in service of problem solving" - an idea discussed at length in Tony Wagner's great book "The Global Achievement Gap". The third point in the system is a Vision of the Student in terms of these core competencies at each grade level. The fourth point in the system are the actual benchmark skills and knowledge and behaviors that demonstrate understanding in each intellectual and creative discipline that we teach - in some cases this may look similar to what is in the progress reports from last year, and in others it might be different. The fifth and final point in the system is the curriculum, or classroom events and experiences that lead to the performances of understanding on the part of the students. The entire system is encompassed and held by the school's mission: to ignite curious minds, awaken generous hearts, and engage a changing world.

At yesterday's faculty meeting (Wednesday 10/6), we kicked off the process of developing these learning outcomes as a faculty. Below are some pictures of the faculty working in small groups, creating Y-charts of what each proposed competency would look like, sound like, and feel like in a TBS graduate. As the year goes on, we'll move through each point of the system with the faculty, eventually arriving at a rewrite of the curriculum that will allow it to more accurately reflect the learning outcomes towards which the whole school will be working. This process actually creates a frame within which to revise the K-8 curriculum - and develop a consistent ECC curriculum - rather than doing so based only on the individual preferences and desires of administrators and faculty, and that is important for establishing the institution's stability.