Euclid Says

A few weeks back I came across a geometry class playing "Euclid Says" in the circle. Turns out that one of their reviews for an upcoming exam consisted of using their bodies to represent aspects of Euclidean geometry, as called out by Mrs. Giancola.

I hear and I forget
I listen and I understand
I do and I remember

Healthy Competition

I recently attended a charter school fair that received some press from the Buffalo News. I was a little surprised that this event received the attention that it did, as similar "next schools" events have become fairly standard in communities where there is robust competition and a market effect around educational options.

When I did my graduate work in the late 1990s, one of the research projects that I worked on was a study of the nascent charter school movement in New Jersey soon after a charter school law was put in place. I personally had the opportunity to visit many of the original 13 schools that were founded in 1996 and our research team conducted extensive interviews with constituents from these schools in an attempt to tease out what their existence might do to the educational landscape.

At the time, one of the conclusions we reached was:

"The results of charter schools should be considered as a whole. The charter school movement should not be celebrated with one or two schools that stand out as shining stars, nor should it be damned by one or two abysmal disappointments. Beyond the constituents of the schools, success of failure needs to be measured, in part, by the impact of charter schools on the wider educational system. Charter schools touch the core of our nation's most pressing problems of equity and excellence -- issues that warrant our most thoughtful consideration." 1

In the ten years since this study, the original 13 schools have expanded t0 62 schools, and all but one are still in operation. Proof to me that charter schools are a "game-changer" for district schools, and that there is a hunger for small, "independent public schools," that will make good on their promise of trading autonomy from state regulations and union forces for accountability for results. I met a lot of good people and excellent educators when conducting this study, which helped me to understand that public schools are not intentionally monolithic, but instead seemed to be yoked under historical and bureaucratic structures that they can't seem to shake off.

Will charter schools ultimately pose real competition to independent schools like Park? I think it is too early to tell, as many of these schools focus on under-served student populations and still don't fully enjoy the wide freedoms or all of the experience and resources that flow from independent schools' long history.

Regardless, long ago I made an uneasy peace with that fact that I serve a population that already has so much. I believe that doing so allows me to do my best work, in partnership with families who have both the will and the resources to provide the best possible education for their children. I wish that I could provide this standard of education to everyone, because all of us want what's best for our children.

I can't, but perhaps charter schools bring us all one step closer.

1. New Jersey Charter Schools: The First Year 1997-1998, Professor Pearl Rock Kane, et. al., Teachers College, Columbia University

MS Teachers Present at National Conference

Middle School teachers Jennifer Kwiatek and Martha Barrett recently presented at the annual convention of the National Association for Gifted Children in Tampa, Florida. Their topic was the integration of creativity skills into a middle school “biome” unit, and the change in quality that seem to occur in student learning when these skills were integrated.

This particular unit was originally taught in 2006, with students simply being encouraged to “be creative.” In the interim, Mrs. Kwiatek was trained in Creative Studies at Buffalo State, and she incorporated this training when the unit was being planned for spring of 2008.

This time, rather than directing students to be creative, the unit emphasized teaching students how to be creative using the Torrance Incubation Model (TIM), a framework for designing lessons that enhances students’ creative thinking skills. This model consists of three stages:

1. Heighten Anticipation: creating the desire to know and arouse curiosity
2. Deepen Expectations: sustaining the motivation created and encourage deeper exploration of a topic
3. Extend Learning: keeping it going even after the lesson is over

The following skills are associated with this model:

• Find the Problem - recognition or awareness of a situation
• Produce and Consider Many Alternatives - generating many and varied ideas
• Be Flexible - perceiving a problem in different perspectives
• Be Original - moving away from the obvious
• Highlight the Essence - identifying what is most important and absolutely essential
• Elaborate – but not Excessively - adding details or ideas and developing themKeep Open - resisting premature closure
• Be Aware of Emotions - recognizing verbal and non-verbal cues
• Put Your Ideas in Context - putting experiences together in a meaningful way and making connections
• Combine and Synthesize - combining relatively unrelated elements
• Visualize It – Richly and Colourfully - using vivid and exciting imagery
• Enjoy and Use Fantasy - imagine, play and consider things that are not concrete or do not exist
• Make it Swing – Make it Ring! - responding to sound and movement
• Look at it Another Way - being able to see things from a different visual or psychological perspective
• Visualize the Inside - paying attention to the internal dynamic of things
• Breakthrough – Extend the Boundaries - thinking outside prescribed requirements
• Let Humor Flow and Use It - perceiving incongruity and responding to a surprise
• Get Glimpses of the Future – wonder and dream about possibilities

In applying this model and these skills, among the approaches that Mrs. Barrett and Mrs. Kwiatek employed was asking students to determine why exploring Biomes might be important to their learning; brainstorming activities for teaching others about biomes; and making future predictions based upon past and present knowledge (to learn this skill, students began by making past, present, and future predictions regarding Mrs. Barrett!).

The result? Both units involved creating biomes and touring various grades through these biomes. The 2008 unit offered these enhancements:

• The creation of biomes involved the use of a much wider variety of material used in much more creative fashion than in 2006
• The focus on predicting the future condition of a biome encouraged higher level thinking than the previous unit
• Tour speeches were scripted for the new unit with a focus on information that would keep audience attention
• The unit eased the students into the material by heightening their anticipation and extended the learning after the guided tours
• Included activities that promoted reasoning, predicting, analyzing, and drawing conclusions
• Creativity was explicitly taught rather than expected

As often happens at Park, student provided a valuable assessment of the new unit:

“The 5th and 6th grade biome project was creative because, any teacher could have you research a biome, but we had to recreate the biome in a selected area. We had to be creative and use everything in our area to recreate our biome. On top of that we had to dress like we would if we were actually in that biome. We were required to explain different aspects of our biome and present to the elementary school, parents, and anyone who wanted to come and see what we did. This was a very memorable experience, especially because it was interesting to learn in a creative, and fun way. I got a lot out of this experience…”

~ Julian, Grade 5

Park School on WGRZ

Many thanks to some of our intrepid Parkies, who gathered at 6:00 a.m. at Spot Coffee to tell the world (well, Buffalo at least) about our open house. As always, our students are often our most eloquent supporters.

November Head's Letter

THE SECOND FAMILY

“Teenagers today have little reason to attach themselves to their parents or other adults. Most of their needs – to connect, to belong, and to communicate – are satisfied by members of their second family.”- Dr. Ron Taffel

I was recently reminded that one of the strengths of a school like Park is our ability to shape a student body through the admissions process, and that one of the seldom talked about benefits to independent school families is the knowledge that our sons and daughters spend their days with students who share similar broad goals (a focus on authentic learning and, ultimately, college preparation) and worldviews (a respect for self and others). This seems particularly important in a world where children often appear to be raising themselves and each other with less and less input from adults.

When I was growing up, the greatest predictor of my success was who my parents were and how they chose to raise me. Today, the greatest predictor of success for the children we serve is whom they choose to hang out with. At least this is the prevailing wisdom among many child psychologists and adolescent health researchers, including Dr. Ron Taffel, whose book The Second Family: How Adolescent Power is Challenging the American Family has been in my thoughts lately.

Taffel makes the case that teenagers’ peer groups and pop culture are the dominant forces shaping their development, and he cites a host of cultural shifts that he believes gave rise to the “second family” phenomenon. Among these he includes an ever-increasing consumer culture that exerts a “tyranny of cool” that relentlessly markets to ever-younger children, a lack of “undivided” attention from parents, constant external stimulation, a sense of “entitlement” to be heard and respected, and a culture of “comfort-seeking” among teens.

These theories grow out of Taffel’s work as a therapist and he mostly supports them with anecdotal case studies from his practice. As such, I am leery of generalizing them to the entire “tween” and teenage population. However, much of his thinking seems to echo what we are learning about the “millennial” generation (those born between 1980 and 2000) and some of the attitudes they are bringing to the workforce: a need for constant personal validation, an inflated sense of self that belies experience or ability, a strong drive to please others, a demand for work/life balance, and an expectation that they should receive immediate rewards from their work. (For more on millennials, see Ron Alsops’s Trophy Kids: How the Millennial Generation Is Shaking Up the Workplace.)

Taffel believes that adolescent culture mimics adult culture, often taking its least appealing aspects to extremes. He posits that the current mantra of adolescent culture is “to be comfortable” rather than to rebel against authority or change the world, as it was when baby boomers came of age. Therefore, the predominant guiding ethic for today’s young adult is less “I am my brother’s keeper” and more “live and let live” unless someone else’s actions will have a direct impact upon one’s personal comfort. While I think Taffel is too monolithic in his thinking, particularly in light of the historic presidential election we just lived through, I must admit that some of his case studies seem to describe particular students whom I have worked with throughout my career, and that I found myself nodding along as he presented the more destructive forces in modern youth culture.

I am struck by the fact that Park School feels downright counter-cultural when contrasted to the world that Taffel presents. In our own way we comprise a second family for our students, but one that I trust is thoughtful and positive in nature. Park has a culture where student and adults interact in a very natural way, and we hold each other accountable to a set of core beliefs. We do believe that we are our brother or sister’s keeper, and that we should respect others as much as we respect our self and value service to others above self-service. We put more value on collaboration and cooperation within the context of our very real community of learners than we do on individual competition, particularly if it will be measured against the abstraction of standardized norms on a statewide test. We believe in a multigenerational approach to education that helps replicate our culture, and I am continually amazed at how well our older students model the school’s values and beliefs for our younger students.

In the language of our mission statement, this sense of belonging to community begins with our youngest learners and follows all the way through to our graduates, who leave with the skills essential to college success and the confidence and wisdom to serve and lead lives as good citizens after their formal schooling has concluded. This is the type of second family that harkens back to the close-knit neighborhood and back-fence conversations of my youth. This is the type of second family that inspires me to work tirelessly on its behalf. This is the type of second family that bonds alumni to one another years after they have left our campus. This is the type of second family I want for my own children.

As I bow my head in reflection during this season of thanksgiving, this is what I am thankful for.

Download a PDF of this letter

Lisa Earle McLeod in the Buffalo News

I came across the following quote in an opinion piece, Daring to Do What You Love, written by Ms. Mcleod:

"In today’s high stakes test environment, I’m amazed at how little time schools are allowed to devote toward self-discovery. It’s all about being good at everything and how well you do on the test.

Yet a lack of true self-knowledge is why so many people slog along in the wrong careers for decades. Personally, I think schools would be better off giving a Myers Briggs or similar personality test to the kids before they start asking them to chart out their entire lives"

This reminded me of what I am learning in my entry interviews. A common theme that has emerged is that Park has historically provided students both the freedom and the support to, in the words of one respondent, "discover who I am meant to be," and the self-confidence to then become that person. Heady stuff.

Election Day at Park

The Upper School Student Government sponsored a wonderful Election Day at Park. Students had an opportunity to cast their votes in a booth custom-built by students and faculty, and were given a choice between voting the Democratic, Republican, or Independent candidates.

MS. AJA EXPLAINS THE VOTING PROCESS TO THE FIRST GRADE

The process was replicated in fourth grade as well, allowing our lower school students to exercise some Chicago-style politics ("vote early and often"). The voting process represents the culmination of myriad lessons and conversations that have been happening through the school regarding this historic election.

MRS. WOODS EXPLAINS VOTING ETIQUETTE TO A SECOND GRADER

At the end of the day the upper school ballot, which consisted of several long rolls of craft paper, was analyzed by upper school students. As much as they had thought through the design of the process and as clearly as they thought they had explained it, students were surprised that they had some voting irregularities. The true implications of "Butterfly Ballots" and "hanging chads" became very real.

BALLOTS UNROLLED AND READY FOR ANALYSIS

Nonetheless, the USSG was able to quickly announce the following statistics:

87% of Park students voted
5% voted for an Independent candidate
21% voted for the Republican candidate
75% voted for the Democratic candidate

VIDEO: Where I Came From...

On my last day at Brimmer and May I toured through the school with a video camera to record the physical space where I worked for six years...