Muddy's Blog

Last week, I attended the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) annual conference just outside of Washington, DC. It is always a good opportunity to catch up with other educators and hear a variety of thought provoking speakers. This year was no different and even though I was there less than 48 hours, I came home with much to consider.

I attended a session on NAIS on iTunes which showed how to access a variety of videos about education at iTunesU. As a collector of music (8700 songs on my iPod), I am regularly at the iTunes site, and yet I was unaware of this resource. Anyone can go to the iTunes store, click on the iTunesU logo on the top bar, then click on the K-12 quick link, and finally click on the National Association of Independent Schools tab to see what is available. I was interested to see the topics addressed and look forward to seeing more of what is there. Also, I am interested in producing some videos of our own to share as I continue to believe that other educators would benefit from seeing the work being done at Pike in a variety of areas from Professional Learning Teams to Diversity to Sustainability and more.

The keynote speaker was Sheena S. Iyengar, the inaugural S.T. Lee Professor of Business at the Columbia Business School. She has taught on a wide variety of topics, including leadership, decision making, creativity, and globalization, earning an Innovation in the Teaching Curriculum award. Internationally, she has taught at the Global Leadership Fellows Program at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland. She discussed some of the ideas from her latest book, The Art of Choosing. She cited some interesting studies such as one where two groups of children were given the same task to accomplish and one group was allowed to choose the color marker to do the task while the other was given no choice. Even though the choice was not that important to the task itself, the group that was given the choice performed better. Another interesting aspect of her work was the link she discovered between culture and choice. Anglo-Americans who perceived themselves as having more choice than others performed better while the opposite was true of Asian-Americans whose performance suffered if they felt there were too many choices. Ms. Iyengar said that a good leader does not assume everyone would want the same choices that they have. I look forward to reading her book and thinking more about the impact of choice on the lives of our children, most of whom have more choices available to them than the vast majority of people in the world.

Another featured speaker was Wendy Mogel, an internationally known clinical psychologist, author, and public speaker. Publisher’s Weekly gave her New York Times best-selling parenting book, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, a starred review saying, “Impassioned, lyrical, and eminently practical, this volume is a real treasure.”
Mogel serves on the scientific advisory board of Challenge Success, a program of the Stanford University School of Education, and the boards of the Center for Early Education (California) and the Counsel for Spiritual and Ethical Education. On an unrelated note, she was at Middlebury College when I was and is married to a classmate of mine. Her remarks were a wonderful mix of homespun humor and wisdom. She explained that in a world that may feel increasingly out of our control, many parents focus on the one piece they feel they can control, their children. She worries that today’s children could file the world’s largest ever class action suit against their parents for stealing their childhood. She cites statistics such as that the average number of contacts between a child at college and a parent is 14.5 times per week. She tells stories like the one about a college student at a salad bar who was overheard saying on the phone to a parent “Do I like French dressing?” She cites these as evidence that our children are growing up in a much different environment and worries about the result of this hyper-focus. College admission officers divide applicants into “teacups” who are fragile because they have been so well protected and “crispies” who are burned out from being ranked and pushed their entire lives. I am confident Dr. Mogel would endorse our mission’s commitment to producing “independent learners and responsible citizens.” I look forward to her newly released book, The Blessing of a B- and look forward to discussing this further in the future as we all strive to give our children enough comfort and support without denying them the opportunities to learn from their own successes and mistakes.

As always, I look forward to your questions and comments.

JANUARY 2011 BLOG

In the last week, Amy Chua’s book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, has been everywhere from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, television, radio, and the Internet. Her book has gotten so much attention because it makes many very strong statements. For instance, one excerpt from her book says, “Chinese parents can get away with things that Western parents can’t. Once when I was young—maybe more than once—when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me “garbage” in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn’t damage my self-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn’t actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage…. The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable—even legally actionable—to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, “Hey fatty—lose some weight.” By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of “health” and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image.”  This article has started a national dialog. Wall Street Journal article

There were two articles this Sunday, one by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times entitled “China’s Winning Schools?” and the other by Patricia Wen in The Boston Globe entitled “The Chinese Mom Controversy” that continued the conversation. In the latter, Ms. Wen takes issue with Ms. Chua by saying that there is not one style or set of guidelines of Chinese parenting and that there is a “strong tradition of trying to discern a child’s particular temperament- not all Chinese are meant to be brainy scholars – and adapting to it.” She goes on to say that the Chinese are also wrestling with what is in the best interests of the children. In Mr. Kristoff’s article, he says that “Education thrives in China and the rest of Asia because it is a top priority – and we’ve plenty to learn from that.” However, he goes on to say that the Chinese themselves are not happy with their system of education. “Almost every time I try to interview a Chinese about the system here, I hear grousing rather than praise. Many Chinese complain scathingly that their system kills independent thought and creativity, and they envy the American system for nurturing self-reliance – and for trying to make learning exciting and not just a chore.” The grass is always greener, I guess. When I took part in an exchange with a school in Tianjin a few years ago, I went to learn from the Chinese, but my partner in the exchange, Yang Li, was very interested in learning from us.

What is one to do as a parent? We want it all: master math facts, learn a huge vocabulary, read as much as possible, be creative, be physically active, and more. In our vision statement, Pike commits itself to the “whole child.” Ms. Chua, the tiger mother, forbids activities like sleepovers, sports, school plays, etc. because she sees them as distractions from her laser focus on academics. She cites examples of the “successes” of that method of parenting just as we often hear about athletes and artists who have “succeeded” because of a monomaniacal focus on one activity beginning at an early age. I have two questions. First, are these so-called successes really successful? Often, their life stories are not happy or fulfilling ones. Secondly, what is the cost of this style of parenting? She says that she was not hurt when her father called her “garbage” when she behaved inappropriately. We all know of stories when that kind of treatment has had long-term adverse effects.

I have come to believe that the best path is rarely found at one side or the other of any dispute. Our children do need to know that we prize education and that we have high hopes and standards for them. At the same time, we need to know our children well and employ strategies that serve them well rather than making our own plans and trying to force them into that particular box. The good news is that our children are resilient and there is never one correct path for a child. It is far more complicated than that. As evidence for that proposition, Ms. Chua responded to some questions from readers of The Wall Street Journal. “Jokes about A+s and gold medals aside, I don’t believe that grades or achievement is ultimately what Chinese parenting is really about. I think it’s about helping your children be the best they can be – which is usually better than they think!” She went on to say, “There is no easy formula for parenting, no right approach (I don’t believe, by the way, that Chinese parenting is superior – a splashy headline, but I didn’t choose it. The best rule of thumb I can think of is that love, compassion and knowing your child have to come first, whatever culture you’re from.” I look forward to your thoughts.

DECEMBER 2010 BLOG

One of our school goals for this year is as follows: “The Administration will work with the Pike community to improve school-home communications by gathering information from faculty and parents about current types of communication and how they meet the needs of the community.” As a result of this focus, we have instituted classroom blogs and electronic newsletters, put our curriculum maps on line, and, most recently, had an evening forum on the math program at Pike. I have received a good deal of positive feedback on these initiatives. This week’s Math Forum was well attended and provides an interesting model for the future.

After receiving several questions about the math program, we felt it was a great time to look at the program and share our findings with the community. During the summer, a group of administrators and teachers met to look at a variety of questions. In the Pike Parents section of the website, you can find the PowerPoint presentation that highlights the findings of their work. The video of the evening will be made available soon. We hope to use the website to make information available to those who could not attend, although our preference will always be to have face-to-face interaction whenever possible.

When I began the question and answer portion of the forum by asking how many of the parents in attendance considered themselves to be math/science types, about 75% of the hands in the room went up, which was not surprising to me. One parent expressed a desire for us to spend more time on math. One of the challenges we always face is doing as much as we can with the time allowed. The reality is that were there to be more time for math, there would be less time for something else. If the room had been made up primarily of humanities types, my guess is that their view of the allocation of time would be just the opposite. I have found our school’s vision statement helpful as we try to strike that balance, because of its commitment to the whole child. We are beginning the process of evaluating our daily schedule in all divisions. That exercise will focus us on just this question of being sure that our schedule reflects our priorities.

Our math program in Lower and Middle School is based on the TERC Investigations program, but it has never been purely TERC. We have always sought to find the right balance between TERC and the more traditional math programs. As an independent school, we have the freedom to alter the program according to the needs of the children rather than being tied to whatever program the district buys. Also, our students can do all the activities in much less time, because our classes are small and students are often working with one teacher in groups of 4 or 5, while the TERC program was designed for classes of 30 that don’t have materials for each child,. Our review of the ERB math tests showed that our children do very well over time. Yet, we saw opportunities where small changes in the program could help our children do even better.

The focus of the evening was our math program and yet many of the questions were about ERB test scores. Several parents expressed an interest in having more detailed information from those tests made available to them, including question by question analysis and detail about where their child ranked compared to other children in the class. I was asked in an email why we are afraid to share such information, and that question helped frame my thinking on this topic. As parents, we all want to know how our children are doing so we can help them succeed. What has changed in my career in schools is that parents are much more focused than they used to be on the details of their child’s education. As is often the case, that change has resulted in pluses and minuses.

Increased attention has allowed us to address issues sooner, which helps in remediation. It shows the children the importance the family places on education. By finding programs in academics, the arts, and sports, families help their children get the extra practice that can help them excel. Many of these advantages can be clearly seen in the short term. However, I do worry that sometimes this attention can have negative effects that will not be seen until later. There is no doubt that we are seeing more children with anxiety issues than was once the case, and my concern is that such anxiety may come from an unintended message that their performance is never good enough. Because, as parents, we love our children so much, I fear that if we shared class ranks, there would be pressure to do what we can to move our children up the list. While many might deny that, the explosion we have seen in tutoring in all areas supports my anxiety. I have heard from many parents whose children ask them if they will be falling behind because many of their peers are being tutored. Obviously, each family has the right and responsibility to do what they believe is best for their child. Yet, I have seen many hockey players who loved the sport when younger who now see it as a job at the ripe old age of 12. I have seen kids who loved math begging their parents to not make them go to any more outside math classes. I have heard of parents sharing ERB scores with their nine-year-olds and telling them that they will work together to improve them. The best path in my opinion is the one that includes enough challenge to stimulate growth without transferring adult anxieties onto the children. That path is different for each child, and we look forward to continuing the dialogue with families as we search together for that successful route.

Here is a brief video of Carol Dweck, the author of Mindsets to which I referred last week.  Enjoy.

Last week, Liza and I attended the annual conference of the Elementary School Heads Association (ESHA) in Monterey, California. I always enjoy this conference, as it allows me to hear what is happening in independent elementary schools across the country. Also, there are always thought provoking speakers on the agenda. Because ESHA had organized the amazing Kenya trip this past summer, I did a presentation on what we did and what we learned.

For me, this year’s most interesting presenter was renowned Stanford University psychologist, Carol Dweck. Her best known publication is Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, in which she explains how we can learn to more fully realize our potential. She explains how praising our children’s basic intelligence not only does not increase their self-esteem but may actually lessen their chances for success.

I believe all parents and teachers want their children to grow and thrive. Different generations of parents have had different strategies to reach that goal. I know my parents were much more hands-off than I have been as a parent, and I have written before about how “helicopter Parents” have been superseded by “snowplow parents” who want to clear the path toward success for their children. Professor Dweck began with an interesting premise: babies are amazing learners who never need to be motivated to learn, and we need to ensure that they retain that natural motivation to learn. She quoted the psychologist Benjamin Barber who said, “I don’t divide the world into the weak and the strong or the successes and the failures… I divide the world into learners and non-learners.” She said that learners have a growth mindset, while non-learners have a fixed mindset.

She explained the difference in the mindsets by explaining an experiment done with four-year-olds. The children were given a choice to do an easy jigsaw puzzle or a more complicated one. She said that the children who believed that traits were fixed (i.e. you are born smart or not) chose the safe puzzle, because they believed that smart children do not make mistakes, so they avoided taking a risk. The children who believed that they could get smarter did not understand why anyone would pick the easy puzzle. They were excited to see if they could solve the harder puzzle. In her remarks, she told us that children who have been praised constantly for their intelligence can develop a fixed mindset. (She was quite critical of the self-esteem movement). Those “intelligent” children come to believe that if they are smart, schoolwork should be easy for them. So, they regard their working hard as evidence that they may not be that smart. On the other hand, children with a growth mindset learn that effort is the key to everything.

We know that many children at Pike strive to succeed, and I worry at times that they are more focused on the result than the process. As the adults in their lives, we will serve our children best if we focus on their effort and emphasize the importance of learning from their mistakes, rather than on getting a higher grade next time. The research shows that if we focus on the former, they will grow and develop as students more quickly.

You are on recess duty when Billy comes running up to tell you that Bobby has hurt his feelings. Do you tell him to go work it out with Bobby? Do you go to Bobby to hear what he has to say? Do you sit the boys down for a conversation about what has happened? Do you tell Billy to go play with some of the other children for now? Is there some other action you would take? I have to admit to having chosen all of these options at one point or another. We all know the issue of children being unkind to one another is not a new one, and we are living in an era when bullying seems to be more in the news than ever. The state legislature of Massachusetts has enacted a new bullying prevention and intervention law (M.G.L. c. 71) in an attempt to address this issue. It requires each school to have a bullying prevention and intervention plan in place by December 31, 2010. While independent schools are not required to file their plans with the state or have the plans reviewed by the state, we believe it is important to comply and will be creating such a plan. We will make a draft of the plan available to the entire Pike community for comment before finalizing it and look forward to your input. I am using this space to share some of our thoughts on this topic.

While the legislature’s attention to this issue may be new, it is not new to those of us in the school business. In over 35 years of teaching or 26 years of parenting, I am not sure if a day has gone by when I was not aware of some disagreements between students or my own children. Were these disagreements bullying? The new legislation defines bullying as “the repeated use by one or more students of a written, verbal, or electronic expression or a physical act or gesture or any combination thereof, directed at a target that:
i. causes physical or emotional harm to the target or damage to the target’s
property
ii. places the target in reasonable fear of harm to himself or herself or of damage to his or her property
iii. creates a hostile environment at school for the target
iv. infringes on the rights of the target at school; or
v. materially and substantially disrupts the education process or orderly operation of a school.”

I applaud the attempt to create a precise definition, but I think you can see how challenging it is. Go back to the start of this entry. If Billy has come to you three times in the last two weeks, does this rise to the level of bullying? As teachers we mediate such situations often and have to make decisions based on the information we have. We all know we would not tolerate the movie version of bullying which often involves a group of boys roughing up some meek boy on a regular basis. Fortunately, we do not encounter that at Pike. Rather, we are aware of thoughtless words and actions which can cause physical or emotional pain. Also, we know some children are more prone to that behavior than others. We have always taken these concerns seriously, devoting a great deal of our Open Circle and Upper School advisor program time to letting the children know our expectations and giving them strategies to be responsible citizens to prevent these types of behavior. In addition, we have countless informal conversations with children since they often learn best from the personal experiences they have at school. Bullying, while rare at Pike, still occurs and needs to be dealt with effectively. Our hope is that the new plan will make our beliefs and processes better known to the community than has been the case to date.

Michael Thompson’s book, Best Friends, Worst Enemies: Understanding the Social Lives of Children, is a wonderful resource for educators and parents. In the preface, he writes, “Very few grown-ups fully understand what is actually going on when children hurt one another’s feelings, when they tease and betray each other. Why is it so hard to stop children from excluding one another? Why is it so hard for some children to make friends? What makes other kids so popular? Why is it some children thrive with a friend or two and don’t seem to care about popularity, while for others it is a matter of life and death?” These questions are only the tip of the iceberg of this complex topic. At Pike, our goal is to teach children how to behave appropriately as members of a larger community while helping them to become more resilient as they face the inevitable challenges of being part of that community. I look forward to continuing to address this topic in future entries.

As the parent of three children who were very involved in youth sports and went on to play in high school and college as well as coaching in town and at Pike for a number of years, I have had a ringside seat to the changing landscape of youth sports. I am somewhat concerned with what I see today. I want to begin by listing the many plusses I see when children are involved in sport. I have watched children learn the joy that comes from being a part of a team and putting the group ahead of their own interests. Also, they can see the growth that can result from commitment and practice of skills. As importantly, they get to learn how to be a good sport in victory and defeat. I watched my own children improve their time management so they could get their school work done and still attend numerous practices and games. Because of hockey, to this day, they can get up and out of the house in ten minutes to catch an early plane or travel to visit family. They loved their sports experiences and are still involved with athletics even after they have graduated from college.

I worry that today’s parents may not be able to repeat the final sentence of the previous paragraph. In the name of excellence and having a “world-class program”, I believe we are losing our way. Seasons that stretch year round in many sports, increased pressure to specialize in one sport at an ever earlier age, unrealistic game and practice schedules, and increased injuries from over-use of developing bodies are just some of the symptoms we are seeing. I know children who, when describing their sports experience, sound more like they are talking about a job than an activity they enjoy. I have coached very able athletes who have given up on what looked to be a promising athletic future because the fun was gone. Conversely, I have seen talented athletes who seem to enjoy their Pike sports experience because they are more focused on having fun with their friends than they are on the tactics of the game.

Some of you may know that I am a fairly competitive person, and I admit that when I am coaching a Pike team and the game is on the line, I can be excitable. However, I am proud of the fact that our Pike sports program is more focused on letting all interested children have a chance to participate than on winning games. I do believe that many of the advantages I listed in the first paragraph can be gained from the Pike program as well as from an elite club team. It is true that my own children played outside teams as well as their Pike team, because they wanted that challenge and did feel they could develop more skills in those programs. So, what is the right balance? My only advice is to monitor your children and let their interest and engagement guide you. If they are balking at going to practice, it is a good time for a discussion about priorities. I worry when I see parents who seem more engaged in their children’s activities than the children themselves. At times, I reminded my children that they were in these activities for themselves, not for me, so if they were not enjoying themselves it might be time for another activity. I remember that my father did not let us play hockey in the summer when we were growing up and I was mad at him at the time. I wonder if that is why at the ripe old age of 57, I am still playing hockey. Let me know what you think.

On April 9th, Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, made a speech to the Arts Education Partnership National Forum entitled “The Well-Rounded Curriculum”. He asked the group to help him make the case not only for the arts but also for the humanities as a whole. In my last posting on this blog, I cited Diane Ravitch’s book, The Death and Life of the American School System. The book was her mea culpa in which she said that her support for the testing movement in this country was mistaken because it led to many unintended outcomes. Secretary Duncan touched on this same idea when he said, “The question of what constitutes an educated person has been taken up by the great thinkers in every society. Yet few of those leading lights have concluded that a well-educated person need only learn math, science, and read in their native tongue.” In our desire to raise the standards in those areas, we have lost our focus on the larger picture. I am happy to say that at Pike, we have not made that mistake. In fact, in the vision statement it adopted last year, the Pike School Board of Trustees emphasized our commitment to the whole child. That commitment has meant that while other schools cut physical education and recess, we did not, knowing full well that our children will be more able to learn if they have the chance to move. While other schools cut back or eliminated arts programs, we committed as a community to build space for the arts that would allow our strong arts program to do much more with our students. Secretary Duncan cited a study from the American Revolution Center that said while 80% of those surveyed knew that Michael Jackson sang “Beat It”, less than half of that same group knew that the Civil War and the War of 1812 came after the American Revolution. I can say with confidence that 100% of our students in eighth grade would not make that mistake. As a parent of three Pike graduates, I feel most fortunate that our commitment to educating the whole child has not wavered, for I have seen the dividends paid in their lives after Pike.

I have always loved the independent school two week break in March as opposed to taking one week in February and another in April, because the two weeks allows for a real change of gears. I got to spend time with my dad in Florida and two of our three children joined us with friends in tow. Walks on the beach with my wife and long rollerblades every day were a treat even if a wipeout led to a torn up thumb, tetanus shot, and some antibiotics. One of the best parts of the break was long uninterrupted periods for reading. I got to read five books that included two page turners (Pretend You Don’t See Her by Mary Higgins Clark and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson). Also, I read Freedom for the Thought We Hate by Anthony Lewis which is a wonderful description of the amazing evolution of freedom of speech in this country, a topic that has always fascinated me. The other two books were related to education.

The first was Seven Secrets of the Savvy School Leader: A Guide to Surviving and Thriving by Rob Evans, a clinical and organizational psychologist who I have known for many years and who has been to Pike to work with the faculty and the Board on two different occasions. I have always appreciated Rob for his sense of humor and his understanding of how organizations work. Both traits are on display in the subheading of the first chapter which is “When you go to see the wizard, take Toto with you.” He talks of the many fads that have come and gone in the field of education and says that good leaders are aware of what the trends are but are also willing to pull back the curtain as Toto did to be sure of what is behind the flashy presentation. I believe Pike has been well served over the years by its commitment to avoid change for change’s sake. For instance, when whole language came on the scene, Pike avoided the trap that many schools fell into of eliminating phonics as it took on this new idea. Teachers took the best from the whole language field and added it to its reading instruction. History has validated this choice as the wars over whole language vs. phonics brought most schools to use both. The other idea I want to share is the sixth secret entitled “Nourish to Flourish.” He begins the chapter with a quote from James Kouzes and Barry Posner from The Jossey- Bass Academic Administrator’s Guide to Exemplary Leadership. “Leaders get the best from others not by building fires under people but by building the fire within them.” He goes on to describe the mythical Perverse Academy whose mission is to discourage learning. He says such a school would begin the year by inventorying what the students’ weaknesses were and then dwelling on those weaknesses each day while withholding any compliments for progress and refusing to acknowledge any hard work that might have taken place. He says he has seen this exact scenario in many schools, not as it relates to the students, but, rather, to the teachers. At Pike, we try to empower teachers in their work by giving them time to meet as teams to plan and assess what their students are learning as well as setting aside professional development funds for summer grants where teachers can look for ways to update and improve their programs. This commitment is why we changed our mission statement which used to say it was our goal to make students life-long learners to saying “The Pike School seeks to develop within its community a life-long love of learning….” We believe that all of us need to be open to new ideas and possibilities.
The other book I read over the break was The Death and Life of the American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education by Diane Ravitch, who is currently a Research Professor of Education at New York University and a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution. She served as Assistant Secretary of Education under President George H.W. Bush and was appointed to the National Assessment Governing Board by President Clinton. The book is the story of how she has changed her views of what is the best way to strengthen the American public school. At the start of chapter one, she quotes John Maynard Keynes who was asked why he had reversed his opinion on an economic policy. “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” In the partisan time in which we live, when people seem to be proud of never changing their mind on any issue, this is an interesting concept. Ravitch says she has gone from being a staunch advocate for school choice and high stakes testing like MCAS to being concerned that they are actually hurting our children. She says she has always known that “…in education, there are no shortcuts, no utopias, and no silver bullets.” That position has not changed and is similar to Rob Evans’ idea of always taking Toto with you.
She describes the political battles that dominated the debate over what topics should be included in national standards and the resulting paralysis that led to vague standards like “Students will demonstrate an understanding of how ideas, events, and conditions bring about change.” These standards are easier to approve than to decide whether or not to include controversial topics such as the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War Two. That battle goes on today as the state of Texas has determined that Thomas Jefferson will be excluded from history books because he favored separation of church and state. At Pike, we are fortunate to be able to decide what we teach, and we continually evaluate what we are teaching to be sure it meets the needs of our students.
Ravitch is concerned that we value what we can easily assess rather than assessing what we value. She describes the evolution of testing in our country and says it changed in the 1920’s as a result of intelligence tests designed by psychologists for the army during World War I to help place recruits in the proper areas. “The psychologists criticized tests with written answers, because their grading was necessarily subjective. Educators became persuaded that the new standardized, multiple-choice tests were the leading edge of scientific efficiency.” Another plus was that these tests were much easier to score and therefore much less expensive. As a history teacher, I learn much more about a student’s understanding from listening to them argue a point in class discussion or in a written essay than from any multiple- choice test which is why I rarely use that type of question. Ravitch says that even the testing companies say their tests should never be used as the sole point upon which to make any decisions. She describes instances in other fields where test results lead to “goal distortion.” For instance, she cites an example from the state of New York where cardiologists stopped performing surgery on very ill patients after the state created score cards that rated doctors based on the mortality rates of their patients. She describes the same effect in schools where the test becomes the end rather than a means to a higher end. That effect means schools are spending less time on science, social studies, world languages, PE, the arts and more because they are not valued on the test nor can they be as easily tested. Once again, at Pike, we are fortunate to be an independent school that can make decisions on what we believe is best for each student rather than because of the impact the decision might have on our results on a standardized test. This does not mean that testing is not important. Over the last two years, we have spent a great deal of professional development time on looking at the methods with which we assess our students. Assessment is critical because we must know that our students are learning the material in our curriculum. Rather than looking for simpler and faster means of assessment, we are finding that effective assessment by its nature is time intensive and varied. The faculty has been divided into professional learning teams (PLTs) to continue to explore this important area and have already created many new assessments for our students.
I apologize for the length of this entry. That is what happens when there is a little more time for reading. I hope you can find the time to dig into some books too.

I just returned from the annual conference of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS). It is a time to catch up with colleagues from across the country, hear some great speakers and interesting workshop presenters, and learn about trends in our profession. Some years, much of my time is taken up by hiring interviews, but such was not the case this year as we have only two positions available and in both cases, have strong pools of candidates. The conference always conflicts with our eighth grade show which is an event I have never missed, so I did miss the last full day of the conference, taking the red-eye home, only to find school canceled because of power outages associated with a big windstorm. (Fortunately, the second night of the play was rescheduled for Monday night.) I thought I would share some of the ideas from the conference.

The first speaker I heard was Michael Walker, head of the K-8 division of Punahou School in Hawaii, the largest independent school in the country with a student body of 3700. His talk was titled “Brain research as a Foundation for Strategic Planning: Designing Healthy Schools”. His concept was to explain briefly how the brain works, then to say what the repercussions are for teaching and finally to discuss how we should allocate our resources, including time, in light of the first two ideas. To get us started, he had us build a neuron out of pipe cleaners. He went on to explain that companies like Coke are doing brain scans of people watching their commercials as a way to see what has the most impact while directors of horror movies are using those same scans to make editing decisions about their movies. Mr. Walker then described several ways in which what happens in schools does not always match what is best for the brain. For instance, he cited studies that show play is a prerequisite for learning. As an example, he cited the successes of NASA scientists of the 1960’s who grew up in a time where they were allowed to tinker with objects, taking them apart and seeing what made them tick, something that is not as prevalent today. He cited statistics to show the importance of regular exercise and its ability to fight off mental disease and help the brain generate new neurons even as we age at a time when many schools are cutting PE programs and recess (not Pike, thank goodness). He told us about something called Nature Deficit Disorder where children are negatively impacted by not being in the outdoors enough. Punahou used that information as it designed its campus (he acknowledged it was much easier to do that in Hawaii). At Pike, it is why we do get the children outside even in the winter for PE and recess. During his talk, he referred to the following books: Brain Rules, Play, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Spark, and Last Child in the Woods. In a time when some are advocating less time for play, physical activity, and creativity in schools in the name of improving scored on standardized tests, I found Mr. Walker’s presentation most interesting.

The conferences keynote speaker was Arianna Huffington. I admit to knowing who she was but not knowing much about her. She spoke about why in spite of having real concerns about the future she maintained an optimistic view. She encouraged the audience to have “joy triggers” like reading a book or going for a run to use in tough times. She talked of an older friend who told her, “I had such a great life; I wished I realized it sooner.” That could apply to many of us. She explained Jonas Salk’s idea that we are moving from Epoch A of competition to Epoch B of collaboration. She gave as an example of hope that Teach for America is having to turn away thousands of Ivy League students because so many young people are looking to serve the needs of others. Finally, she quoted Lincoln from his second annual address to Congress when he said, “As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.” She encouraged us as educators to do the same as we prepare our students for the future.

Another speaker was Mimi Ito, a cultural anthropologist of technology use, who holds doctorates from Stanford in education and anthropology. Her most recent book is Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. Her basic message is that we need to understand that a great deal of learning already takes place outside of the classroom. Our children are connected 24/7 which means are homes are more porous than ever to their friends, news, information, entertainment and more. She encouraged educators to see this fact as an opportunity rather than a threat. She distinguished between “friendship driven participation” (Facebook, MySpace, etc.) and “interest driven participation” where people with common interests are drawn together in pursuit of knowledge about their particular interest. She went on to say that we had grown up in an era of “supply push” where information was pushed on us by teachers, parents, and the media to an era of “demand pull” where the internet allows us to be pulled into areas of interest. It is in this latter arena where she encouraged teachers to find ways to encourage, facilitate, and celebrate children to follow their interests and use them to teach important skills. At the end of the session, a teacher asked whether the world she described would not be splintered and could lead to a society without any common beliefs or understandings. I left with a great deal to consider.

The beauty of a blog is that it is of the moment. My hope here was not to come up with answers or new programs but rather to think about new concepts. The joy of this type of professional development is that it gives us time that may not exist in a typical day to step back and look at the larger picture. I have some new ideas for my history class that I will share as they come into clearer focus.