Do not disturb my circles!

Dear friends,

As you may have noticed, this blog has been quiet for the last six weeks. This is not a reflection of the joyous learning, teaching and living that has been going on at The Berkeley School, but rather an inverted representation of my life this spring.

I have been juggling so many balls, pins, and knives (wrapping up faculty evaluation, interviewing for the Kindergarten, Learning Support, K-5 Spanish, and K-8 PE sabbatical positions, helping finalize next year's strategic program initiatives, developing a process for generating our CAIS accreditation action plan, and just this week launching the process for year-end progress reports and class placements for next year -- not to mention the regular ongoing work of student learning and growth) while trying to start spinning a few plates atop sticks (visiting Gateway School, informally meeting parents and family members, attending official Board meetings and beginning to get information flowing with various administrators -- not to mention finding and buying a house, and starting to pack up) that I simply haven't been able to keep this outlet going. Not that I've been casting about for content -- I've had dozens of topics to write about, and hundreds of iPhone photos downloaded onto my computer waiting to post.

However, now that it's May, and we're entering the season of year-end events designed to provide closure to children's academic and social/emotional lives, and to honor and celebrate the transitions that we all go through with the cyclical nature of the school year, with deep affection and sadness I am officially closing this blog. I've greatly enjoyed sharing my views into the Elementary classrooms, the inside scoop on admin discussions, revealing the thinking and processes that drive our school culture, and engaging with interesting topics in the larger field of education. Thank you for the many kind words and deeds you have given me over the last several years, both online and in person.

If you find yourself walking along West Cliff in Santa Cruz with nothing to do, please come knock on my door at Gateway and say hello. If not, as Archimedes reportedly said to the Roman solider who killed him, Noli turbare circulos meos.

With love and respect,

Zaq

30 Minutes on the Brain

Good playlist from Edutopia on the brain:

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A Lovely Note

Sent to one of our teachers yesterday from faculty at another East Bay school:

Mike,

Our 5th grade team so appreciates the time and effort you have made to connect with us.  Sharing your Stock Market Project has been incredibly helpful as we begin our unit on decimals, fractions and percents.  Not only have you emailed your materials and answered questions, you’ve taken the time to FaceTime with us to provide greater detail on the sequence and pacing.  As a teacher, time is always short and yet you’ve been upbeat and responsive to our on-going requests.  We really appreciate this!

We also look forward to sharing our tweaks as we roll this unit out later this month.  We feel very fortunate to collaborate with you and hope you’ll ask us questions in the future.

All the best,

Amy, Eric and Nicole

Community Training on Mindfulness

Jennifer DiBrienza at TBS tomorrow!

All parents and guardians are invited to our Family Education Night - How Children Learn Math on Tuesday, Feb. 25, 7-8p in the Depot. Come and learn from mathematics education expert Jennifer DiBrienza about why TBS classrooms feature discovery-based math and problem solving. We ask that you RSVP here. Childcare is available; please indicate childcare needs with your RSVP.

Dr. DiBrienza received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in math education, and has worked as an elementary classroom teacher, math staff developer, and writer for TERC Investigations in Number, Data and Space, the core of the TBS elementary math curriculum.

Mindfulness Training with Kate Janke

As dedicated readers of this blog already know, the K-5 division has been in the midst of a year-long initiative to implement mindfulness in our classrooms. After six months of meetings designed to help the teachers and staff develop our own personal practices of mindfulness and mindful meditation, last week we spent 15 hours across three days in an in-depth training on how to implement mindfulness in the classrooms.

Kate Janke's Heart-Mind Education curriculum moves through several distinct segments. We're already well on our way to understanding how to teach from presence, which is the first grouping. Next we learned about creating the container that supports children as they enter into mindfulness with physical and psychological safety. Lessons on cultivating connection with self and others mindfully came next, followed by lessons that teach simple regulation and attention skills. The last two clusters of lessons in the curriculum focus on how we treat, speak to, and care for each other, and then a series designed to go deeper into self-awareness and our understanding of perception.

The energy of the faculty at the conclusion of the day on Saturday was incredible -- especially considering it was a Saturday, the third consecutive Saturday working for some faculty, and the first day of February break! While no two classes will be implementing the curriculum in exactly the same way, every teacher has a concrete plan to begin regularly teaching and implementing mindfulness in the K-5 classrooms when we return from break. Be sure to check out your classroom blogs for more info in the upcoming weeks.

Interested in some reading on your own? Check out these resources, but please don't try to pre-teach mindfulness to your children at home -- we want to start with this as a "school activity" before we extend it into the home lives.

The Mindful Child by Susan Kasier Greenland

The Whole Brain Child by Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson

Mindful Teaching and Teaching Mindfulness by Deborah Schoeberlein

The Mindful Brain and Mind Sight by Dan Siegel

The Best Way Out is Always Through

I feel like we've won the Olympics, if such a thing was possible!

Yesterday's CAIS accreditation visiting committee read-out in the social hall of Netivot Shalom was a cathartic and gratifying experience for the assembled faculty, staff, Board, and parent leadership. The preceedings began with each member of the committee giving a moving personal ancedote; one team member spoke about how being here at TBS re-connected her to the feeling of joyous possibility that she had experienced 15 years ago when her daughter first went to school, while another team member spoke about how he had carried a student's welcoming note in his pocket through the visit, which carried the values and culture of our community.

The committee then read through the six sections that comprise the main body of the report, identifying strengths, challenges and opportunities, and major and minor recommendations for the school to consider as we build an action plan over the next three-six months that will carry us forward for the next seven years. In the big picture, we were encouraged to establish a new narrative in which change is no longer such a powerful force, even though the school has the orientation towards self-improvement, and to slow down and let our roots grow. Some of the specific recommendations include linking the school's mission and learning outcomes more explicitly in our curriculum, developing a multi-year financial plan, and increasing our emergency response preparedness. As we have throughout this process, we'll make the committee's report available to our community once we've gotten a copy.

After the read-out, the committee immediately departed, and the assembled employees and guests moved to the Depot for a champagne toast and snacks to celebrate three years of hard work to reach this point. I'm so thankful to Sima Misra, Anne Buechner, Ann Baranger, and Natasha Distiller for their work on the Accreditation Leadership Team, and to everyone who worked to help the school move through this powerful process of self-reflection. As Robert Frost wrote, the best way out is always through!