Who do you trust, neuroscientists or magicians?

We love neuroscience here at TBS. Even when it has nothing to do with education. Here's a great article by Teller, of Penn & Teller fame, about how he uses neuroscience in the construction of his magic tricks.

Today's professional development day

We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to gather regularly as a faculty and have professional development days! Today was no exception, as it gave us a chance to continue the important curriculum review process that we've been undertaking this year. The morning started with an unbelievable breakfast home-cooked by Diane, Heather, Laura, Mohammad, and Paula. At the end of breakfast, Diane spoke with the teachers about the Annual fund.

I then laid out the agenda for the day, and moved into our first activity by reviewing the timeline for the curriculum review process we initially designed in August. Back then, today was intended to be a day to gather faculty into small groups to begin proposing specific changes and shifts in our curriculum. However, the small group meetings in November and December to review the curriculum maps the faculty had created ran into two unexpected issues that we needed to address. The first was the simple fact that there is so much data on the maps that it was difficult for faculty to do the task of finding the alignments, patterns, overlaps, and gaps. This in turn lead to the second issue, which was that faculty had many questions about the process of the curriculum review, and how it was designed. Similarly, I struggled to do a meta-analysis of the data the teachers had provided me, and ultimately created a list that categorized information in one of four ways; themes and patterns, questions about the curriculum, questions about the process, and comments about the process. After looking at this meta-data together, I explained that we wanted to stay in the "questioning" mode rather than shift into a "resolving" mode, and so sent faculty off in small groups

to conduct a parallel process to the reviews of the curriculum maps, except this time each group was tasked with looking specifically at the criteria of a specific discipline (math, literacy, science, cultural studies, approach to learning, social/emotional development) of the progress reports. This turned out to be a huge success - being able to look at the content in a specific discipline helped teachers narrow the data to consider to a manageable scope, and using the criteria from the reports also shifted the conversation from broad patterns about content to the underlying skills and understandings we are trying to help students develop.

After a short break, we reconvened for a short explanation of the afternoon activity. Teachers were asked first to look back at the curriculum maps they had written in August and analyze where, when, how and why they diverged from the curriculum they had planned during the first half of the year; and then, to look at what they had planned for the second half of the year, and to make any revisions possible now based on their experiences in the first half of the year. This took faculty anywhere from 1-3 hours, and they turned these maps in before they left for vacation. The rest of the afternoon, faculty were free to do any curriculum planning work that they needed.

I tried out two new activities with the faculty during these meetings that I learned about from a book Diane (our Director of Advancement) brought back from a recent professional development event she attended on Gamestorming. In the first meeting, just before sending the small groups off to work, I conducted a "Pre-mortem" of what could go wrong with the activity. This was very helpful in generating unrelated constraints, such as focusing on philosophy instead of criteria, or bringing in thoughts/emotions about other topics unrelated to the task at hand, or tentativeness about a discipline, that teachers could then put aside. In the second meeting, I began by leading the group through the game of "Campfire." Just as campfires are a way to share stories, the goal of this activity was to help teachers simply share their experiences with curriculum planning, and thus set the mood to delve into the work they were about to do. I had written 15-20 words related to the theme of curriculum development on stickies (spiral; emergent; resources; whoops!; trial and error; lesson plans, etc), which I put up on the board in a random collection. Taking turns, faculty came up to pick one of the words and talk about an experience they had had related to this key word, and they then added the word to a "path" that represented our collective experience of sharing and listening to these stories. It was a very powerful experience complete with tears, laughter, and appreciations!

The rest of my day was a whirlwind.

11:30-12:00 Math night planning meeting with Amy, Danette, Sima, Mike S, Missy, Maureen, and Steve.

12:00-12:30 Service learning planning meeting with Diane, Mitch, Nancy, and Kate.

12:30-1:30 Phone conversation with Scott Duyan, Head of Presidio Hill School and my mentor in my Fellowship for Aspiring Heads through NAIS.

1:30-3:00 Admin team meeting.

3:15-4:00 Progress reports technology/concept meeting with Cindy, Mike S, and Mitch.

What a great, fulfilling way to head into a few days of rest and recuperation!

The new K/1 playscape fence is in!

Many thanks to Eitan Spanier, who built and led installation of the beautiful new fence at the north end of our K/1 playscape.

What do we do on Valentine's Day?

Two weeks ago the Elementary Division faculty shared an email thread in which we discussed how we wanted to acknowledge Valentine's Day this year. We shared the traditions in different classes - Laurel Creek (k/1) makes valentines for people at home, the 2/3 classes have "Friendship Week" where students make bracelets and other gifts for a secret buddy, etc - and then we agreed on two simple guidelines for families (which you've probably already seen, via your child's classroom teachers):

1. If someone wants to make valentines, they must be 100% fully inclusive of all students in the class. Homemade valentines are encouraged when possible.

2. No candy or sweets should be attached to the valentines. Non-sugary gifts like pencils are acceptable.

Several classes had a single class treat - I counted four sets of cupcakes coming into classrooms this morning at gate duty.

If you're interested in how other schools approach this tradition, you can check out articles today at the Winnipeg Free Press, the Nanuet Patch, and the Frederick News-Post.

Writing Workshop in Strawberry Creek

Today I watched a writing workshop in Strawberry Creek. While many workshop periods follow a formula of mini-lesson and then open work time for writing, editing, and conferring, this particular workshop moved from a mini-lesson on a particular rhetorical concept to a directed work period.

The first 20 minutes of the period featured a lesson on analogies. Jeff introduced the idea with the analogy go:green as ______ : red. Student ideas initially focused on surface similarities, such as the first letter of each word, before moving on to a nuanced understanding of the concept. The open-ended possibility of the conceptual linking was explored in further examples; for instance, wheel:bike as tire:_______ was answered by motorcycle, car, and truck - all of which have a claim to being right. The example meow:cat as _____:_______ further raised the issue of conceptual connection; when talking:humans was proposed as an answer, the class discussed the idea of onomatopeia and whether blah blah blah:humans would be a more accurate answer.

In the next phase of the period, Jeff introduced a worksheet for students to gather information for the bibliography of their science research reports. He reviewed the different information necessary from different types of sources (books with one author, books with many authors, articles, and websites being the four primary types used by students for this project), and also where and how to find that information within each source. Students then returned to their seats and compiled the necessary information. This is a great example of how our teachers use the writing workshop to explore writing ideas across the curriculum.

TedX talk by TBS parent Gene Wade

Gene Wade is the hero of my day. Wow! This little clip has me fired up. So much of what he is saying resonates deeply with my understanding of TBS' mission.

Do we need words to teach math?

I'm sharing this video with our K-8 faculty, because it speaks to the need to consider our teaching practices in light of the diverse ways in which students learn. Thanks to parent Keren Stronach for passing it along!

And if you want to know more, here's an article from the Las Vegas Sun that I just saw today.

Today's assembly

Today's all-school assembly was another smashing success.

Head of School Mitch Bostian welcomed the students by talking about the power of words to generate ideas, using the phrase "Don't think of a carrot" to illustrate how we can't always control our response to stimuli, and the need to think critically about how we respond to other people.

Eve Decker and Chris Perdue then lead us in singing "We Shall Overcome". Holding hands with an administrator on one side and a student on another, listening to the voices of the students belt out this powerful song of self-realization and freedom, brought tears to my eyes.

Guest teacher in-residence Daniel Schmidt presented the work of three 4/5 students in the instrument building class as this month's Showcase of Learning. Hannah, Tyrrell and Riley took turns demonstrating the instruments they had built and the design process that they went through in conceiving of those instruments.

The Student Council made an announcement about the work they have been doing planning a Service Learning opportunity for the entire school. The council is working on hosting an event that would raise money and awareness for an issue, and asked for input on what sort of organization or cause students would like to support and learn about.

Eve and Chris closed out the assembly by leading the school through "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody", another wonderful civil rights anthem. If you don't know that song, here's a great version (we sounded pretty darn good too!).

Elementary Division Level meeting

Yesterday we held an elementary division meeting. Here's what happened.

1) Review of our ground rules:

-everyone participates

-different opinions are welcome

-limit side conversations

-respect time

-maintain your sense of humor

2) Cheer-leading - I reviewed the many things that we have excelled at recently:

-working closely with students to increase their knowledge, skills, and understandings

-the depth of mid-year progress reports

-the completion of all progress reports on time

-the social/emotional work with students that we have been doing, both in the teachers implementing ideas from Positive Discipline and Responsive Classroom, and also the integration of the Social Rules and social facilitation work that Kate Klaire has been leading

-the increasingly consistent and accurate implementation of the Words Their Way word study program

-managing the Admissions season (tour panels, classroom visits, preparing for Child Visit Day at the K/1 level, etc)

-the implementation of our new approach to all-school assemblies

-working on the items in each person's personal Professional Development plan

3) Check-in - I asked teachers to take some time to reflect on how they are taking care of themselves and each other, by completing a form covering ten actions: take time for yourself, be proactive about your health, keep family time sacred, share the positives, laugh every day (for self-care); be giving, practice empathy, compromise, inquire about others, and consider your impact (for care of others). We then shared ways in which we were being successful with these, and areas to which we want to give more attention.

4) Calendar review:

a) We looked at the draft calendar that the administration has created for the 2012-13 school year (which was done after gathering faculty input via a survey), and discussed aspects and issues with it.

b) We looked at the year-end calendar and issues related to managing the transition for Steve + Kate's camp to move in to our rooms.

5) Teacher-generated items:

a) Mike Sinclaire lead a discussion about progress reports - the pros and cons of our current system, and generative ideas for how we can improve them.

b) Sima Misra had teachers fill out a survey and discuss what would be useful in creating an online archive of math resources (which is one of the goals of her personal PD plan).

c) K/1 teachers lead a conversation about "rough play" on the playground, and how we can incorporate this developmentally appropriate need in a way that creates a safe space for children.

6) Service Learning - Kate Klaire lead a discussion about the work of the Student Council, which is trying to organize a school-wide event for later this spring.

As you can imagine, it was an action-packed 75 minutes!

Scenes From This Morning's Classrooms

Laurel - Continuing their ongoing "Here I am in the month of" project, Julianne worked with students to create self-portraits in the style of...

Blackberry - During a literacy workshop, students worked on either word sorts or "lift the flap" books, while a small group of students worked with Fundations.

2nd math - Drawing on the TERC Investigations curriculum, students worked with creating and predicting numbers based on pattern trains, and then solving and creating addition and subtraction sentences with multiple operations per sentence.

3rd math - Drawing on the TERC Investigations curriculum, students worked with the idea of "close to 100", both on worksheets and playing the actual game (six cards are dealt, and each player tries to make two two-digit numbers that total as close to 100 as possible). This was preceded by conversation about the difference between a guess and an estimate, and the relative certainty between them (teachers created a scale that read "no clue/guess/estimate/certainty" in increasing order to illustrate this).

5th math - After a lesson and activities on classifying triangles (scalene, obtuse, acute, right, isosceles, equilateral), students moved into the Show Me 1/2 curriculum to develop their skill with fractions and decimals. Today's "exit ticket" was identifying two attributes of a triangle from among the set given by the teacher.

Strawberry - Extending their marine biology science unit, students used books and websites to engage in research on an aspect of the oceans, choosing from among animals, topography, or mythology. Each child had generated a list of research questions and took notes in his/her science notebook.

Moments I Witnessed Today

Laurel Creek - Students reading "just right" books during Reading Workshop.

Blackberry Creek - Students working in their Handwriting Without Tears workbooks.

Temescal Creek: A range of activities during math workshop, including tracing and then painting complicated geometric shapes based on the property of symmetry - using the Stamp Game to understand division problems - practicing multiplication facts - using snap cubes to create pattern trains for TERC work - and investigating ratios.

Sweet Briar Creek - Students choreographing on a dance to the Water Cycle Rap:

Strawberry Creek - A mixed 4/5 math class on measurement. One station asked students to select classroom objects, estimate their length or width, and then measure them. At another station, students were measuring the length and width of insects. At a third, a variety of objects not easily measurable waited on a platter to be measured. The crowning activity: how can you measure the thickness of a piece of paper?