Gratitude and Goodbyes

It's become a commonplace in motivational (and educational) speech these days to point out that an ability to experience gratitude fully is one of the key components of happy, fulfilled life. That being the case, I am all set up for bliss right now.

This is my last blog as Head of Summers-Knoll School, and I am overwhelmed with the warmth and kindness shown to me by parents, staff, and students alike. There has been an outpouring of love and appreciation that completely humbles me. In turn I want to share my appreciation here.

This has been an unquantifiable journey for me. I have learned more than I would ever have dreamed, and grown in ways I could not have anticipated before I took on this work. I have been helped along the way by a changing but always dedicated board, led and manned by extraordinary people. The teachers and staff I have been privileged to work with are brilliant, deep, thoughtful, sensitive, funny, skillful and intensely creative. The families who have shared their children with the school have been diverse, involved, insightful, adventurous, helpful, and wonderful partners in support of their children's growth. The students themselves have grown and continue to grow into confident, independent, thinking, questioning, feeling, engaged, passionate, communicative people who all have my heart now and forever. Thank you all for your part in making this school the home it has been for me throughout these amazing years.

Thank you to all who organized and attended my farewell party. Thank you to all the students and staff who contributed to my lovely book, Dragon Breath and Unicorn Magic, and to all of you who wrote farewell messages in my notebook. Many, many thanks to everyone who contributed to the Library Fundraiser; the idea that any room in the school will still be known as "Joanna's..." warms my heart, but the library especially brings me so much joy. Thank you, thank you.

Many of you have asked about where my life is leading me next. I had originally planned to move back to England completely, but as time has gone on I have realized that I am not willing to put myself in the position of missing my friends here as much as I now miss my family in England. So I am planning a flexible lifestyle, freelancing as a writer, and as a consultant for progressive education. My goal is to be able to make my own schedule, and spend significant stretches of time in England as well as keeping my life here in Ann Arbor intact. I will be doing a lot of theatre, beginning with a production of one of my own plays at the Yellow Barn opening at the end of July.  Many of you know that theatre was a huge part of my life before I became Head of School; it is all set to become that way again.  I am excited at the possibilities the future holds, not least because I will be able to stay in touch with everyone here who matters so much to me.

Thank you again for being part of this community, for sharing your children with the school and with me, and for all the enriching experiences we have shared. In the words I offer our graduates as they leave each year: You're my favorite.

The Science of Character

Here's eight minutes worth of a wonderful tool to help guide thinking about your child's development, and how you talk with your children about their life, their day, setbacks, struggles, conflicts. Parents of older children might want to watch it with their child. Whatever you take away from it, it's definitely worth a look. You can find the video here.

Group Work

Group work and student collaboration are lynchpins of our work at Summers-Knoll, for reasons that range from the social development of our students (negotiation, adaptability, empathy, listening skills, and a whole host of other benefits) to academics (looking at a question from different perspectives, critical thinking, the deepened thinking that comes from having to explain yourself and argue) by way of increased resilience and opportunities to be active, take initiative, and more. It can also be a messy, unpredictable way to work, at least if it is done properly. 

The article linked here is a long read, and very much from a teacher's perspective, but for those of you who are interested it may shed a unusual light on the frustrations and the glories of this kind of work. Please don't take the title at face value. 

Enjoy!

The Importance of the Arts

Watching the work that Josh has been doing with the children all year continues to inspire my (and the whole team's) thinking about developing deep learning and ownership in our children. Here's a link to his blog, where in any given post you can get a sense of the autonomy and purpose that our kids develop in music. It's not just Josh, by any means - all the teachers incorporate the arts meaningfully and intentionally. Josh, as the music teacher, as well as Tracy and Monica, has a program that exemplifies the benefits of integrating the arts into education.

Immersion in the arts - visual arts, theatre, music, creative writing - is an crucial element of a well-rounded education. It gives our children a means to figure out who they are, by developing creativity and learning how to express their ideas. But it doesn't stop there. Engaging in the arts is also a processing tool. It allows people to take on new ideas and think about them in multiple ways. It is a way to grapple with difficult concepts and thorny issues, partly (in my view) because it enables each individual to internalize an idea in a way that makes sense to them. Involvement in music, theatre, and all forms of art is linked to advances in academic areas such as math, reading, cognitive ability, critical thinking, and verbal skill as well as social and emotional areas such as motivation and confidence. At Summers-Knoll, art is seen as essential. It is not an “extra". It is not an afterthought to reading and math. Every child in the school has dedicated music and art scheduled twice a week, and it is integrated into the homeroom and specialist classrooms in multiple ways.

If you are the parent of a 5th or 6th grader and were able to catch the Latin play (Imogen's post here), you'll have seen the calm, conversational ease with which they rolled off their lines. I'm sure you're acutely aware of the value theatre can have in developing confidence and deep understanding of foreign language, for example. Many of you saw the whole school play earlier this year, where Karl and Josh engaged every class in a production of A Sort of Complete History of America (Abridged), and witnessed the joy in which students participated. I had multiple notes from parents as well as hallway chats letting me know how inspired their child was to learn more about history during and after that experience. The Place Out Of Time project, in which Summers-Knoll has had a shaping and participatory role for the past twelve years, and in which every middle school student participates, is different kind of example of how dramatic approaches lead to heightened awareness, engagement, and processing of ideas for our kids. History, science, equity and justice, writing, research and debate skills are all developed through role-playing in this project. (Here are some photos of the culminating event on Jason's blog.)

It's not just theatre, it's not just music. It's not just the amazing artwork that decorates the school. It's classroom teachers giving our students ways both small and large to connect the dots through creative endeavors. Here's Elaine linking numbers, innovation, and the poetic forms with her 1st and 2nd graders. Sam French, the Academy Award nominated filmmaker, came into school and talked with our middle school kids about making his documentary "The Buzkashi Boys", connecting with the filmmaking work that the 5th and 6th graders (and also Jason's documentary EB) are doing and forging associations with culture and geography at the same time. Here's Lisa, working with students in science to develop their understanding of adaptation in animals through an imaginative assignment.

The benefits of this approach are many. Our students maintain and build on their creative natures in all subjects, rather than learning by experience that the arts are valued only as recreation. After years of engaging in integrated arts education, our students leave as creators who have experience giving expression to their ideas through multiple artistic forms, and with enhanced academic skills, including an ability to think creatively about whatever subject matter they encounter and whatever problems they are asked to solve.

Elections, democracy, and respect

America is in a state of fever right now. Everywhere you go, news, advertisements, casual chat and intense discussions are centered on the build-up to the election.

This is a huge opportunity to model thoughtful, respectful discourse with your children. They are sensitive to everything going on around them. They hear what you say, even when it is not directed at them. They absorb your reasoned approaches and your respectful weighing of perspectives. They also absorb any anger, vitriol, fear, sarcasm or hyperbole that you may share in their presence.

Children are interested in what's going on. Their world is dominated by the election because it is everywhere and they hear about it constantly. They have thoughts and opinions, often (though not always) modeled on their parents. Encouraging your children to discuss their thoughts, and modeling reason and respect in doing so, helps to set a foundation for their effective engagement in the democratic process.

Children are also intensely literal. They don't necessarily know the difference between hyperbole and fact, or a sarcastic joke and actual truth. Anxiety can run rampant, opinions can be adhered to as incontrovertible, and divisiveness between children and their friends can become a significant issue. They may be afraid that they will have to move to another country. They may be terrified that they or a friend may be deported. They may even find that it makes them feel powerful to threaten their classmates with this fate.

Talking to them about the democratic process, about your thoughts regarding who you support and why, and keeping the conversation positive and respectful goes a long way towards both supporting their development as active citizens in a democracy and towards negating the anxiety produced by the constant rush of fever-pitch emotions that we are all exposed to around this subject.

Please help your children and your children's classmates by being aware of the way you represent political candidates and your opinions to them. It's important to your child's emotional wellbeing and to our whole community of children, all of whom are important whether they share political beliefs or not.

Here's an article that may help guide your thoughts (from four years ago, but still relevant). Here's another.

Homework Then and Now

At Summers-Knoll we believe that young children should be free of homework, and that even as they grow older it should be limited. Children have many needs and develop in complex ways. It's not our view that relentless, constant academic study leads to healthy, happy, confident and independent young adults. People often ask us about our homework philosophy, simultaneously anxious that their child will not be adequately trained, and grateful for the possibility of their child having time to learn in other ways and live without the stress that they see other families endure. So when I came upon this quote from an article in an October 1860 issue of Scientific American, I immediately wanted to share it with you. This isn't a new struggle - it's been going on for centuries.

“A child who has been boxed up six hours in school might spend the next four hours in study, but it is impossible to develop the child's intellect in this way. The laws of nature are inexorable. By dint of great and painful labor, the child may succeed in repeating a lot of words, like a parrot, but, with the power of its brain all exhausted, it is out of the question for it to really master and comprehend its lessons. The effect of the system is to enfeeble the intellect even more than the body. We never see a little girl staggering home under a load of books, or knitting her brow over them at eight o'clock in the evening, without wondering that our citizens do not arm themselves at once with carving knives, pokers, clubs, paving stones or any weapons at hand, and chase out the managers of our common schools, as they would wild beasts that were devouring their children.”

Spirit of Place

From time to time I find that I need to walk around our school building, remembering the tiny (but much loved) space we came from four years ago, and remind myself to wonder at the difference and be grateful for where we are. The place is so much a part of how we teach and learn, and our journey of discovery as we turned this new building from a pipe dream to a reality is reflected now in the activities and processes of the teachers and the children who work and play here.

I remember how important it was to us to find the right building. We looked at many, all with some compelling features. Two were close to the river, one had a hill in its play area (sledding!), one was an amazing pile of old warehouses stretching out from an office wing. I imagined that one as a high school where each warehouse became a studio - ceramics, poetry, carpentry, languages, electronics, you name it - but romantic though it was, it was not right for us. We looked at all kinds of places, and each had a unique spirit.

We found the building that we ended up buying first, and a long time before we were ready to do a search. We pressed our noses against the windows like children, and lost our hearts to the nooks and crannies inside and out - the trees we saw growing in the interior courtyard, the way the building branched out and embraced areas of grass and greenery. We mentally emptied the building of walls and repopulated it with bright open spaces, cosy corners and windows everywhere. We wanted a place that felt like home, and even when this building was cold, empty, dark and dusty we could feel its potential.

When we finally entered the space to look around inside, it was full of small dark offices and narrow corridors. I fully expected to come across a corporate Miss Haversham, sitting in an ancient pin-striped business suit at a derelict computer, with spiders weaving webs from her broken door handle to her dusty desk. But even then, the vision of the light-filled library and the bright classrooms cut through the shoddy walls and tiny windowless spaces, and the possibility of dreaming up our own purposeful learning space filled us with excitement.

So we dreamed up our own ideal space. We talked about public versus private space, how a shared space like the library borders with a semi-public space like the classroom front porch, which welcomes children in to the private space of the classroom and also extends it. We talked about deliberately leaving spaces that were not dedicated to one thing or another, knowing that they would find their purpose as the teachers became comfortable and the work evolved. In this way, when Fish Lab (for example) was ready to happen, it was able to grow into the little study area in the middle school commons and create a space which has become a haven and a magnet for all kinds of kids, as well as a place where our Fish Lab aquatic scientists feel pride and ownership. We focused on common areas and areas where two or three children could work in seclusion. We talked about how glass walls could offer the autonomy some students need while giving a teacher full ability to see what was happening. We discussed natural light and its effect on focused learning and added skylights and extra windows. We talked about the needs of transgender kids or adults and made sure that all our bathrooms were single-person use, and that as many as code allowed were gender-neutral. We talked about natural play areas and how to gradually allow our outdoor spaces to evolve. We left the space for the 7th and 8th graders as it was - a large central area for discussion and presentation, and multiple little spaces for small group work, to support the level of project-based learning that they have developed in that class.

The result of all this (and more - this scratches the surface of the conversations we had) is that we have a learning space that flows with the children, where dedicated spaces and open spaces combine to offer flexible, creative teaching opportunities, consistently with the needs of our learning community. It's a great gift to all of us to have a space like this, and the location of the building - right next to County Farm Park, accessible to downtown Ann Arbor, close to the border of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, accessible to the freeways - also serves the kind of programs and learning approach of this school. It fills me with gratitude. My hope is that the physical space will continue to evolve as the school itself does, and that it becomes more and more unique as each generation of children shapes changes that reflect the work they do.