TBS Parent Ed event on The Zones of Regulation on Wednesday 11/7

Staffing transition in Blackberry Creek

Dear TBS families,

We want to let you know about an upcoming staffing change in the Blackberry Creek classroom. Shannon Collins will be leaving the classroom, and former TBS teacher Claire Patterson will be returning to the classroom. 

Shannon's decision is based on personal circumstance and her desire to fully meet the needs of her family, which includes three teenage children (the youngest of whom is in 8th grade here at TBS), and we fully support her: as a consummate professional, her dedication to teaching is only exceeded by her dedication to her family, and this has been a very difficult decision for her.  She has been a faculty member at The Berkeley School since 2003 and a parent at the school even longer, and she and co-teacher Lisa Chung have gotten Blackberry Creek off to a great start this year.

As you might know, Claire left the Blackberry Creek classroom at the end of last year to take a position as an art specialist and classroom teacher at a new, Montessori-based charter school in Oakland. As she has begun to share with our community, her time there has been highly educative: through her experience, she came to understand the gifts and challenges of working as a specialist teacher, and, equally important, going outside the walls of The Berkeley School allowed her to understand the unique nature of our supportive, well-resourced, and child-centered professional environment. Those understandings, coupled with other experiences, led Claire to give notice to her new place of employment in September.  Shortly after that, she contacted us to ask about the possibility of returning to The Berkeley School at some point in the future.  So when Shannon informed us of her decision, we saw an immediate opportunity to bring Claire back into the fold, minimize the impact of a staffing transition, and most importantly, continue to meet the needs of the children in Blackberry Creek.  Claire knows our program, curriculum, protocols, and traditions deeply, and she already has personal and instructional relationships with the first graders in the classroom, as well as working relationships with the other faculty, so she needs minimal time to get up to speed on instructional needs in the classroom.

Claire visited the classroom on Monday and together the three teachers led a discussion with students about the staffing transition. That afternoon we hosted a meeting with parents of children in Blackberry Creek, where we reviewed that conversation and answered parent questions about how we will maintain curricular and programmatic consistency through this change. If you were on campus this morning, you might have seen Claire leading the annual Halloween parade - a role she has had now for several years. Claire’s first full day at The Berkeley School will be tomorrow, Thursday, November 1st, in for Parent/Teacher conferences, while Shannon’s last day will be Tuesday, November 20th. During those overlapping weeks, the classroom will be staffed by all three teachers, and we will be giving Claire and Lisa additional time to meet in order to work together on planning the curriculum and instruction.

We encourage you to speak factually and clearly with your children about this staffing transition, and refrain from presenting the news in a "guess what?" or similar approach that sensationalizes the information. Our K-5 division truly is a village -- older siblings of the 21 students in Blackberry Creek are in all four of the 2/3 and 4/5 classrooms -- and we have many students who have had Shannon, Claire or both as past teachers across all grades of the school, so we know this information will spread quickly among the children. Because we expect that various children will feel a range of emotions about this change at different times,  we hope you can join us in emphasizing to your child(ren) that this transition is a process, not a single event, and give them the space to express their feelings, thoughts and questions over time.

When you see them on campus over the next few weeks, please give Shannon your best wishes, and give Claire a warm welcome.

Positive Discipline

TBS K-6 Music Teacher Kim Headlee submitted this report on a recent professional development training she attended about Positive Discipline, a paradigm for thinking about interactions with children that forms one of the foundations of our approach to classroom management.

Positive Discipline with Lori Onderwyzer

October 26/27, 2012 at Mills College, Oakland, CA

After reading about Positive Discipline, it was an unparalleled experience to have the chance to practice and discuss it among a diverse group of teachers, counselors, and administrators. All equally passionate about making a positive difference for children, we came from a wide diversity of experience: from public to private schools, from 1^st year to retired teachers, from pre-K to high school. We spent two full days exploring ourselves as both learners and teachers, and delving into practical theories for the modern classroom.

Positive discipline is based on Alfred Adler’s idea that all humans have a basic need for belonging and significance, and uses this idea to foster connection and mutual respect, and to empower children to realize their own capabilities. For example, Positive Discipline emphasizes encouragement over praise; the first creates intrinsic motivation and self esteem while the latter builds worth only through external means, which disappears with external source. Encouragements are about the student; praise is about the teacher. Praise and other external motivation like rewards and punishments create a fixed reality with no room for improvement, only regression. For example, think of how, “I’m so proud of you!” feels as opposed to “You should feel so proud of yourself.” 

Positive Discipline, along with its guiding principles, suggests simple classroom management tools. A few of my favorites are the one word redirect, and using 10 words or less whenever possible. Remember Charlie Brown’s teacher? Another is providing the “wheel of choice,” a set of problem solutions that kids can do themselves, including “apologize,” “count to ten,” and “use an ‘I’ message.” Lastly, asking “what” and “how” questions (not “why”) put the onus on children to follow their own learning process. It is this learning process we strive for as educators; after all, the root of the word is “ēducāre,” which means “to draw forth.” And the root of the word “discipline?” It’s “disciplina,” which means “to guide.”

Girl's Leadership Institute

My nine-year-old daughter and I just finished attending a four-week session run by the Girls Leadership Institute, and I can't recommend the experience highly enough. Titled "Real Parents, Real Daughters", the program spent sessions on relational aggression, emotional intelligence, learning to own mistakes and say sorry, and ended with practice using a loose script for conflict resolution. It gave both my daughter and me tools to use to talk and listen to each other better. There's another session beginning next week for parents of girls in 4th and 5th grade.

Using neuroscience in the classroom

Today I sent around this article about using neuroscience to inform classroom practice to the faculty. A quick hit of some highlights:


- Establish the relevance of the lesson to previous and future lessons.

- Allow more time for inquiry; ask fewer spontaneous questions, and focus on specific, planned questions. Also, slow down the pace; extend your "wait time" for student answers.

- Incorporate movement, play, and collaboration into the lessons.

And of course, teach students about their brains!

Parent Ed Event on raising boys

A Day in the Life....of 4th Grade Math

This morning I had the pleasure of observing a fourth grade math class. Though we have two mixed 4th/5th classrooms, every morning the students regroup by grade for math, and this year Jeff and Kellyne are teaching 4th grade math.

The class began with the teachers taking the students to the basketball court, and organizing them into two groups to play a 10-minute long math version of Giants, Elves and Wizards. One group was Even and the other was Odd; the teachers would shout a computation problem (such as 4x3), and the group with the appropriate characteristic to the answer (in this case Even) would then chase the other group to a safety line, attempting to tag as many people as they could (tagged students then had to switch sides and become part of the other group). This 10 minute warm up combined mental calculations of addition, subtraction, and multiplication, and knowledge of odd and even, with a kinesthetic action (chasing or fleeing) that motivated students to attempt to speed up their computational speed.

Everyone then moved inside to the rug, where they found their notebooks and pencils, and worked on a series of warm-up problems displayed on the interactive whiteboard. The students had 10 minutes to work on their own, and then 10 minutes of whole-group sharing and discussion about the problem set, which included logic problems (Two men play five games of chess, and each wins an equal amount as the other. How is this possible?), greater/less than symbol application (155 > 99), and connected pairs of algebraic problems involving addition or subtraction with one variable (If 27 - X = 20, what is X? Next, what is X + 14?)

The class then continued a stations-based work period begun earlier in the week, for about 30 minutes. One station drew on Marcy Cook curriculum for creating dynamic triple-digit addition equations involving regrouping. Two stations drew on JUMP! Math curriculum for investigations into linear measurement and time telling. One station drew on Everyday Math curriculum for work with pan balancing (solving equations using various weights on either side of a balance scale); and the last station contained cuisenaire rods for students to use in working with the Show Me 1/2 fractions curriculum. In the last five minutes of class, students returned to the rug to preview the homework assignment, ask clarifying questions, and organize their materials.

There were many aspects of this period that artfully embodied the elementary division's approach to instruction. The introductory activity (on the basketball court) combined the use of prior knowledge with current skill development, while providing movement-based reinforcement using a high-motivation game format. The second phase of the class (on the rug) provided guided practice on current concepts and whole-group sharing of strategies for arriving at answers, balancing individual students' desires to work alone (some students wore noise-canceling headphones to help them concentrate) or in groups (some students engaged in spirited conversation while attempting to solve the problems). The third phase of class (five table workstations) allowed for student-directed choice about which concept and activity to practice, and also gathered students together to support their understanding of how the homework connected with the work they had been doing. Taken as a whole, the tripartite structure of the lesson provided adequate time in each phase for students to dive into the knowledge and skills presented, while factoring in student motivation and the constraints of their ability to maintain attention.