Week of March 7, 2011

We had a great week in the Upper School last week. The bottom two photos will give you a taste of our QSA sleepover on Friday and Lunch with Philip on Thursday. As you may recall, Thursday was a beautiful spring day. During lunch time, over 40 students and 10 staff members chose to be inside, listening to US guest staff member Philip Gary talk about the Middle East. Philip has lived and worked in the Middle East. He talked for 45 minutes and left time for questions. Due to the thoughtful questions being asked by both students and staff members, we stayed for the full hour. Philip has agreed that this will be the first of a series of lunches with Philip.
A photograph of plates and bowls may seem odd. I first want to thank parents for the wonderful potluck lunch that we enjoyed as a part of our Spring Symposium. During parent conferences, a group of parents provided a delicious lunch for the staff. Thank you! We have been left with a variety of unidentified plates and bowls. This photo shows only a few of them. If you are missing a serving dish, please stop by our staff room kitchen and take a look.














These pictures are all out of order. The photo of Jamie at the piano is meant as a reminder that our annual (fundraiser) Cabaret will be held on Saturday, March 26th at 7:30pm in the Center. PLEASE MARK YOUR CALENDARS! The Cabaret is a fun, family-friendly event. The money we raise goes directly to End-of-Year service projects in Trinidad and Nicaragua. We hope you will join us.

WILDERNESS FIRST AID TRAINING
Seven of our staff members have recently completed a 2-day Wilderness First Aid Training class in preparation for End-of-Year off-campus experiences. This weekend training class covered emergency management, patient assessment, musculoskeletal injuries, splinting, dislocations, shock, head injuries, heat and cold related illness, just to name a few of the topics. This is a 2-day, 18-hour class designed for trip leaders, camp counselors, and outdoor enthusiasts. At least one staff representative from each End-of-Year off-campus experience took part in this class. I am happy to report that they all passed!

STAFF EVALUATIONS
In January, our students completed online evaluations of all of their teachers. After compiling the results of these evaluations, I shared this information with staff members at this week's staff meeting. Each staff member received responses to 34 questions that were devised by our Clerks Committee. These questions pertained to class preparation, classroom management, organization, homework, feedback...just to mention a few. Students were also asked to include Compliments and Suggestions for each teacher. As always, our students took these evaluations seriously and provided their teachers with thoughtful responses. As a follow-up, I will be having conversations with each teacher about the evaluations they received.

MARCH 17
We will have a noon dismissal on March 17th for staff development. During that day, the Upper School will host a conference for the Independent Curriculum Group. The theme of the conference is The Dynamic Dialogue: Students as Co-Creators of Schools. Some of our students will participate in the conference, either as presenters or attenders. Parents are invited to participate as well. Our plenary speaker will be Deborah Meier (9:30am in the Meeting Hall), author of The Power of Their Ideas. Meier is currently a senior scholar at NYU's Steinhardt School of Education and is on the Board of Ted Sizer's Coalition of Essential Schools. She spent more than four decades in public education, and in 1985 she founded the Central Park East Secondary School, a model of success that restarted a small schools movement in public education.

Upper School students who do not participate in the conference will view Race to Nowhere in the Center. The description below was taken from the Race to Nowhere website:

Featuring the heartbreaking stories of young people across the country who have been pushed to the brink, educators who are burned out and worried that students aren’t developing the skills they need, and parents who are trying to do what’s best for their kids, Race to Nowhere points to the silent epidemic in our schools: cheating has become commonplace, students have become disengaged, stress-related illness, depression and burnout are rampant, and young people arrive at college and the workplace unprepared and uninspired.

Race to Nowhere is a call to mobilize families, educators, and policy makers to challenge current assumptions on how to best prepare the youth of America to become healthy, bright, contributing and leading citizens.

Following the film, Mike Hanas will lead a discussion with our students.

HAVE A GREAT WEEK!