Year-end elementary division mtg

Yesterday we held our year-end elementary division meeting. My goal was to both honor the year that was past, and to start thinking ahead towards next year in real and pragmatic ways. We began, as always, by reviewing our established groundrules.



The first activity was an appreciation circle. I asked each teacher to write at least three appreciations: one for the person sitting directly to his/her right, and two more for other people around the table. My original idea was to have each person receive the assigned appreciation, and then anyone else could add in as s/he felt, but a quick check revealed that the teachers felt uncomfortable with this plan. One of the faculty then suggested we simply do the first part of the circle (the assigned part), and that any additional appreciations be made directly to each other during the break. This was eagerly adopted as a better approach for the group, and a terrific experience followed. While hearing the great appreciations faculty had for each other was very moving, the event was also a powerful leadership experience for me; hearing opposition to my plan, being able to express my intent, and then being open and receptive to an alternative suggestion of how to proceed left me with a good feeling about the work I've done to develop a strong culture, and also my willingness to model appropriate behaviors.

After a quick break, we had a group brainstorming on topics to include in a Program Handbook that can be given to current and prospective faculty. We have handbooks for families (the Parent Handbook) and employees (the Employee Handbook) that lay out lots of important information about school policies, but we don't have a unified source for "the ropes" that lay out our approach to topics such as curriculum design, pedagogic tools, discipline, homework, the SST process, classroom and consumable budgets, field trip forms, a calendar of traditional events, school-wide assemblies, and many other topics. Teachers suggested lots of ideas, and one of my summer projects will be to draft this handbook.

The third part of the meeting was a conversation about Room Parents. While we are of course(!) deeply grateful to all parents who volunteer and help out in the classroom, the role of Room Parent is one that has special importance, and also one that needs more intention and cultivation. We spent about 20 minutes identifying positive and negative qualities of Room Parents, the important duties that teachers rely on Room Parents to fulfill, and how the selection process can be handled as apolitically and effectively as possible.

The last section of the meeting was spent in reflection on our teaching practices. We began by thinking about our work with the TBS Learning Outcomes. Teachers were given two starting questions to consider, in writing: Which learning outcomes were you most successful in teaching, and why/how? And, which learning outcomes were you least successful in teaching, and why/how? After sharing their thoughts and responses, teachers were given 20 minutes to return to the curriculum mapping project we have worked on this year, and asked to revise the maps they had made in February in order to accurately reflect the content of their curriculum for the second half of the year.

And then, bittersweet though it was, we said goodbye. I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to guide, grow with, and learn from this collection of creative, insightful, dedicated, compassionate and collaborative faculty, and I'm excited to build on this year's successes next fall.

Mission Moments #5

As always, it's a genuine web exclusive available just to you, dear reader - the fifth and final installment of the Mission Moments newsletter (for this year)! Enjoy reading about the incredible teaching and learning happening in the elementary division at TBS. For this year-end edition, I've mixed in items from throughout the year (which I wrote about when I saw them, and hung on to as extra copy) with observations from the last month.

The Last Day of School!

The last-day-of-school-assembly is always a wonderful experience for the students, staff and faculty, and today's event met all expectations for a positive and engaging time. Mitch began with a short welcome, which was followed by Eve leading us in singing This Land is Your Land. Next, the 4/5 students played a rondo on their Dresher Project instruments, with parent Leah Mahan on hand to capture the footage, after which Eve taught us all a 17th century French folk dance. The faculty band then rocked through All You Need is Love, I Can See Clearly Now, and La Bamba, with a student dance party in full effect. Kate and the Service Learning Council presented checks to representatives from the groups we raised money for through the Walkathon, including TBS alum Luke Tanaka, who talked about his first-hand experience working with the What If? foundation in Haiti. Enjoy the pictures below!

8th Grade Graduation

Today's graduation ceremony was a touching and powerful event. My hat goes off to the students for their insightful, articulate reflections on their experiences at TBS, expressed through song, poem, story and speech. Though the themes of change that these 13-year-olds have lived through are fairly repetitious - overcoming shyness, making new friends, accepting oneself, learning what it means to truly work hard, becoming inspired by a teacher, etc - I am always amazed at how each one is able to find a unique and original approach, if not an entirely new story,  to tell about how s/he has changed during her/his time at the school.


The centerpiece of the TBS graduation event is the student presentations, which meld exhibition as an assessment device with the entire range of school-wide learning outcomes, and especially our emphasis on meta-cognition and reflection as essential skills for effective learning. This six-week unit begins with a variety of activities that help students remember and recall information about their time at TBS, starting with the creation of a timeline of their time at TBS filled with dozens of details about each year on the line. Students then move into creating Top 10 lists on various topics about their time at the school, followed by the construction of an extended metaphor ("My time at TBS has been like a ________, because __________"). This is a very public and interactive phase of the project, where students relive their younger years and share laughter and memories, and thus begin the process of moving towards closure with their time at TBS, for which the graduation event itself is merely the formal signifier.

At this point, students are ready to move into the next, more individual phase of the project, which is thinking about their own presentations. They first are asked to select a topic in response to the prompt, "What is a major way that you changed in your time at TBS?" This is followed by my personal favorite part of the project, which is a lesson on the nature of form/content relationship; by reading and discussing the poems Swan and Shadow by John Hollander and r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r by ee cummings, students learn that the form of their presentation (speech, poem, story, song, etc) should have some connection to the content of the poem, and that the two need to work in harmony to reinforce the central meaning and message of the project. Armed with this understanding, students are able to make discerning choices about how to proceed with drafting their texts, in both form and content.

Rounds and rounds of drafting, editing and revising follow, sometimes right up until the day before graduation, which is a little nerve-racking for teachers and students alike. During this last week, lessons about the actual delivery of the project are provided through watching video of, or having read-alouds of, graduation projects from previous years. Verbal and non-verbal topics including pacing, intonation, enunciation, posture, gesture, and eye contact are analyzed and discussed, and then practiced in a variety of settings, from alone to with a partner to on a live microphone. And though most students admit to being nervous before and during their presentation, the love, laughter, insight, and presence that these young adults bring to the event create an environment of joy and renewal just at the moment that we need it most.