Head of School

A year ago I had the opportunity to re-connect with an old friend and colleague Erik Weihenmayer. Erik and I had worked together in the late nineties at Phoenix Country Day School and had parted ways in 1999. I had gone on to work at The Head-Royce School in California and Erik left the school to pursue his dream to climb the “Seven Summits” – the highest peak on each of the seven continents. This is, of course, an incredible triumph, what makes it even more amazing is that Erik Weihenmayer is completely blind.

On the day he stood atop Mt. Everest Erik became the first blind climber to ever climb to the “top of the world.” As one might expect, that accomplishment did not come easily. In the early weeks of the expedition, Erik and his team worked their way up and down the mountain establishing base camps and rehearsing their climb. On many occasions during this training phase Erik and his team became frustrated and concerned. On their first attempt to cross the infamous Khumbu Icefall Erik required thirteen hours for the crossing. Most teams manage to cross the icefall in six or seven hours. They were in trouble. Confronting the tallest mountain in the world they were worried, anxious, and increasingly disappointed.

At this point Erik did what he had done since going blind at the age of thirteen, he turned his disappointment into success. Erik refused to let the fact that he was blind and, therefore, slow deter him. In fact, the adversity motivated him. On the day that his team began their final assault on the mountain they crossed the Khumbu Icefall in an incredible five hours and a few days later they stood atop the world’s highest mountain.

Through hard work, discipline, and the tremendous desire to turn disappointment into success Erik and his team overcame the early frustration inherent in their situation and found the strength and fortitude to make it to the top. In the process, they made history.

By embracing his blindness and seeking out difficult challenges Erik developed a strong “Disappointment Muscle.” A psychologist friend of mine has spoken about this “muscle” and suggests that too many of us have poorly developed “disappointment muscles” as a result of too many years of being shielded and protected from adversity in an attempt to stay happy and content. As parents and teachers we must be aware that our kids need disappointment and adversity in order to find ultimate success.

Only through building resilience and courage was Erik able to climb the “Seven Summits.” By building the strongest disappointment muscle he could, he found his way to the “top of the world.” In that story, there is a lesson for us all.

Click here for a great slide show from Sunday's Graduation.

http://www.devkhalsaphotography.com/tcsgraduation2010/

How many schools have banners like this one?

Billy Collins read this poem to our graduates in 2007. It never gets old...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EjB7rB3sWc&feature=player_embedded

Check out this simple little YouTube Video on the subject of 21st Century Teachers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4g5M06YyVw

In this great story from NPR's "All Things Considered" there are quite a few thought-provoking ideas about rules for both parents and teachers.

Just click on the link below and listen to the report. It's approximately 7 minutes long.

http://npr.vo.llnwd.net/kip0/_pxn=0+_pxK=17273/anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2010/03/20100329_atc_17.mp3?dl=1

In this thoughtful article from The New York Times the author suggests that perhaps we could serve boys better in school:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opinion/28kristof.html?emc=eta1

From "The Marshall Memo"

In this thoughtful New York Times Magazine article, Elizabeth Green describes the work of Doug Lemov, a New York educator who has compiled a “taxonomy” of effective teaching, and Deborah Loewenberg Ball, a Michigan State researcher who has found that specific pedagogical content knowledge is important to getting classroom results. The gist of the piece is that Lemov and Ball, who had not heard of each other’s work until they were interviewed for this article, should combine their efforts to create an even more powerful strategy to improve classroom teaching.

Lemov created his taxonomy after watching a few too many ineffective teachers – “a dispiriting exercise in good people failing,” as he put it. He also remembered his own lame attempts as a beginning teacher – saying to himself as a lesson plan collapsed, “Oh, my God. I still have 45 minutes left to go.” Lemov came to believe that teaching was not an innate capacity possessed by a few born superstars – it could be developed. Rather than trying to hire and motivate a “different caliber of person” (as Washington D.C. school chancellor Michelle Rhee puts it), Lemov focused on how to improve the effectiveness of the existing teacher corps – building talent rather than trying to buy it. Teachers want to do better, he believed – they just don’t know how – and he set to work on a training program that would give them an incentive just as powerful as money: the chance to really make a difference for their students and be part of a winning team. In youth soccer (another Lemov passion), it’s not enough for the coach to tell players to “get better.” Good coaches tell them to “mark tighter” or “close the space.” The problem, Lemov found, was that educators didn’t have a clear idea of the specific components of good teaching. Even the best graduate schools of education were floundering in what educational historian Diane Ravitch calls “the contentless curriculum.”

So Lemov spent five years observing and filming teachers who had a track record of bringing about dramatic gains in student achievement. He found that what appeared at first glance to be a magical gift – the innate “stuff” of natural-born classroom geniuses – was really a set of specific techniques that ordinary mortals could master. At the core was a simple principle: students can’t learn unless the teacher knows how to capture their attention and get them to follow instructions. This is classroom management 101, and some teacher educators look down their noses at such mundane material, but Lemov believes it’s as specialized, intricate, and learnable as mastering a musical instrument. He has been presenting his taxonomy, backed up by videotapes of teachers, in workshops around the country (a book version, Teach Like a Champion: The 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College, will be published by Jossey-Bass next month). Here is a selection of the techniques:

• Standing still when you’re giving directions – Don’t do two things at once and students are much more likely to pay attention and comply.

• Strong voice – Adopting a different persona to get and hold the floor.

• Being direct and specific – Lemov is on a campaign to stop teachers from saying, Shhh. “It’s fundamentally ambiguous,” he says. “Are you asking the kids not to talk, or are you asking kids to talk more quietly?” He uses a videotape of Bob Zimmerli, a master teacher, to demonstrate direct and specific management. Zimmerli is teaching a group of inattentive fifth graders for the first time. One has headphones on, another is looking through a large three-ring binder, and none of them are paying attention. “O.K., guys,” says Zimmerli from the front of the room, “before I get started today, here’s what I need from you. I need that piece of paper turned over and a pencil out.” Almost no students comply and he says, “So if there’s anything else on your desk right now, please put that inside your desk.” He makes a hand gesture like an underhand pitch and a few students in the front rows put papers away. But it takes a second technique to get the whole class with him…

• Framing a positive outcome, building momentum, and narrating the positive –Zimmerli points to the students who are putting their materials away and says, “Just like you’re doing, thank you very much.” When another student clears his desk, Zimmerli says, “Thank you, sir.” When another does so, he says, “I appreciate it.” As the last desk is cleared, Zimmerli points to the student and says, “Nice… nice.” In the end, the headphones are off, the three-ring binder is stowed, and every student is paying attention. “It’s this positive wave,” says Lemov as he shows the videotape. “You can almost see it going across the classroom from right to left.” Lemov focuses on the student with the three-ring binder. Ten seconds into Zimmerli’s directions, the three-ring-binder student glances at a classmate to his left who has his paper and pencil out and is paying attention. For the first time, he looks at the teacher. “He’s like, ‘O.K., what’s this?’” says Lemov. “‘I guess I’m going to go with it.’” Half a minute later, the student closes the binder, puts it in his desk, and pays attention.

• Warm/strict – Teacher’s control should be “an exercise in purpose, not in power,” says Lemov. Correcting a student is done with a smile and an explanation, for example, “Sweetheart, we don’t do that in this classroom because it keeps us from making the most of our learning time.”

• Cold calling – Students are instructed not to raise their hands when the teacher asks a question; the teacher decides who get called on, asking the question first and pausing so every student has to do the work of figuring out an answer before one student is asked to respond.

• No opt out – A teacher should never allow a student to avoid answering a question, no matter how tough it is. “If I’m asking my students a question,” says Katie Bellucci, a first-year teacher trained in Lemov’s taxonomy, “and I call on somebody, and they get it wrong, I need to work on how to address that. It’s easy to be like, ‘No,’ and move on to the next person. But the hard part is to be like: ‘O.K., well, that’s your thought. Does anybody disagree?’... I have to work on going from the student who gets it wrong to students who get it right, then back to the student who gets it wrong and ask a follow-up question to make sure they understand why they got it wrong and understand why the right answer is right.”

• The J-factor – Ways of injecting joy into the classroom, such as giving students nicknames and handing out vocabulary words in sealed envelopes to build suspense.

On a parallel track to Lemov’s, Deborah Loewenberg Ball at Michigan State has observed scores of teachers and found that pedagogical content knowledge is associated with higher student achievement – for example, the detailed understanding of third-grade mathematics, which is distinct from general math knowledge and the pedagogical knowledge that Lemov has catalogued. Ball calls it Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching or M.K.T. – in essence, knowing how 30 different minds might understand (or misunderstand) a specific math concept and bringing them all to mastery in a 45-minute class. At the heart of M.K.T. is teachers’ ability to step outside their own heads. “Teaching depends on what other people think, not what you think,” says Ball.

The Michigan State researchers believe that M.K.T. is crucial, but they know classroom management techniques are important too. As college teachers, they use many of Lemov’s techniques intuitively, but they haven’t had a vocabulary and a conceptual framework for them. “That’s one thing our program doesn’t address right now, how to get and hold the floor,” says Francesca Forzani, who is working with Ball to revamp Michigan’s teacher education program. So it’s clear that they could benefit from Lemov’s ideas.

Lemov sees the importance of M.K.T. and its brethren in other subject areas, but he has no doubt about what comes first. “I believe in content-based professional development, obviously,” he says. “But I feel it’s insufficient… It doesn’t matter what questions you’re asking if the kids are running the classroom.” That said, Lemov and his colleagues in the Uncommon Schools network are working on beefing up the taxonomy with an added focus on content knowledge in math, reading, science, and social studies.

“Can Good Teaching Be Learned?” by Elizabeth Green in The New York Times Magazine, March 7, 2010 (p. 30-37, 44, 46)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html?hp

In this thoughtful Kappan article,University of Missouri/St. Louis professors David Light Shields and Brenda Light Bredemeier reexamine Alfie Kohn’s assertion (in his 1986 book, No Contest: The Case Against Competition) that competition interferes with creativity, narrows thinking, promotes conformity, diminishes self-esteem, undermines performance and productivity, and increases prejudice, hostility, cheating, aggression, and violence.

Kohn was right in one sense, say Shields and Bredemeier. Research before and after his book confirms that win-lose, conflict-oriented competition really does produce negative effects. But there is another kind of competition, they say – striving with one’s opponent for the highest level of excellence – and it has distinctly positive effects. “Rather than corrupting our young,” they say, “competition can cultivate their character. It can build their self-esteem, promote humanistic values, support a sense of competence, and lead to enjoyment.” Here is a comparison of the two types of competition:

•The kind that Kohn attacks involves situations in which the goals of the contestants are mutually exclusive and the aim is deciding who is the winner and who is the loser.

•The other kind derives from the Latin petere, meaning “to strive” or “to seek”, combined with the prefix, com, meaning “with.” It isn’t striving against but striving together with one’s opponent in an enjoyable quest for excellence. “In sports, for example, what is being sought is excellence of physical performance,” say Shields and Bredemeier. “It is the exhilaration, excitement, and sense of accomplishment that comes with maximizing one’s physical and mental potential in the pursuit of a goal. In school-sponsored contests such as spelling bees and debates, we seek to promote a joy of learning that will lead to academic excellence… In true competition, each party is pushed to its limits by the challenge coming from the best effort of opponents. The mutual challenge is a stimulus to maximum effort that, when rooted in the values of true competition, leads to an… upward spiral toward excellence.”

The attitude people bring to the contest is what makes the difference. If contestants see it as a partnership aimed at excellence, competition will be positive. If they see it as a battle for victory and domination, competition will be negative.

It’s vital that young people learn this distinction, say Shields and Bredemeier, and sports may be the best arena to learn it, since sixty percent of American children participate in organized sports. “If students learn that sports are all about who’s number one,” they say, “if they embrace showboating and dominating as goals, if they learn that rule-bending is normative, if they come to believe that opponents are simply there to be victimized, what does this portend for how they will think about contests in other sectors of life?”

Educators need to realize that there is a natural pull toward the dark side of competition. Student athletes can become confused when a coach pushes them to be competitive and then criticizes them for trash-talking, cheating, or fighting. Just how competitive are we supposed to be? they might ask. In fact, they need to be more competitive, but with a focus on excellence and enjoyment. “If winning is viewed as a demonstration of personal superiority, if it is valued as an opportunity to claim supremacy, if it is a salve for an insecure ego, then the desire to win will likely lead to ethical lapses, even if the desire isn’t particularly strong,” say Shields and Bredemeier. “On the other hand, if the desire to win springs from a desire to test one’s limits, to approximate personal excellence, to support one’s teammates and the core values of the community, then even a powerful desire to win will be walled off from a temptation to deviate from ethical commitments… While the immediate goal may be to win, the meta-goal is to enable all participants to explore the boundaries of personal growth and accomplishment. In this broader goal, opponents are partners.”

Fortunately, there are some great competitors who can serve as role models, for example, tennis champion Chris Evert, who says that her favorite match ever was when she lost to her arch rival, Martina Navratilova, in a contest that pushed them both to the top of their game. “Competition requires balancing seriousness with play,” say Shields and Bredemeier, “intrinsic motivations with extrinsic motivations, and outcome orientation with process orientation.” Teaching young people to see competition this way, they say, “will help us avoid the many pitfalls of contesting that have been eloquently described by Kohn and other critics of the contest.”



“Competition: Was Kohn Right?” by David Light Shields and Brenda Light Bredemeier in Phi Delta Kappan, February 2010 (Vol.91, #5, p. 62-67); this article can be purchased at [ http://www.pdkintl.org ]http://www.pdkintl.org.

This article was originally published in the October 19, 2008 issue of the Wood River Journal and seems quite relevant today:

"Kids can be great “Unitaskers” if we let them"

We live in the Age of the Multitasker. Everywhere I look I see them. Mom’s on their cell phones while picking up their kids from school. Dad’s text messaging their offices from the golf course. Employees answering emails during meetings. Kids listening to their ipods while doing their homework and instant messaging their friends.

Certainly, modern technology has provided us with wonderful communication tools that have made our lives simpler and changed the way we do business. In the 21st century we are all more connected, interdependent, and informed and our kids live in a world that is getting smaller every day.

However, what is the cost of multitasking? What impact does doing many things at once have on us and, more specifically, on our children? I believe the effect of multitasking is significant and can have a profound effect on adolescent development cognitively, emotionally, and socially.

Last week on a visit to an art class I was observing a student from my school, I’ll call him Bruce. Bruce is a great kid who occasionally has difficulty focusing his attention on the task at hand. In this particular class, on a typical October day in school, he showed me the value of what I like to call “Unitasking.”

After a few minutes of instruction from the teacher the class was asked to begin their preliminary sketches for what would become soapstone sculptures. Bruce, after spending a few minutes fidgeting in his seat and shuffling his papers around, began to draw. With his face two inches from his sketchpad and his body poised on the edge of his stool he produced a drawing with incredible detail and complexity. His pencil moved with skill and speed and his eyes never left the paper. After 30 minutes the teacher asked the class to begin cleaning up to get ready for the next class. Bruce kept drawing. The other kids began to leave the room. Bruce kept drawing. The teacher finally came over to the student and gently placing a hand on his shoulder said, “It’s time to wrap up.” Bruce looked up startled by the emptiness of the classroom. “Where did everybody go?” he said.

In the Age of the Multitasker it is difficult for kids to focus on just one thing. It’s nobody’s fault, really, but this lack of direct focus has the effect of robbing kids of the opportunity to find depth and meaning in their everyday lives. When a kid has the chance to become absorbed in a single activity he is able to explore ideas and emotions that are easily eluded in the Age of the Multitasker.

In the course of one art class Bruce unknowingly discovered the wonder of unitasking. He became so engaged in the moment that the world around him was stripped away. It so happened that Bruce found this engagement in the arts but he could have easily found it in a math book, on the athletic field, or in the wilderness. The key to me is to provide kids with an environment for unitasking. Who knows, it may end up making our lives better as well!

Andy Jones-Wilkins

My Powder Day actually started at 7pm on Sunday night when I pushed send and the email alert began its rounds. My three boys, of course, reading over my shoulder, erupted into a pig pile and given the fact that we had been momless for the past three days the resulting celebration was nothing short of catastrophic. That said, as the phone calls and emails started to roll in following the announcement, I became overwhelmed with emotion. Not necessarily because I was excited for the day but rather because I was in awe of the event. I am sure that it was not Sam Hazard's intent 35 years ago to produce a symbolic "time out" but to me that is the beauty of Powder Day. For seemingly no reason at all we stop everything that we are doing and for one day, one glorious day, we simply live in the moment. So Sam, thank you for giving me permission to live in the moment! It is, simply put, my favorite day of the year.




On Monday I started on Dollar Mountain where the Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade were skiing. Beginning at 9:45 the 1st grade, respendent in newly created tie die shirts just for the occasion, were eager to strut their stuff on the terrain park jumps and my heart skipped a couple beats when I saw one seven year old after another hurtling their little bodies through the air. Watching Josh, Lily, Nils, Tully, Logan and the rest fly through the early morning chill literally gave me goosebumps. Of course, I was watching them from the comfort of the adjacent corduroy.




After a couple runs with the little ones I drove over to Baldy and headed straight to the top. It appeared that several groups of kids, teachers and parents were gathering up there but the 4th grade boys seemed the most eager. So, in quick succession, all ten boys, five parents, Trent and I plummeted down the sun drenched face of Christmas. Twenty turns and a handful of snow gun jumps later we reached the cat track. They continued down to Christmas Bowl and ultimately over to Seattle Ridge while I rested my already burning quads on the cat track over to Christmas lift.




There, I encountered the 8th grade. Not surprisingly, this rag tag group of 8 or 9 were 10 minutes late for their meeting with the group on top and I thought it might be best that I accompany them so that they would not incur the wrath of Scott and Naomi. Furthermore, I think it is no secret that I absolutely love 8th graders and was eager to ski a run with them. And, by the time we got to the top they were all there. Every single one of them. Yes, in classic Middle School style it took a while for them to actually begin skiing but once we did it was a blast. The costumes, the chatter, the breakneck speed...Jeez, it's no wonder these kids had no problems with the Food Unit! I knew one run was all I could handle with my beloved 8th graders so it was back to the top with an impromptu rendez-vous with the 3rd grade boys.




Now, these little guys can flat out rip and it was clear as soon as we began the descent down Christmas Bowl that it would be the boys in front and the adults behind. These boys were flying over jumps, bouncing through the moguls and impressing us all in the process. And, in classic 3rd grade boy style, they couldn't help but comment on my pink poles and the fact that I barely got any air at all over the last jump. Little did they know that the air I did get was entirely accidental. Obviously, it was time to move on.




Thus, I found myself on the Seattle Ridge Chair with Colleen Weaver and a posse of 3rd grade girls. Yes, I seemed to be caught in a 3rd grade maelstrom and I was not sure if I could get out. Then, when I innocently agreed to play follow the leader with Noelle, Addy and Kinley I knew I was in for it. You see, they thought it would be fun to take me down Broadway. And not, mind you, the Broadway we all know and love, but the Broadway on the right side where all the bumps and twists and turns are. The Broadway that makes you remember where your kidneys are and why you took up distance running. The Broadway that makes you long for a couch and a fireplace. Anyway, I survived that Broadway and quickly made my getaway. Conveniently enough a train of 8th grade girls, yes, those same 8th grade girls, was heading down to Cold Springs and then up to the top so I thought I'd tag along and perhaps survive intact. Once on the top I actually found myself alone so I thought it would be fun to try to ski from the top to the bottom without stopping. It wasn't exactly fun but I will say when I got to the bottom I was ready for lunch.




The scene inside Warm Springs lodge was probably not your typical Monday in January scene but the kids seemed well behaved and the staff seemed to be enjoying a little more lively Monday than is typical. So, I settled into my chile with the 6th grade boys and just listened. That's pretty much all I needed to do. Then as I was finishing my lunch and growing a bit tired of the 6th grade, well, the 6th gradeness, I saw a large 9th grade group heading out. I tagged along. Of course, they were so caught up in whatever they were caught up in that they didn't notice me until we got to the top but once we got there I said, sheepishly, "Mind if I ski with you?" I don't think they actually heard me but at least I kept up through the flat part before Ridge. Then, it go crazy. Couple things to remember if this ever happens to you: Frannie is much, much, faster than you think. Brett is very funny and a pretty decent snowboarder. Ella is a darn good skier for someone who has pretty much lived in London for the past few years. And, just a warning, don't ever drop into a powder run at the same time as Natalie and Ellie. They tend to crash into one another and when the skis go flying it's a danger to everyone around. Anyway, I was wiping the tears from my eyes when we got to the bottom of River Run in what felt like about 90 seconds when I bid the 9th grade crew goodbye and headed back to Dollar to pick up Tully and shred a few more runs with Janet, Kathy, Gretchen and the gang. And, I gotta say, it won't be long before all these little skiers are getting after it on Baldy (if they're not already!).




After dropping off a tired Tully at my house and calling Carson to find out that he was skiing with his friends (and therefore had no interest in meeting up with me) I knew I wanted to finish the day skiing with one of my kids and knew I only had an hour until I (and more importantly, my credit card) was due at Apples. So, I grabbed Logan at the bottom of Warm Springs and we headed up. As luck would have it we got on the chair with our good friend Terry Palmer who was just finishing a lesson. He said if we could meet him at the top of Squirrel he'd love to ski with us. Now, for any of you who know Terry he is basically the Mayor of Baldy. One day when I was skiing with him last year we met Jann Wenner and Dick Dorworth within minutes of one another and skied with them for the entire day. I actually expected Arnold and the Bruces (that is, Willis and Springsteen!) to show up as well. Anyway, Terry is one of those infectiously enthusiastic skiers who can't help but coach you when you're skiing with him and he always gives just the right pointers. So, needless to say, Logan and I had a great last run with Terry and even though my legs were crying out for mercy I tried my best to heed his advice to keep my weight on my downhill ski (whatever that means).




And then, finally, we retired to Apples. My kids were there, the Blackburn kids were there, and about 25 TCS teachers were there. From the rookies to the vets we enjoyed our time together and Hank, the owner of Apples, suggested that we have a few more of these "Headmaster's Holidays" this year. I think he enjoyed the surprise business. In the end it was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

To complete the circle, when I looked around the room at the end of it all I paused and once again, as I had done the night before, became filled with emotion. Again, the emotion was subtle but real. It was that kind of emotion that emerges when you find yourself in the midst of something larger than yourself. The kind of emotion that wells up when you look around and see Bob and Elliott, Rem and Naomi, Bev and Gretchen, Scott and Travis, Pilar and Jenn and a host of other folks both old and new. The kind of emotion that flies in your face when, in the very same room, you feel the pull of tradition and the connection to the past in the presence of graduates Greg van der Muelen, Mark Hanselman and Jack Weekes who perhaps, better than most, understand the importance of stopping, pausing, and simply living in the moment. After all, isn't that one of best things we teach at this place?

As we embark on the establishment of our Reggio Emilia Early Childhood Center here at The Community School this article could be particularly helpful to those who wish to learn more about this exciting new program.

Can video games teach kids?

Read here about one school doing just that!

Daniel Pink, author of the new book, Drive, offers the following recommended readings and trend predictions as we start the new year (the comments are all Daniel Pink's own words from a recent web seminar):

10 publications:

1. Springwise.com. A website and fabulous electronic newsletter. Thousands of people out there, looking for new business ideas, from all over the world. Every time the weekly email newsletter comes, it is full of great stuff.
2. The Week: A collection of digest and articles/columns from all over North America, and is unbelievably useful.
3. The National Bureau of Economic Research Digest. Email newsletter. Economists submit working papers, short, shorter than journal articles, and this offers great summaries.
4. Arts Journal. Outstanding email newsletter; daily and weekly. Summarizes a whole array of information in the arts, and the broader world of ideas and the intersection of arts and sciences. The intersection of arts and sciences is among the most interesting thing happening in the world today.
5. The New Scientist. Fabulous—stuff on the website is excellent, user friendly, making science understandable and relevant.
6. Popurl. A massive agglomeration of what is happening on the web right now, an MRI of the global web brain.
7. Seth Godin’s Blog. Outstanding. He really irritates me—8 times out of 9 it is really interesting, really insightful, really useful. His ability to crank out something every single day is really amazing.
8. Employee First, Customer Second. A new business book coming out next summer, with a crazy, radical, counterintuitive notion. Coming from a CEO of an Indian technology company. The result is that customers love us, because when employees are happy, customers happy. Very interesting new management ideas coming out of India.
9. Different: Escaping the Competitive Heard. Purple Cow meets Blue Ocean. A book for people who don’t read business books. Very smart, very strategic book against conformity.
10. The Thing. I don’t even know how to describe the Thing—it is an object based quarterly magazine. But instead of getting a magazine in your mailbox, you get a “thing.” A mix of art, a subscription, ideas.

Five Trends Worth Watching this Year:

Trend Number 1: Apps for Everyone! It is astonishing how many apps come out every day, and I don’t see why we will not each have our own app. Mobile Roadie has a very small elegant way to have people create their own app. This is really just a beginning; five years from now, most people will have their own app.

Trend Number 2. Socrates Meets Statistics: Know thyself and track your personal, bodily data. It is amazing the amount of data each body creates every day, and there are ways to capture that and track that. Ten years from now we will be amazed that we didn’t use to track our every single step we take for our health. Total Recall is a book that speaks to this really well.

Trend number 3: This may not be the American or Chinese century, but the English century- the English language century. We now have a worldwide first language. There will be soon a “Starbucks” of English instruction, a branded shop to teach English all over the world.

Trend number 4: Dysfunction is High Function. Quite a list of gamechanging dyslexics—it is really weird, but somehow very compelling. “Orchid Children,” an Atlantic article that is really fascinating, speaks to this. The Hypomanic edge is another book that speaks powerfully to this, that in the US we have genetically selected for hypomania and that has created our US global competitive advantage.

Trend Number 5. Obama is Reagan. Not politically, but the parallels are astonishing, in the way the President is an outsider, the economy is in terrible shape, the ideology is out of control, the FedReserve is significantly involved. Their approval rating curve is very, very similar. I guarantee you: by 2012, it will be morning in America, and Obama’s reelection is certain.

In the past week The Community School has been featured in three newspaper articles in the Idaho Mountain Express.

Our "Students From Afar Program" is covered here:

http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?ID=2005129233&var_Year=2009&var_Month=12&var_Day=18

A follow-up on the 8th grade "Food Unit" is described here:

http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?ID=2005129244&var_Year=2009&var_Month=12&var_Day=18

And, the appointment of our new Upper School Director is discussed here:

http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?ID=2005129310&var_Year=2009&var_Month=12&var_Day=23

Not bad advice from one of the most influential men of our time:

Rule 1: Life is not fair -- get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping -- they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, "What the Dog Saw" is an expansive compilation of his New Yorker columns over the past decade. One, in particular, caught my eye.

In his essay, "The Art of Failure: Why Some People Choke and Others Panic," Gladwell explores the psychological and emotional impact of success and failure on the human experience. In doing so, he raises several important points that are relevant to our daily work with kids.


In discussing some particularly painful examples of failure Gladwell notes that "Human beings sometimes falter under pressure. Pilots crash and divers drown. Under the glare of competition, basketball players cannot find the basket and golfers cannot find the pin. When that happens, we say variously that people have panicked or, to use the sports colloquialism, choked. But what do these words mean? Both are pejoratives. To choke or panic is considered to be as bad as to quit. But are all forms of failure equal?"

This notion of equal forms of failure is an interesting one for an educator. Why is failing a test worse than forgetting one's lines or missing a free throw? Don't all three prepare us for a life in which we fail more often than we succeed? And, in the end, what do these failures tell us about how we are meeting the needs of our kids in school and at home?

Gladwell goes on the say that "we live in an age obsessed with success, with documenting the myriad ways by which talented people
overcome challenges and obstacles. There is much to be learned, though, from documenting the myriad ways in which talented people sometimes fail."

Wait a minute! Talented people fail? Is that what we want to teach our kids?

I say, absolutely. It's not the failure that's the issue, it's the kind of failure that's important.

In citing two examples of infamous athletic failures (Jana Novotna's meltdown in the 1993 Wimbledon Final and Greg Norman's collapse in the 1996 Masters' Championship) Gladwell illuminates what is perhaps the most mysterious aspect of failure, the distinction between "panicking" and "choking."

"Panic," Gladwell notes, "is the opposite of choking. Choking is about thinking too much. Panic is about thinking too little. Choking is about the loss of instinct. Panic is reversion to instinct. They may look the same, but they are worlds apart." For those of us working every day with kids we must learn to tell the difference and shape our experiences in and out of the classroom to
inform those differences. In addition, we must realize that "thinking too much" and "thinking too little" can both get us into trouble. As with many things in life, we must find ways to help our kids find a middle ground.

This exciting book by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman caught my eye recently and contained three themes, in particular, that are quite relevant to our work with kids in school and at home.



Praise effort: Much of traditional school has centered around achievement. Bronson and Merryman make the argument that scientific research suggests praising effort is every bit as important praising achievement. In fact, as a predictor of future success, students who were more actively praised for effort were ultimately more successful.

Encourage more sleep: Bronson and Merryman cite a nationwide study of over 10,000 high school students providing clear evidence on the importance of getting enough sleep. A comparative study of sleep patterns and grades showed that teens who received “A’s” got an average of 15 more minutes of sleep per night than students who received “B’s” and so on with “C’s” and “D’s." The message, a little sleep goes along way.

Accept disappointment: The authors note significant research that suggests shielding kids from disappointment at a young age can have detrimental results. In fact, it is clear from the world of neuroscience, that disappointment and the subsequent lessons learned from disappointing experiences can have a profound effect on brain development.

This interesting article from the Boston Globe suggests that hard work and determination are every bit as important as talent and ability.

In our opening faculty meetings back in August the Community School faculty participated in an outstanding workshop with Lee Crockett, a Canadian curriculum expert and a consultant with the InfoSavvy Group, an international consulting firm working with schools on program development and innovative curriculum. At the core of Crockett’s message was the notion that in order to prepare students for the future they must have a clear understanding of what he calls “21st Century Fluencies.”

In essence, 21st Century Fluencies provide students with the tools to manage in and navigate through an ever-changing world. Through integrative technologies and innovative programs, schools can address 21st century fluencies at any grade level.



The five fluencies are:

Creativity Fluency: involves the transparent use of artistic proficiency to add meaning to a product through design, art or storytelling.

Media Fluency: is not just about the ability to operate a digital camera or build a Power Point presentation. It’s about being able to look critically at the content of a web site, podcast, newscast, or a video game and be able to understand how the medium is being used to communicate, shape our thinking, and how well it’s communicating the message.

Information Fluency: is the ability to unconsciously and intuitively interpret information in all forms and formats in order to extract the essential knowledge and perceive its meaning and significance. There are five distinct steps in the process, ask good questions, access and acquire raw material from the most appropriate sources, analyze/authenticate the data to distinguish between the good and bad information, apply the knowledge within the context of real life, and assess both the product and the process

Solution Fluency: refers to the creativity and problem-solving applied in real time. Four steps: Define the problem, design a solution, do by putting the plan into action, debrief to evaluate and foster ownership of the problem.

Collaboration Fluency: fosters the notion of teamwork by using social networking tools in an online environment with virtual partners, sometimes located in other parts of the world.

In the months ahead we will be working with 21st century fluencies across the curriculum in an attempt to provide our students with the “real world” skills they will need in the future. In these exciting times this is, indeed, an exciting project!