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.

Love and Logic: a response to disrespect

For years at Summers-Knoll we have used an approach to behavior issues with our students that has its roots in the Love and Logic approach. (You can find the Love and Logic web site here.) The essence of this approach lies in encouraging children to take responsibility, and therefore to grow into people who can manage themselves, hear constructive feedback, build on strengths and fearlessly address problems.

I was reminded of this today when a message came through my inbox from the Love and Logic people, talking about parenting children who sneer and roll their eyes at their loving mothers and fathers. It's a phase many children go through, a way of establishing their independence and proving, at least to themselves, that they are grown up enough to not have to listen to authority figures. However, it's a damaging way, and one that they deserve help to overcome.

Having heard several parents recently express frustration at this trend in their child's behavior, I thought it good to share some of the Love and Logic insights here. Enjoy. 

Does your child habitually sneer, roll their eyes, or make sounds resembling an alley cat trying to cough up a hairball? Does this happen just about every time you say or do something they dislike?
 
The danger in allowing this behavior is that actions shape beliefs and attitudes. Yep! If anyone acts annoyed or offended often enough, seeds of discontent and feelings of victimhood sprout in their hearts, leading to pervasive feelings of being tread upon.
 
Let their arrows miss the target.
 
Kids launch these emotional missiles in order to strike at the heart. Our greatest source of power against such attacks is showing that they don't get the desired result of anger, lectures, threats, or frustration. 
 
Expect mature expression of feelings.
 
Doing your best to remain calm, reply, "I will know that you are really maturing when you can share your feelings without giving dirty looks or huffing. If you feel something I do is unfair, we can have a mature discussion when both of us are calm."
 
Reinforce mature expression by listening with respect.
 
A great irony: When our kids are able to talk to us about how they feel, they are less likely to act these feelings out in nasty, disrespectful, or irresponsible ways. Listening means demonstrating we care about their opinions. It also means reinforcing healthy, mature expression of opinions and emotions. It's not about allowing them to run the home. It's about ending infantile drama in the home.
 
Provide empathy and consequences if the problem continues.
 
When this behavior has become seriously habitual, wise parents consistently apply a rather generic consequence: "I allow (or do) ____________________ as long as my energy is not being drained by dirty looks."
 
The key to rebuilding respect from our kids involves proving to them that we can handle them without getting frustrated or angry.

One Hen, Two Ducks

On Thursday we had the honor of hosting our second Head of School candidate at a morning meeting. It seemed a good idea to revive an old Summers-Knoll tradition - the whole school joining in with a not-so-simple say-and-repeat game called One Hen, Two Ducks. The kids love this game, they love the fun of the increasing levels of difficulty, they take pride in the long words even as they giggle at them, they enjoy the opportunity to engage their bodies in the response, and they feel involved in the common - if zany - goal of group recital.

Several of you have asked me for the text, so that you can try it at home. There are several different versions you can find on the internet. Some of them even have a 10 line that makes sense. I asked some of our children a long time ago (alumni at this point, out making the world a better place) if we should change to one of those versions. They said no, emphatically. They liked it the Summers-Knoll way. And so it is.

One hen.
One hen, two ducks.
One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese.
One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four Limerick oysters.
One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four Limerick oysters, five corpulent porpoises.
One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four Limerick oysters, five corpulent porpoises, six pairs       of Don Alvarzo's tweezers.
One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four Limerick oysters, five corpulent porpoises, six pairs       of Don Alvarzo's tweezers, seven Macedonians in full battle array.
One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four Limerick oysters, five corpulent porpoises, six pairs       of Don Alvarzo's tweezers, seven Macedonians in full battle array, eight brass monkeys from the        ancient sacred crypts of Egypt.
One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four Limerick oysters, five corpulent porpoises, six pairs       of Don Alvarzo's tweezers, seven Macedonians in full battle array, eight brass monkeys from the        ancient sacred crypts of Egypt, nine apathetic, sympathetic, poor pathetic old men on roller-                skates, with a marked propensity towards procrastination and sloth.
One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four Limerick oysters, five corpulent porpoises, six pairs       of Don Alvarzo's tweezers, seven Macedonians in full battle array, eight brass monkeys from the        ancient sacred crypts of Egypt, nine apathetic, sympathetic, poor pathetic old men on roller-                skates, with a marked propensity towards procrastination and sloth, ten lyrical, diabolical                     denizens of the deep, who quark with the queen and queen with the quorl and quorl with the               quizzle at the bottom of the deep blue sea all at the same time.

Enjoy!