How do we teach for the future without sacrificing our core skills and values?
Here are few sources of inspiration and information:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1621539/teen-iphone-app-developers
http://developer.apple.com/ipad/sdk/
http://www.amazon.com/Designing-iPad-Building-Applications-that/dp/0470976780
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/04/the-world-of-childrens-apps-a-shake-up/#more-62342
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/01/the-5-best-toys-of-all-time/all/1
I must admit that I am an easy target for the holidays. I grew up in a family where my brothers and I just loved all the anticipation and excitement that came with holiday decorations and music, family gatherings, and yes, trinkets and stuffed stockings and sleepless December nights. We would often sneak into each other’s rooms and wake each other in anticipation of the holidays and the fun and tradition that awaited us. We had our favorite music and our favorite stories and our favorite cookies. As an adult, I enjoy the preparations: the writing of cards, the baking of cookies and divining that one original gift that will make all the difference for a loved one…these are all activities that happily preoccupy me at this time of year.
So yes, there are two trees in the Pink House, stockings hung by the fireplace, scarves being knitted, cards being written, and holiday menus being planned. But there are also whispers of gratitude as well as worries about our children traveling home safely, Hannah from California and Alex from Connecticut. There is anticipation for the speedy recovery of some family and friends, and wishes and hopes for the future: the future of my family, of this school community, of our local community, of our country, and of our world. If I let myself, I could become paralyzed by all there is to do, and all that could go wrong, and all that might not get done. Instead, I want to focus on what is simple and good and right and humane–and just be grateful for the here and now.
In the spirit of giving, I offer up the following links for our collective enlightenment and education. Keep the peace and be thankful for all that we have in our lives. Right here. Right now.
• developmental milestones and what it means to parent this age group.
• questions about parenting rules and what others are doing in their homes.
• questions about school or school work for the age group.
They have been fruitful conversations, sometimes reinforcing, sometimes revelatory, about what it means to be parents in 2011. This Friday’s Parents’ Association meeting includes the topic of “media literacy” for parents. This is timely for all of us as we grapple with the ever changing role of media in our own lives and in the lives of our children. I am looking forward to some lively conversation in the upcoming roundtables and in this Friday’s meeting. Additionally, over winter break, many of us will read Richard Weissbourd’s The Parents We Mean To Be. The book is the topic of our January Parents’ Association meeting.
Indeed, one of the beauties of this school is that we do have involved parents, willing to lend their time, talent and resources in service in of education of their children. This is a wonderfully supportive group of parents. And so this environment can make me forgetful sometimes that not everyone is as lucky as we are.
At times I feel immune to some of the larger issues being debated in the media on the state of education because Independent Schools are just that: independent. I am reminded, however, that not all children have such an adult-rich learning environment and such attentive parents. Thus I was struck by Thomas Friedman’s Op-Ed piece in the New York Times last week that sparked an online debate I have been watching with a certain degree of fascination. For the record, what Friedman writes about is not new news. To see his piece, How About Better Parents? and the ever growing commentary, click here to read.
Of all the data Friedman has collected here, the piece I want to focus on is the very simple fact that students whose parents read to them on a regular basis while in the early primary grades perform systematically better than their peers. Friedman talks about all kinds of parental involvement and investment in school. But the focus on reading is not to be overlooked.
Here at Tuxedo Park School we have involved parents who help and volunteer in all kinds of ways at our school. We have just returned from Thanksgiving Break after a very successful, warm and wonderful Grandparent’s Day. At Grandparent’s Day I had the privilege of addressing the grandparents and asking them to tell their stories to their grandchildren. For parents, the plea is about reading. Read to them, read with them, read next to them, each of you in your own book. We are lucky enough to have access to books in all forms: in our local libraries, in our homes, online. Make reading a family habit. As you think about gift-giving this holiday season, think about giving your child the gift of your undivided attention while you read him or her a story.
Some wonderful suggestions:
As family holidays go, I have always loved Thanksgiving best of all. Thanksgiving always invokes memories of my maternal grandparents’ home in Newark, N.J., where my mother and her siblings were raised. There are memories of running up and down the stairs of that big three-story house with my brothers and cousins in tow. There are sensory memories of the smell of my grandmother’s gravy mixing with biscuits and mashed turnips – a food I only saw once a year. There are memories of sitting at a grand table, with seventeen people gathered around it, and of toasts and prayers said at that table. It was pure magic – unadulterated joy – as I recall it all. We always had our own separate turkey at home as well. My mother had a knack for magic with leftover turkey: open-faced turkey sandwiches smothered in gravy, creamed turkey over rice, and, when the meat was all gone, turkey soup. My brothers and I would fight over the wishbone, always. I have come up with my own treat to make with turkey leftovers (a sort of Bûche de Thanksgiving): phyllo dough rolled up in a spiral with layers of turkey, cranberry, shredded cheese and stuffing. I think my children prefer the leftover version to the turkey day version, but there you have it. As I look back over my first autumn here at Tuxedo Park School, I feel the beginnings of a new set of memories and traditions emerging and a sense of enormous gratitude on so many levels. Here are just a few of the reasons I feel grateful, in the form of an invocation:
* I feel grateful for a school that values character and service to others as much as it values academics, arts, and athletics.
* I feel grateful for a professional and committed faculty and staff who work tirelessly on behalf of children.
* I feel grateful for a dedicated board of trustees whose committees are buzzing with activity in service to the school.
* I feel grateful for a committed and involved parent community who value education so completely that they make sacrifices in other parts of their lives in order to have their children at this school.
* I feel grateful to the legions of community members who preceded us here and still manage to stay connected to TPS over time and distance because this school was an important part of their family’s history.
* I feel grateful for a school where students are helping people in our own neighborhood in addition to helping people in other parts of the world.
* I feel grateful to be a part of a school community where we actively value gratitude.
So, this Thanksgiving as you connect with family, traveling far or staying close by, no matter what you eat or how many days of leftovers are required to finish it, remember to be grateful for the miracles (big and small) in your life – the gifts we count before we’re told we must worry about holiday presents. Reflect on the things in your life for which you are grateful, and share them with your children. Reach into your own past to help create new stories and traditions for the next generation. Make a commitment to some family time that is distraction- and electronic-free, silencing your devices to just be in the moment with your children. Create memories they will always remember.
With gratitude, Happy Thanksgiving!
A recent New York Times Magazine cover referenced a series of articles about failure as the path to success. On a few occasions I have reminded our faculty that if we expect our students to make themselves vulnerable to the failure (and triumph) posed by change, then they themselves should feel compelled to do likewise. I soon realized that by exhorting them in this way, I myself must be open to the same challenge—and ideally, first.
Last week I stumbled into my own foray into this arena.
As many of you know I teach 8th grade French. I love the opportunity to work with students at this level, because, among other things, it allows me to learn from them directly. This was never more the case than last week when we commenced preparation for our first semester exams, and I began constructing a method for that preparation. Habit led me to a conventional system: a printed “analogue” version of all information we would be studying, compiled by way of a time-consuming process of printing, cutting, pasting, and copying. But then, there it was, the 10-page sum total of everything I needed these students to know, written down on something I could hold – something tangible. It includes exercises and lists and many components of practice for students.
When Cristin O’Connor and I stood before the class to discuss the period of time we had to prepare for the exam, we decided to offer them the choice of determining how they wanted to prepare. The decision was unanimous, and there was nothing analogue about it. For their study tool they chose quizlet.com, an online apparatus that allows students to digitally create their own flashcards, something my class did by dividing up the content and inputting their delegated sections onto the site. A compelling mix of quizzes and games then makes interactive activities of the designated material in a virtual community of the participants.
Quizlet.com was invented by a high school sophomore six years ago and now boasts 1.6 million registered users, including our 8th grade French class. The site includes 5 million existing flashcards spanning nearly every topic imaginable, but as it happens, the 15-year-old founder of Quizlet.com was preparing for a French exam when the inspiration struck him. His teacher had assigned him 111 animal names to memorize, and he realized that it would be more efficient to write code for a memorization tool than to use the conventional techniques available to him in 2005. Just over a year after serving as his program’s guinea pig, Andrew Sullivan released the site publicly to much acclaim. In April of this year, the 21-year-old pulled a move familiar to Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs by opting out of his university education (MIT, in Andrew’s case) to serve the growing company full-time.
Lest I be seen as an advocate for dropping out of school, I am compelled to examine why four such disparate and talented (in some cases young) men would have done so. It seems clear that education, even at its finest – MIT, Harvard – sometimes loses its brightest acolytes by not keeping pace with the evolution (revolution) being created by their young agents of change. My own young charges were a compelling reminder to me that if the existing construct doesn’t work, a new one will be created. This creative process is what I want to celebrate and advocate in this Menuscript article, and at this school. We should all demand it from ourselves as well as from our students, even as we risk failure in doing so. Next week will be the moment I discover if my students’ risk pays off when they take their French exam and either benefit or suffer for their choice.
I think we are up to the challenge to make the classroom even more interactive and dynamic, to allow students some voice in the creation of their study materials, and indeed even in some cases, of the content. By the time our students enter their high school worlds, they will be taking some percentage of their coursework in a blended environment where the material exists online, in the classroom, and in the spaces in between. We need to try and meet them there, while never sacrificing what we hold dear at Tuxedo Park School: the human interaction, the public speaking skills, the firm handshake and eye contact, the important words of please and thank you. They will need all of it.
Watch this for more on this topic:
The intro is a bit long before he gets to his thesis, but Sir Ken Robinson is worth the time and investment.
While enjoying the Heads Conference at Mohonk last week, I became familiar with the work of Tony Schwartz, one of the terrific speakers at the conference whose work on The Energy Project is making me rethink the school day and schedule. He spoke to us about multitasking and about the power of human energy. He also gave us some terrific data on the myth of multi-tasking.
I had the opportunity at the conference to practice “task-shifting.” Since I often multitask, this seemed a bit old school as I thought about the work of schools and how I spend my days. But by the end of the three days, I had come away with a better understanding of the following notion: there are moments in our lives when focusing for sustained periods of time on one thing nets better results and more thorough understanding.
Conversely, multi-tasking when one of the tasks does not require cognitive functioning is also okay. So I am successful at knitting and listening, and working on calligraphy letters while watching a video, but as soon as I try to accomplish two tasks, each of which requires cognitive firepower, then one and often BOTH of the tasks suffer: answering email while being pinged by new messages that I then try to read; speaking to someone in my office and retrieving a text message from a colleague; listening to a speaker at a conference and composing an email at the same time.
Mr. Schwartz ran us through a series of exercises designed to show us how faulty our output can be when we are not singularly focused on the task at hand. Again, this makes me think about our students and their world. What does this mean for us here at school? For how students learn best? For how we teach best? When it matters, we need to create opportunities for all of us that are distraction-free–for students, for teachers, for parents.
The work of Tony Schwartz dovetailed nicely with a speaker on multi-tasking that I heard present to students last year in California. Dr. Karen Bradley gave the students much to think about in her presentation on brain research with regard to the myths of multi-tasking. She has done in depth research on this topic and has some great points to make. Click here for a link to part of her presentation.
Now, I recognize that for you to read this article and look at the attendant links, I have, in essence, asked you to multitask: to move from text to online links to text to YouTube video. This is the reality of the way we now process and synthesize information, but it is also important to understand the mindset of our children and how they move–often much more seamlessly than we do–between media. Check out the links I have enclosed and see what you think. As I prepare for the faculty professional day on Friday, I am thinking about how to approach this topic with all of us together in a room, how to delineate when we want to task-shift and when we need to “multi-task.” More to follow…
As a still new head of school, and as one still new to Tuxedo Park School, I pride myself at appearing (and being) relatively unflappable. I can take many things in stride. I understand that there is much to learn both in a new role AND in a new place. So as this fall has unfolded, I have tried to remain measured, calm and balanced in my approach to most things.
The Halloween Blizzard of 2011 has taken me to a new place! Here on campus we had 16 inches of snow, loss of power and many downed trees! We also had visitors from the Bay Area over the weekend who felt it was all a grand adventure. I am happy to report that my snow shoveling muscles still work, and that I will make sure to add a personal chainsaw to my holiday wishlist.
This weekend was all too similar to that of August, both the bad–and the good. On campus, a great group of adults pulled together and made the best of an unusual situation, pooling the food of the campus residents and hunkering down by candle light. Special thanks to the men of O&R who made good on their promise to restore power at 5am. Extra special thanks to Bill Pfiester who met them at 4:15am this morning to make sure it all worked. And we opened school having missed just one day.
It was fortuitous for all of us that the school’s annual Halloween parade played out on the brilliant fall Friday preceding the snow, and as you will see in the attached slideshow, our students put on a show worthy of a Green & Gold competition. Fostering creativity in our students looms large in our priorities, and from what the staff and assembled parents witnessed in the parade, we’re well on our way. May we all be as creative as we come out from under the latest “trick” from Mother Nature.
And the beat goes on…
Click here for a Smilebox slideshow of the TPS Halloween Parade!
Many schools can view the arrival of a NYSAIS accreditation team as a three-and-a-half day event to be endured: schools worry about judgment, about feeling affirmed and about testing out our mission. But quite the opposite feeling was apparent yesterday with the arrival of our accreditation team. With the seven members of NYSAIS now ensconced in our school, our mission and our daily life, they will help us as a school community answer the important question: Are we doing what we say we do? “We’ve walked a mile in your shoes,” said Michael O’Donoghue, chair of the accreditation team, in his remarks to our assembled faculty–and we’d do well to remember that. The NYSAIS team is comprised of our colleagues from other schools, and they share our same end goal: to give our students the best education possible.
Different state and regional associations have different time frames for accreditation. When I was a part of the California Association, it was every six years. Here in New York it is every ten years. The Tuxedo Park School Community started working on a self study during the 2010-11 school year, no small feat when one realizes that the community was also involved in the search for a new head of school. The Steering Committee deserves an enormous thank you for shepherding the community through a very detail-oriented process leading up to the arrival of the team yesterday. Thank you to Lori Calderon, John Ham, Dawn Kranzo, Lynne Schroh, Diana Coyne and Caitlin Rycewicz. The countless hours and accumulation of documents and data was successfully accomplished, as was the fine tuning required of a document with no fewer than 70 contributors. Thank you!
The visit this week kicked off with a tour of the school yesterday that Andrew Monachelli and I gave the NYSAIS group, followed by a cocktail party where they could meet the teaching and non-teaching staff as well as some of our trustees. Our visitors will meet all employees, visit classes, watch our systems, and give us a full report of our adherence to our stated mission and program objectives. For me, as a newcomer to this community, this is the best feedback to create our roadmap for the school going forward. I look forward to this visit and to great conversations, some of which have already been sparked by this visit. I will report back when we have more data from the team after their report has been filed.
In the meantime, I am enclosing two links. Both of them are talks by Daniel Pink on the same subject: motivation. They are given in two different formats for different kinds of experiences. Enjoy!
As parents we often worry: Are we are doing the right thing? Too much? Not enough? When we approach conference day (or in my case, with a child in boarding school, Parents’ Weekend) we arrive with a mix of excitement, adrenaline, dread and wonder. How is my child doing? How does she or he measure up to others? Is she meeting her potential? Is he overwhelmed? Should I be doing something different to support her at home? Does he need me to be more involved? Less involved? What does good support for my child look like in our house? Checking his work? Just creating a quiet space for her to do her homework? For all of these questions, the real answer is it depends:
•it depends on how independent he or she is right now.
•it depends onhow thoroughly he or she is performing on homework tasks.
•it depends on how satisfied he/she is with the outcome.
•it depends on whether teachers feel she is giving her best effort.
•it just depends.
This is a week to continue the dialogue with your child’s homeroom teacher or advisor. Nothing will be decided this week; these reports and comments (and grades for older students) mark the middle of a semester, nothing more. This is a snapshot of where your child is after the first six weeks of the school year. For primary parents, this means hearing about how well your child can take direction, wait her turn or simply carry the container of milk to the lunch table. As students go up through the grades, we look at personal responsibility, the understanding of one’s role in the class dynamic, and an ability to keep materials and personal space in check. By fifth and sixth grade, we add the layer of academic grade ranges, school citizenship and adherence to larger community norms. By seventh grade, students are participating in conferences, explaining where they feel successful and where they struggle. Upper School conferences should be about your child’s current academic standing and creating a road map (setting goals) for the second half of the semester. This type of goal-setting is not only useful for school, but is also great practice in life skills as well.
For all parents in all divisions, this is a wonderful opportunity to match up what you are seeing at home with what teachers are seeing at school. The conversations at conferences will often center on teacher feedback and parent questions. Come in with the knowledge that we are working on this educational process together to make sure each child is on a positive and forward-moving path.
Open communication and dialogue is the key. Education is a process, not just a product (or report card). Having read all of the report cards being sent home, I feel certain you will find this snapshot enlightening and informative.
October brought a gorgeous first week of weather, the launch of the TPS faculty iPad pilot program and the untimely death of Steve Jobs. As I think about Tuxedo Park School and imagine all the possibilities that technology can bring into our educational world, I also pause to think about exactly what kind of innovation is necessary to create the tools of the future. What do we need to help our children unlock their potential and encourage them to innovate in ways unimaginable to us right now?
Tributes to Steve Jobs abound in the blogosphere, but there was one particular posting that caught my attention, the 2005 commencement address at Stanford University. Watching this video reminded me of three of my favorite mantras: “We must prepare the child for the path and NOT the path for the child.” It was said by Rob Evans, a frequent speaker to Independent School administrators, boards and parents and he uses it to encourages parents and teachers to build that resilience muscle in our children, to teach them how to rebound after a setback or disappointment. As Tom Sturges wrote (and as I shared with the middle school parents) “Grow the Tree you Got,” encouraging the parents of teens and pre-teens to stop wishing for a child with a different skill set or talent base and appreciate and nurture the seed in the children we have right now. Finally, as I think about the weighty responsibility born by those of us who parent and teach in this digital age, I am yet again reminded of Daniel Pink, who tells us “We must educate our children for their future—not our past.”
So even as we continue to foster the rich traditions of Tuxedo Park School, we modernize them, where we can, and only when that modernization enhances and extends the experience. As Head of School, I have the joy of reading Harold and the Purple Crayon to the kindergarteners at our weekly reading date, but I can also share the book’s app on my iPad, allowing the children to interact and manipulate the same story in new ways.
And so, as the gold team earned 35 points at last week’s Math Bowl championship, one in a long tradition of wonderful academic bowls, iPads were used for the first time in order to display the math problems to the contestants. And as the jazz band prepares for its first performance, students recorded themselves playing on video and audio using Mr. Williams’ iPad. As we teachers learn how to extend our learning through technology, we wonder: which of our students will take these tools on his or her circuitous path, perhaps some of them emerging as the next Mr. Jobs, themselves eventually creating and enhancing educational opportunities for future generations? It is with a hopeful sense of wonder that I look forward to this journey, and to finding out where innovation will strike next.
Head's Up, Kathleen McNamara 