|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
| | | | | I recently read an article in the New York Times about a school in my old
neighborhood (you can find it here.) Like many New York City independent schools, it has to compete with the Manhattan powerhouses that
serve as the Ivy League equivalent of K-12 institutions (except the admissions
processes are actually more obtuse and often more difficult to navigate
successfully). Here, though, because the
school is located in Brooklyn, the dilemma the article outlined was a seemingly
simple choice: should the school really
compete with the Manhattan schools, or should it remain “nice.”
| | | |  |
| | | | | I know—this
story is almost too good to be true. But
it shows the direct and growing power of technology in education.
| | | Posted by on 5/3/2012 9:43:00 AM | Comments (0)  |
| | |
| | | | | This is the Class of 2012’s last week of classes. Next week they begin
their month-long internships at a wide variety of organizations, the
goal of which is to give them a bit of real-world experience before they
set out for college where they further narrow (or broaden) the process
of choosing a career path.
| | | Posted by on 4/25/2012 4:50:00 PM | Comments (1) |
| | |
| | | | | A few years ago I read an essay by the New York Times columnist David
Brooks called “The Organization Kid,” which was published in The
Atlantic in 2001. In the long article Brooks spends time at Princeton
University in an attempt at distinguishing what is different about
today’s students. While I’d urge you to read the article, one of the
things he argues is that students have learned how to be incredibly good
at being students, to the point where they simply excel at many things
that generations of students before them never considered taking
seriously. They work long hours, they aim to please their professors,
and they think and act strategically about their course selections,
their internships, and the friends they make.
| | | Posted by on 4/12/2012 8:51:00 AM | Comments (0) |
| | |
| | | | | Recently I decided to teach a class in the Upper School next year. But
deciding what to teach turned out to be much harder than I expected.
| | | | |
| | | | | Before Spring Break I had the privilege of attending alumni gatherings
in Providence and Boston. The real occasion was to give alums a chance
to get together with each other and to say thanks to Paul Tukey, Upper
School English teacher and Director of College Counseling, who is
retiring after more than three decades. As we knew would happen, alumni
came out to tell Paul how much they had benefited from his sound,
straightforward advice, and how his wisdom had remained with them over
time.
| | | | |
| | | | | In a letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy in 1789, Benjamin Franklin wrote, “In
this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
There aren’t a lot of sure things in life, especially when we look at
variations among individuals.
| | | | |
| | | | | The other day I was reading the New York Times and ran across a
full-page advertisement from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
congratulating its 126 early-career scholars. Winning a Sloan Research
Fellowship is often a sign of greater things to come; awardees have gone
on to make great discoveries in the sciences, and have won honors from
Nobel Prizes to the top prizes in virtually every field.
| | | | |
| | | | | But what is the “value added” in schools? In other words, if the
students enter (at whatever grade), how do we measure what they’ve
gained, so we know their “value” has increased? Educators chafe at such
language, and for good reason; all of us want to feel like what we give
students is the ultimate “valued added.” There’s nothing wrong with
that, of course, and in many ways it’s perfect. If every teacher is
adding value, then we know our students will be better off when they
leave as compared to when they started.
| | | | |
| | | | | I didn’t used to think of myself as a competitive person. I think that’s because, in a way, I don’t like competing. I can’t sleep the night before a running race. I resent the amount of time I have to prepare when giving a talk as part of a panel discussion. When I was a professor searching for jobs, I used to eye candidates at conferences from across the room, wondering what would happen if we both gave presentations back to back—who would be chosen first? That never made me feel any better, though, since rather than the interview being an enjoyable exchange, it was tinged with a fear of failure.
| | | | |
| | | | | This week, in preparation for a 7-hour marathon meeting about strategic
planning, I found myself returning to some of my graduate school work in
American history. Mary Grant, who is the chair of our Strategic
Planning Steering Committee, had asked me to say a few words of
introduction that would set the tone for the hours that lay ahead—15 of
us locked in a room, with the goal of beginning to make sense of some of
the ideas we’ve been collecting for the past month or so.
| | | | |
| | | | | Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about revolutions. This past year has
seen change—revolutionary change—in the Middle East that spread from
nation to nation in ways that observers never could have anticipated.
And in some cases, for example in Egypt, the post-revolutionary fallout
has been difficult for citizens to navigate; the unfamiliarity of the
new regime means that the ways one lived have often disappeared.
| | | | |
| | | | | Have you ever heard the term life-long learner? The implication is that a person who is a life-long learner jumps at any opportunity to enrich him or herself through educational opportunities. What defines an educational opportunity, in my opinion, should include many formal and informal settings which allow and encourage people to join endeavors that enrich them in any number of ways.
| | | | |
| | | | | This week we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday as a way of
honoring his leadership in the civil rights movement. For students
today, the events of the 1960s seem not just like another era, but
another country.
| | | | |
| | | | | I remember when I first started studying history in graduate school and
ran into the discipline called “food history.” What a joke, I thought
to myself. What could anyone learn by studying food or the eating
habits of a group of people? Plenty, it turns out. If you think about
how important food is to our everyday lives—something that’s especially
driven home when visiting places that use meals as the focus of family,
socializing, and often business, you know that we can learn a lot about
behavior and social norms through examining what and how we eat.
| | | | |
| | | | | During the vacation I
was lucky enough to spend a week in Germany visiting my in-laws. As I often tell people, it’s not actually as
glamorous as it sounds—in fact, it’s fairly routine, even for our youngest son
who’s only three. Of course, our
children love seeing their grandparents and cousins, and they love the fact
that when we’re outside of Hamburg, spending time in the countryside, that they
feed chickens and cows, see as many tractors as cars, and glimpse huge
windmills that dot the landscape.
| | | | |
| | | | | One of my secret fixations is modern music, theater or film that’s based
on some sort of classic text. Think about the movie “Clueless,” which
is based on Jane Austen’s Emma, and you’ll get the idea. Another great
example of such repurposing is the song by the 1960s rock group The
Byrds called “Turn, Turn, Turn.” If you’ve never heard it (or even if
you have) check out this video. (I confess that the choice of putting
the song to a compilation of scenes from Forrest Gump is fairly bizarre
considering that the movie is one of the more all-time conservative
depictions of the 1960s ever produced. But I digress….)
| | | | |
| | | | | When one of my jobs was college admissions we had a funny saying: "let’s look out for the student with blue hair." You might think that “look out” meant “watch out—this person might not be a good addition to our freshman class.” In actuality, it meant just the opposite: we wanted to look at that candidate because he or she might, through the symbolic blue hair, bring something different to the mix of students we were assembling as a class.
| | | | |
| | | | | In the senior administration meeting on Tuesday, I mentioned that a good metaphor for Rocky Hill School could be choosing to walk on the grass. What I meant is that we should think about why we’ve chosen to walk on the same paths we’ve always used in the past, and why we haven’t tried to do things in a different way. Maybe those paths we’ve always used are the best, and it’s a good thing we’re using them. But how will we know if we don’t walk on the grass to try something new?
| | | | |
|
|
|
| | |