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.