Images from the K-5 classrooms

In Cerrito Creek (4/5), students brainstormed "writing territories", or topics that they might want to write about for their next piece of short fiction.

In Sweet Briar Creek (2/3), students turned their recently finished poems into holiday gifts by adding them to hand-painted canvases.

In Temescal Creek (2/3), students used a work period to paint holiday gifts...

...work on addition and geometry...

...and build models of molecules.

In Laurel Creek (K/1), students used a literacy workshop period for projects related to their study of author Jan Brett, including writing and illustrating stories...

...contributing to a class mural of events in Trouble with Trolls...

...and sewing giant mittens as in The Mitten.

Finally, in Strawberry Creek (4/5), students worked in small groups to read the Declaration of Independence and come up with laws that they felt would directly arise from that text.

Letter from Mitch about tragedy in CT

Dear TBS Families,

As most of you will have heard by the time you read this email, a tragic and awful shooting took place today at an elementary school in Connecticut.  News like this stops all of us -- families, teachers, staff, and administrators -- in our tracks, and calls forth a range of powerful (and often surprising) emotional responses from us.  When that tide recedes, we all begin to move into "action mode," as we try to reassert some degree of certainty into our lives and into our hopes and dreams for the children whom we love.

Accordingly, we want to give you information about our own actions (ongoing, present, and future), and also share resources and ideas with you that may inform your own course of action with your children over the weekend.

First, I want to assure all families that we have thought a great deal about preventing such events from occurring on either of our campuses.  That starts at a fundamental level -- we work hard to create physical and social campus environments that model respect, emphasize inclusion and peacemaking, and help build and maintain community connection. Beyond that, both our campuses have key-code, locked entry gates that are visible from multiple windows, and security cameras on our larger University campus show live feeds of every exterior part of the campus on a screen visible to our receptionist and also via a secure internet link.  Finally, all our staff are trained to approach unfamiliar visitors with a cheerful and proactive greeting.  If you step onto our campuses, we'll know who you are and why you're with us very quickly.

We also engage in regular "Stay in Place" drills at the University campus:  drills designed to provide maximum safety in an "intruder on campus" situation.  Doors are locked, curtains and blinds lowered, and children are taught to shelter out of sight:  communications protocols also are enacted to keep communication flowing.  We just completed our most recent drill last month, and while we wish that the need for these drills didn't exist, we will continue to do them as a regular part of our emergency readiness plan.  We consult with the Berkeley Police Department and other authorities to ensure that our practices are appropriate and effective.

In my experience, many of us will want to know how to talk about these events with children.  Here are some guidelines and suggestions to keep in mind.

Should you bring this up with your child(ren), or should you wait?  

In general, we think this depends on the degree to which information about world events flows into your child's environment at home or in the transition from school to home.  Our sense today is that none of our children have heard about the shooting, and we've worked hard to limit their access to that information.  In general, we think limiting their access to this information in developmentally appropriate ways is key for families as well.  However, going into the weekend, match what you know about your child(ren) with what you know about your child's weekend social environment and cohort, and let that process be a guide.  If you think it's likely that your child will hear about this news or see it, you may want to bring it up first so that you can give it appropriate context.  

Will teachers be discussing this event with children on Monday?

This is a level-dependent question.  In general, the younger the children, the less likely that teachers will bring things up proactively -- but our faculty know our children well and will rely on that knowledge, their own deep knowledge of child development, and any information that you share with them to make their plans.  Your child's teachers will let you know before Monday if they see a need to take proactive action -- and if so, they'll let you know what they will say and follow up with information about how things went.  

What should we keep in mind if (or when) we talk to our children about this event?

Often, younger children may believe that events like this happened nearby, are continuing to happen, and/or are happening in multiple schools.  Consequently, it's crucial to establish concrete details and take nothing for granted.  Showing a child a map that includes Connecticut and California can be helpful.  Being very clear about time frames is helpful.  And giving them information about resolution (i.e. the shooter is no longer alive) can help as well.

Be careful to answer any questions that you are asked appropriately:  it's very easy to give children information that doesn't match what they wanted to know.  Listen carefully to their questions and, if you're not sure what they want to know, ask them directly:  too much detail may be overwhelming or frightening to children who (fortunately) lack a frame of reference for such an event.

Offer a great deal of reassurance.  Make sure they understand that families, schools, and people in the wider community all work together to make sure that events like this do not happen.  If your children need it, make more time to be with them physically and mentally.  

Remind them that the school practices drills for emergency situations, and that they know what to do if when unexpected emergencies happen.  Praise your children for always taking our practice drills seriously and tell them that as parents you too have copies of our school plans, and know what good care the teachers and administrators will take in keeping them safe while at school.

Are there any other resources that we can access?

Here are four links that CAIS schools are recommending:

http://www.childrenscolorado.org/news/inthenews/2012-news/talking-to-kids-about-school-shootings.aspx

http://www.apa.org/topics/violence/school-shooting.aspx
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15109195/ns/health-childrens_health/t/how-talk-your-kids-about-shootings/#.UMt_9qUWHzI

http://www.nasponline.org/resources/crisis_safety/terror_general.aspx 

Thanks for your ongoing support and for partnering with us in helping children navigate through these troubled, but teachable, times -- and best wishes for a good weekend.

Take care,

Mitch

All hail Julianne!

TBS K-5 Teaching Artist Julianne Hughes has done a pair of special projects with the K/1 students recently, in addition to the twice-weekly art classes she teaches those students. In Blackberry Creek, she helped students create a "button pillow" as a goodbye present for Shannon, while in Laurel Creek she helped students sew a soft quilt for Cate's soon-to-arrive baby. I feel so lucky that we have people like Julianne at TBS, who take the initiative, time and effort to care for each other so deeply! Enjoy the pictures below.

K-3 staffing for 2013-14

 At last week's internal step-up tour for parents of current K, 1, and 3rd grade students, a great deal of interest was expressed in how we're creating staffing assignments for the K-3 classrooms in 2013-14. In response to a suggestion made at the Q+A at that event, I want to share our process for this, which I outlined to faculty in a letter in late October (which you can see by clicking on these images).

Our first goal is to create strong teaching pairs that will ensure the academic, social and emotional success of all children; our second goal is to ensure institutional stability through this change; and our third goal is to make all faculty feel that their input and reflection was heard and considered in this process. Our intention is to begin talking with faculty about tentative placements before we leave for winter break, finalize those in early January, and announce that to our parents at that time.

Over the last two weeks, I have been meeting individually with each K-3 faculty member for an hour+ conversation. I've asked each teacher to bring a completed Faculty Gifts and Challenges reflection tool to the meeting, which we go over in depth (see the images in this post for details on that device). This tool is neither evaluative nor supervisory; it is a structured way to have each teacher reflect on his/her practices, and areas of relative strength and opportunities for growth. I ask questions and probe for more information based on what the teacher says, but I do not offer an alternative/contradictory view of anything said, as my goal is to try to understand how each faculty member views him/herself when looking through this lens.

The second half of the discussion is forward-looking: each teacher discusses the pros and cons s/he sees to teaching in each of the grade configurations next year (K, 1/2, and 3), and ranks the options in preference order. That conversation is then repeated, with the other K-3 staff at the center of the conversation - what are the pros and cons of working with each of the other faculty members, and who are their preferences?

So far I've interviewed six of the eight faculty, and I have enjoyed all of the conversations. It's rare and precious to spend an hour talking deeply with a faculty member in this way - our conversations are usually so targeted to student and parent needs, curriculum and instruction, or administrative tasks, that being able to simply check-in with each teacher in this way has been a very special experience.

This week's field trips

We had some pretty darn cool field trips happening this week at TBS! In K/1, Blackberry Creek spent the day at the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, as part of their emergent curriculum unit on flight.

In 4/5, Cerrito Creek spent a soggy day at the U.C. Botanical Gardens and Tilden Park, doing field work to extend their Lewis And Clark cultural studies work...

...while Strawberry Creek spent a sunny day in San Francisco at the Exploratorium, learning more about their current science studies of electricity and magnetism (as well as all the other fun exhibits, like cow's eye dissection).

Photos by Youval Dar, Katy Grannan, and Jeff Grether.

December's K-8 Assembly

This morning we held a monthly assembly in the Depot. We began by having each of the administrators introduce themselves to the students - an activity that was suggest by the Student Council, as there are many kids on campus who don't regularly interact with the adults in the office, and may not even know their names, let alone what they do.




This was followed by a presentation by two members of the Student Council on the recent penny drive that the students have been doing.  This community service fundraising is raising donations for Literacy Lifeboats, an initiative by Lucy Calkins and Teacher's College in New York that is serving schools hard hit by Hurricane Sandy. The reps reported that the K-5 students raised $363.61, and the 6-8 students raised $453, totaling $816.61.

Cerrito Creek then presented a Showcase of Learning on their recent work with electricity and magnets. Students were enthralled by the video, and I'm sure you will be too, as the 4th and 5th grade students explain their understanding of how magnets, motors and coils work.

Finally, we ended with a full-throated sing-along to What A Wonderful World.

Leadership as service

While I'm extremely leery of the politics and evangelism of the organization for which he works, I strongly believe in the ideas that Mark Miller offers in a recent post on SmartBlog on Leadership - that to truly lead, we must approach our work as service to others. Earlier this fall I wrote a Statement of Educational Leadership and Philosophy, and this concept is the note I chose to ring out in my final sentence (click here if you want the whole document):

I believe that people work hard and are motivated when they feel they are doing important, good work. For me, there is no greater or more important work than fostering the self-transformation of the next generation of citizens. I approach my work as a position of service to others, and as an expression of my own commitment to improving our society.

Accreditation: Trainings for Board, Admin, and Faculty

In the last few days we've trained the Board of Trustees, administration, and faculty on the new CAIS/WASC protocol that we'll be beta-testing this year.  I conducted the training for the admin at a team meeting on Tuesday. We began by reviewing the timeline of work for the remainder of this year, and then looked at the draft of chapter chair assignments the Accreditation Leadership Team had made. We're distributing the work of writing the 15 chapters for the protocol by having the relevant administrator who holds responsibility for a topic chair the chapter committee, whenever possible, and we're excited at how this involves all of our admin team in leadership work in the process.

Chapter/Topic	Chair
1. Mission	Mitch
2. Ed Program	Zaq
3. Student Learning Experience	Sima
4. Faculty and Pedagogy	Gretchen
5. Climate and Community	Laura
6. Residential Life	NA
7. Preschool	Kathy
8. Admissions and Enrollment	Paula
9. Finance	Mohammad
10. Advancement	Araxi
11. HR	Mohammad
12. Facilities	Mohammad
13. Health, Safety and Wellness	Jeanne & Cindy
14. Governance	Dobee
15. Administration	Mitch
16. Self- assessment and Decision- making	Zaq

That afternoon, Dobee Snowber and I conducted the training for the Board of Trustees at the November meeting. We structure our discussion to contained six parts: the benefits of accreditation (the rigorous self-study, the professional development, the faculty recruitment, and the marketing), the school's history of accreditation, a broad timeline for our process, a comparison of the old protocol with the new protocol we are using, some specifics about our approach, and the ways in which the Board is involved in the process:

Board member of the Accreditation Leadership Team: Dobee Snowber

Chapter 1: Mission - Executive Committee

Chapter 9: Finance - Finance Committee

Chapter 10: Advancement - Development Committee

Chapter 12: Facilities - Site Committee

Chapter 13: Governance - Executive and/or Trustee Committees

Chapter 16: Decision Making - Strategic Planning Committee

Sima Misra and I conducted the training for the teachers at an all-faculty meeting at the ECC yesterday. After reviewing the benefits of accreditation and the timeline of work, we split them into five groups and rotated each group through five stations with a few choice questions from each of the relevant program chapter. Teachers were given pens and asked to write their thoughts and comments in response to each question, and to the thoughts and comments of their peers who had rotated through that station before them. Each group ended up back at the station at which they had started, and had a chance to read what the other teachers had added to the chart paper. This highly generative activity lead to a strong sense of excitement about the ways in which the accreditation process will help us see and highlight our strengths, as well as identify meaningful areas of improvement in our program.

At the end of the meeting, we passed out forms for faculty to let us know their preferences for committee assignments. Our next step will be to gather this data, draft committee compositions, finalize those with chapter chairs, and then inform the faculty about their placements.

Mission Moments Newsletter - Volume 2, Issue 1

I feel very lucky to get to come and go freely through the classrooms at The Berkeley School (one of the perks of my job!), and I like to share what I see when I can. That's why I write the Mission Moments newsletter; it's a regular chance for me to point out moments when the teaching and learning in our classrooms embodies our mission, learning outcomes, and values. Here's the first edition of the year; if you want to see issues from last year, just search the blog using the tag "mission".

Kindergarten Readiness

A recent opinion post on CNN's School's of Thought blog by Donna McClintock offered a one-sided take on the question of when to start children in Kindergarten.

Her arguments in favor of starting almost all kids in Kindergarten at age five boiled down to two points: first, that the brain develops regardless of grade, and second, many reasons parents start children a year late have to do with their adult needs rather than the child's needs, such as peer choices, future sports success, or anxiety about separation. While she seems to have a good sense of what makes a good Kindergarten program, her view is best summed up in the line "If the program is not a true hands-on, positive, developmentally appropriate program, then perhaps redshirting is a good choice or choosing a different school might be an even better one."

For the sake of fairness, let's look at what she didn't acknowledge in her post:

-Many families don't have the financial or social capital to choose a different school other than the one their child is assigned to. Those that do are usually upper-middle class and white -- exactly the demographic that is often choosing to delay their child's start in order to try to maintain the academic and other advantages that come with white privilege.

-The curriculum in Kindergarten has been accelerated to become what First Grade used to be - a phenomenon well documented in both the academic literature and news media, including articles in Newsweek (2006),  The Washington Post (2007), and The Chicago Tribune (2010). So pushing children who may or may not be ready for Kindergarten into First Grade academics makes little sense.

-The research of the impact of redshirting is extremely mixed, despite her claims: some research suggests that boys and low-income students have significant benefits to waiting a year, and that starting Kindergarten too soon can have significant negative effects.

-Brain development is not only regardless of age, it is also unique to every child. Simply because a child is five does not mean s/he is neurologically ready for the work of Kindergarten. And simply because five year old child spends a year in a preschool or bridge-K program does not mean that it is a wasted year for neurological, academic, intellectual, social, and/or emotional development.

That these and other important factors were left out of the piece is predictable; what truly annoyed me was the style of the piece. I'm all for substantive conversations that encompass differing opinions on important topics, but let's be honest about how we are approaching the discussion. Although initially positioned as an objective perspective, starting with the "Kindergarten redshirting different for each child" title for the post, the piece is in fact an unstinting push to get age 5 children into Kindergarten, right up to the very last line that tells readers who choose to take another year for their child "While it may be too late to get him into the original kindergarten program you wanted to, do not allow him to waste this critical year of opportunity." I'm glad that Mrs. McClintock recognizes the characteristics of a good Kindergarten, but I wish she could have been more transparent and direct about her views at the outset of the article.

At TBS, we believe that age is not the determining factor in Kindergarten readiness, and that's why we have a Transitional K program at our Early Childhood Center. We recognize that Kindergarten readiness means ready child, ready family, and ready school - a chronologically young child may thrive in Kindergarten, while a chronologically old child may do better in the TK program. Our "cut off" date is September 1, and we work closely with each family of a child with a fall birthday to determine whether the Explorers program or our Kindergarten will be a better fit.

Tying academic curriculum to real life

This week I came across some marvelous examples of how TBS faculty work to tie examples of real life experience into the academic work of the classrooms.

In Sweet Briar Creek (a second/third grade classroom), the students set up a polling station on Tuesday (the day of the elections). The topic of the vote was the re-naming of the Sweet Briar Creek blog, and each student took a turn as a poll worker. The polling station included a voter register, voting booth, ballots, ballot box, posted times when the polls were open, and even "I voted in Sweet Briar Creek" stickers.  The work wasn't limited to the day of the election, however; while guiding prospective parents on a tour the next morning, we encountered the students working in groups to count the ballots. They began by checking, and rechecking, each ballot for any irregularities, such as multiple votes (those that were found to be irregular were referred to the teachers for arbitration). They then counted, and recounted, the ballots to determine which of the candidates had won.

Instead of learning information about candidates and issues, as is often the basis for a study of elections (though not always developmentally appropriate for 7 year olds), this approach included both giving students the experience of participating in voting themselves, and also an understanding what it takes to actually put on an election. By simulating all steps of the process, students developed a genuine sense of the importance of voting in our society, and why we use it as a decision-making tool for issues that matter to many people, getting at our learning outcomes of interdependency (the society of the class), creativity (coming up with candidate names), critical thinking (doing the voting), and discipline understanding.

[Side note: During my first visit to the class on Tuesday, I was turned away from voting, because I was there at a time when the polls were closed; it was a tremendous a real life moment for me, as an adult who read about the long lines and struggle to get access to polls in places like Florida and North Carolina, to have that experience myself. I've asked the teachers if I can come in to speak with the students about my perspective on this project, and my experience with it, and also to hear from them about what their experiences.]

In Strawberry Creek (one of our fourth/fifth grade classrooms), the study of the election included learning about the Electoral College. In order to give students a direct experience of how it works, the teachers asked the students first to vote about which pet they liked more, cats or dogs. The teachers then had the class offer pros and cons for each pet, which they wrote down for all to see. Finally, the teachers had students re-vote by private ballot, this time tying each student's ballot weight to the number of Electoral College votes that the state s/he had done his/her recent state study on (e.g. the vote of the child who studied Louisiana counted x9, the vote of the child who studied New Hampshire counted x4, and the vote of the child who studied California counted x55). While the results were the same (dogs won), the students were able to witness how weighted voting changes the way national candidates might choose to campaign.

On a completely different note, in 5th grade math on Wednesday, the students' lived experience became a high-interest leverage point in their study of data and statistics. Working in table groups, the students categorized and then taped candy wrappers from Halloween onto posters as a group, before identifying the mean, median, mode and range of group consumption. For some, the act of classifying was the exciting part; for others, the creation of the display; and for others, getting to work in small groups with their peers kept them motivated. For all, the mathematical calculations became an object of intense interest, both to know the group's internal nature better (some groups were high on chocolate, others on chewy treats) and also to compare to their classmates (who had eaten the most candy? the least? how did each person's consumption compare to the group's average?).

Last Night's Parent Ed event on Zones

Many thanks to the parents who showed up last night for the Parent Ed event on our use of the Zones of Regulation curriculum in the K-5 classrooms!

Kate's presentation began with the big idea of the Zones, moved into what the actual Zones are, and then on to the lessons and implementation that teachers have used in the classrooms. She also showed some videos kids in the 4/5 classrooms had made showing possible facial expressions of someone in one zone or another (here's the link to the videos on Strawberry Creek's blog).

We then moved into a conversation about extending the Zones language and approach to the home environment. Of special interest was the question of what to expect, and how to work with, a child in the red ("stop") zone; what's happening on a neuro-physiological level during that sort of emotional experience; and ideas for engaging children in physical activities that allow them to have their emotions without self-judgment, express those feelings to others without perceiving judgment, and then releasing it without having to talk.