100 years later, there is still much to be done!
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Amplify
Today I attended the Women’s Funding Alliance breakfast, Amplify: Raise the Volume, Up the Impact. Seattle Girls’ School is currently the only school recipient of WFA funding. I believe that it is a testament to the scope and reach of our mission. We do indeed exemplify their definition of amplify:
• To make more powerful, stronger or louder
• To magnify intensity, heighten, deepen, compound, raise
• To add to; make complete
• To increase the volume
As our families converge on the school next week to interface with teachers, but led by students who “chair” their learning teams; I want to share with you some communication from our Curriculum Council. These are the school’s core standards that we use to inform both planning and assessment at SGS. Our faculty revisits these standards every year to ensure viability and relevance.
• Democratic Citizenship: The student actively works to create an environment in which there is respect and equity for all. The student works to create equitable social interactions and strives to be a critical consumer of information about issues. She consistently works with others toward a common goal while balancing both individual and group needs.
• Analytical / Critical Thinking and Problem-solving: Analytical/critical thinking involves the ability to make accurate observations, draw inferences, identify relationships and integrate knowledge. Problem solving includes the ability to examine possible solutions, choose effective courses of action, plan ahead/strategize, integrate skills into a functional process, monitor that process, document results, and accurately evaluate and verify.
• Communication: Communication involves the ability to clearly and effectively impart or exchange information through a variety of methods and modes: verbally - in both speaking and writing, active listening skills, and visual representations. Effective communication results in a two-way exchange of pertinent information as well as in the potential to positively influence others or reach a desired outcome.
• Effort (Work Habits): Effort involves consistent evidence of follow-through and responsibility. Evidence of effort includes meeting deadlines, possessing required class materials, arriving promptly, paying close and consistent attention, adhering thoroughly to verbal and written directions, completing all prescribed tasks, posing pertinent, provocative questions, and participating actively.
I believe that our focus on 21st century skills helps insure that this amplification effect starts happening in grade 5, 6, 7 or 8. We are not just preparing the girls for some distant future endeavor. The future is tomorrow; and these girls are ready to shape it!
• To make more powerful, stronger or louder
• To magnify intensity, heighten, deepen, compound, raise
• To add to; make complete
• To increase the volume
As our families converge on the school next week to interface with teachers, but led by students who “chair” their learning teams; I want to share with you some communication from our Curriculum Council. These are the school’s core standards that we use to inform both planning and assessment at SGS. Our faculty revisits these standards every year to ensure viability and relevance.
• Democratic Citizenship: The student actively works to create an environment in which there is respect and equity for all. The student works to create equitable social interactions and strives to be a critical consumer of information about issues. She consistently works with others toward a common goal while balancing both individual and group needs.
• Analytical / Critical Thinking and Problem-solving: Analytical/critical thinking involves the ability to make accurate observations, draw inferences, identify relationships and integrate knowledge. Problem solving includes the ability to examine possible solutions, choose effective courses of action, plan ahead/strategize, integrate skills into a functional process, monitor that process, document results, and accurately evaluate and verify.
• Communication: Communication involves the ability to clearly and effectively impart or exchange information through a variety of methods and modes: verbally - in both speaking and writing, active listening skills, and visual representations. Effective communication results in a two-way exchange of pertinent information as well as in the potential to positively influence others or reach a desired outcome.
• Effort (Work Habits): Effort involves consistent evidence of follow-through and responsibility. Evidence of effort includes meeting deadlines, possessing required class materials, arriving promptly, paying close and consistent attention, adhering thoroughly to verbal and written directions, completing all prescribed tasks, posing pertinent, provocative questions, and participating actively.
I believe that our focus on 21st century skills helps insure that this amplification effect starts happening in grade 5, 6, 7 or 8. We are not just preparing the girls for some distant future endeavor. The future is tomorrow; and these girls are ready to shape it!
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Can we teach compassion?
At Rutgers University last week, an 18-year old freshman decided to participate in secretly videotaping a male student having an encounter with another man. The young man whose privacy was invaded took his life as a result of being exposed on the internet. This tale is tragic on so many levels. What would compel two young people – one in the role of bystander – to decide to inflict this kind of humiliation on a classmate? Would the exposed young man have faced similar anguish to the point of taking his life if he had been filmed with a girl? Should we actively be preparing our students for a new definition of privacy in the 21st century? I think so! This story left me with more questions than answers.
However, at Tuesday’s community meeting, I found some answers. The rising leaders of a group at SGS, Richard’s Rwanda – Impuwe, delivered a motivational presentation that highlighted the group’s inspirational founder, an SGS alumna currently in 10th grade, as well as their on-going mission to help girls in Rwanda become empowered women. Their presentation included two very powerful video clips that are MUST view for all of us:
Richard’s Rwanda - Impuwe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFxMZaBx4pc
Girl Effect
http://www.girleffect.org/video
“Impuwe” is Rwandan for compassion, and also stands for “inspire and motivate powerful, undiscovered women with education.”
I myself left community meeting inspired and hopeful. The choice that Jessica and her classmates made years ago to help others who are very different from them presents itself in stark contrast to the choice made at Rutgers University. I believe that compassion and empathy can indeed be taught; and that they are an important part of working and learning collaboratively in a diverse community. I also believe that SGS graduates will make different choices because of what they learn from their teachers and from each other. As the girl effect video reminds us, we all face divergent paths that have much to do with how we are guided.
As the Dalai Lama told us a few years ago on his visit to Seattle, “With an open heart and joyful mind, I promise to practice compassion- to be kind to myself and to others and, especially, to be kind to every child whose life touches mine, from near or far, for today and always”
However, at Tuesday’s community meeting, I found some answers. The rising leaders of a group at SGS, Richard’s Rwanda – Impuwe, delivered a motivational presentation that highlighted the group’s inspirational founder, an SGS alumna currently in 10th grade, as well as their on-going mission to help girls in Rwanda become empowered women. Their presentation included two very powerful video clips that are MUST view for all of us:
Richard’s Rwanda - Impuwe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFxMZaBx4pc
Girl Effect
http://www.girleffect.org/video
“Impuwe” is Rwandan for compassion, and also stands for “inspire and motivate powerful, undiscovered women with education.”
I myself left community meeting inspired and hopeful. The choice that Jessica and her classmates made years ago to help others who are very different from them presents itself in stark contrast to the choice made at Rutgers University. I believe that compassion and empathy can indeed be taught; and that they are an important part of working and learning collaboratively in a diverse community. I also believe that SGS graduates will make different choices because of what they learn from their teachers and from each other. As the girl effect video reminds us, we all face divergent paths that have much to do with how we are guided.
As the Dalai Lama told us a few years ago on his visit to Seattle, “With an open heart and joyful mind, I promise to practice compassion- to be kind to myself and to others and, especially, to be kind to every child whose life touches mine, from near or far, for today and always”
Sunday, October 3, 2010
How cool is this!?
Railway to the sky? NASA ponders new launch system
Engineers have tested a prototype track-based system that uses magnetic levitation to accelerate vehicles to launch speeds
Click Here
Engineers have tested a prototype track-based system that uses magnetic levitation to accelerate vehicles to launch speeds
Click Here
Saturday, October 2, 2010
A Homework Assignment for Private School Families
Well, the long awaited debate on the state of education in the US is here. In case you have not heard, we are all Waiting for Superman, Racing to the Top, or Racing to Nowhere depending on which blog or movie you might have first chanced upon. As a private school that is often said to have a public school heart – with about half our students coming from public elementary schools and about half our graduates attending public high schools – I believe that we have an obligation to consider our “public obligation” and enter into this debate.
With that in mind, I give you all homework; and yes this is intentional and relevant and certainly not busy work! I would ask that we all spend some time in the next month viewing and discussing the following “media events:”
Waiting for Superman. Here are two reviews that provide very different perspectives on this film.
o http://www.examiner.com/family-in-seattle/isabelle-zehnder-review-waiting-for-superman
o http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rick-ayers-/an-inconvenient-superman-_b_716420.html
Question: Does this movie “provide a strong argument for major reform of America's educational system and examines how the system is failing our children and, ultimately, our society?” Or is it “a slick marketing piece full of half-truths and distortions.” Talk amongst yourselves!
There is another film that will be harder to find, Race to Nowhere. It will be shown locally on October 26th at the Nova Project, http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/124873.
It is a film that seeks to describe “the dark side of America’s achievement culture.” I had the opportunity to preview Race to Nowhere in the spring at the PNAIS Heads’ Meeting. It is a disturbing film that brings to light the impact of the achievement culture on individual students. While I don’t agree with all the premises presented, I do believe all private school families and educators should see it and enter into that conversation.
Last, but not least, this website describes itself as “a nationally broadcast, in-depth conversation about improving education in America.” You will find links here to the current administration’s Race to the Top initiative, comparisons to other nations – valid or not – and other links for us to view the larger educational landscape, http://www.educationnation.com/.
Given the unique missions of private schools, I will be so bold as to say that we hold a piece of the educational reform puzzle. We must ask of ourselves what we ask of our students: will we be informed and analytical in our approach to understanding and helping solve a key national challenge?
With that in mind, I give you all homework; and yes this is intentional and relevant and certainly not busy work! I would ask that we all spend some time in the next month viewing and discussing the following “media events:”
Waiting for Superman. Here are two reviews that provide very different perspectives on this film.
o http://www.examiner.com/family-in-seattle/isabelle-zehnder-review-waiting-for-superman
o http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rick-ayers-/an-inconvenient-superman-_b_716420.html
Question: Does this movie “provide a strong argument for major reform of America's educational system and examines how the system is failing our children and, ultimately, our society?” Or is it “a slick marketing piece full of half-truths and distortions.” Talk amongst yourselves!
There is another film that will be harder to find, Race to Nowhere. It will be shown locally on October 26th at the Nova Project, http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/124873.
It is a film that seeks to describe “the dark side of America’s achievement culture.” I had the opportunity to preview Race to Nowhere in the spring at the PNAIS Heads’ Meeting. It is a disturbing film that brings to light the impact of the achievement culture on individual students. While I don’t agree with all the premises presented, I do believe all private school families and educators should see it and enter into that conversation.
Last, but not least, this website describes itself as “a nationally broadcast, in-depth conversation about improving education in America.” You will find links here to the current administration’s Race to the Top initiative, comparisons to other nations – valid or not – and other links for us to view the larger educational landscape, http://www.educationnation.com/.
Given the unique missions of private schools, I will be so bold as to say that we hold a piece of the educational reform puzzle. We must ask of ourselves what we ask of our students: will we be informed and analytical in our approach to understanding and helping solve a key national challenge?
Friday, October 1, 2010
SGS Alumna, Sylvie Baldwin, is trying to apply the idea of being a "conscientious objector" to the world of admissions testing.
No surprise to her teachers at SGS, Sylvie is using the power of her convictions to change the landscape for college admissions. More ripples from the remarkable young women we are sending forth as empowered leaders!
Click here for the full story
Click here for the full story
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
