Weekly Message from Steve Warner, Head of School (February 25, 2013)

Greetings, GreenMount Community,

            I would say that our theme event was “Boffo!” (a huge success, as per Variety magazine, which coined the term).   When you came here on Friday, did you expect to see our students so confident in their ability to demonstrate what they had learned?  Did you expect to see all of our kids so engaged in what they were doing?  I have watched 17 of these themes come together and I am still always amazed at the final product.  And of all 17, I can’t think of one that was a “flop” (another term coined by Variety).

Certainly this theme was a challenging one for our teachers and the students.  How should we approach this 49-year period in our history during which so much happened?  What parts of this history are most essential for our students’ understanding?  These kinds of questions help us make choices about the curriculum for the theme and drive the instruction and projects that students complete.  And in the end, the students learn a lot, as demonstrated on Friday.  From kindergarten students who studied about the gold rush to eighth graders who tackled the issues of big business and workers’ rights, we saw that our kids have accomplished a lot in just about 53 days. 

The memories that our theme events create will stay with these students for many years to come.  Second and third grade students who wrote such wonderful poems about settling the west will remember how important it was to share them with the people who visited their classroom.  They will long remember what it was like to receive such deserved praise for their literary accomplishments. Students in the Vaudeville and Wild West Show will remember what it was like to take a risk and dramatize Annie Oakley’s feats of marksmanship or to stand alone before an audience telling corny jokes.  And who will forget the 90-minute debate on the Bread and Roses strike?

This memory of an opportunity to present oneself to a large audience and demonstrate knowledge may well be the important event that changes a person forever.  For the adults who witnessed all of the venues on Friday, the memory of bursting with pride for all of our kids will last forever, too. I am personally wondering how long the songs of our choruses will keep repeating in my head.  I’ll not ever hear the Harrigan song again without hearing it as “lollipop”.  Nor will I ever feel as patriotic when I hear “Over There” as I did on Friday.  I think our themes bring out the best in our students, and with each conclusion I am again convinced that we have something very special going on here.  Thank you for your unending support and for the gift of seven hours a day with your children.

Cheers,

Steve

Weekly Message from Steve Warner, Head of School (February 19, 2013)

Greetings, GreenMount Community,

            At our staff meeting on Friday we discussed some important issues that involve you, and I am writing to remind you of a couple of policies we have in place.

We all know what it is like to be late, especially on those mornings when we have “weather events”.  These times become especially difficult for some of our staff members, a full 27 percent of whom travel from points as far north as the Pennsylvania line (that’s dedication!).  The other fact is that we have 13 parking spaces on our small lot and we have a staff of 16, including our part-time folks.  You have also recently received an email from me asking everyone, including staff, not to park on the grass as its condition is preventing us from using the field for recess and PE.  The question is, where can the parents park in the morning?  We ask that parents not park in the spaces provided for our staff or the handicap spot and instead follow our procedures for dropping off students either at Miles Avenue or by the flagpole, which has been designated as a drop-off area (no parking there).  If you have business in the school in the morning, we ask that you park on the street.  I know how difficult this is sometimes, but teachers need to get to their classrooms as soon as possible to greet their students, and when they have to search for a place to park away from the school, this can cause them to be late for that morning meeting.

The second issue involves afternoon pick-up.  In our Family Handbook it is clearly stated that if parents pick up their children after 3:30 p.m. (or after 12:15 p.m. on Fridays), there will be a charge of $20 for any part of an hour after those times.  To this point, we have not enforced this policy because we have just tried to accommodate situations that arise not through negligence, but because of things that just happen.  Unfortunately, we have had enough families take advantage of this kindness that now we must enforce the rule in order to have compliance with it.  Please understand that our main concern is safety of the children and the welfare of the school.  There have been occasions when we have not had the people power to supervise a child left after dismissal time as well as perhaps we would like.  This may be because of a staff meeting or parent meetings, or other appointments that cannot wait until a parent arrives to collect his or her child. That child may have to sit outside a classroom where teachers are meeting, or in the lobby, supervised by whoever may be in the office.  If we find ourselves in a situation where a child is not “properly supervised”, even though we are doing the best we can, and something happens to that child, we could become liable for any injuries that might occur.  You can imagine the worst-case scenario and the effect that could have on the future of our school.

I know that there are times when your lateness is unavoidable.  My advice in those cases is that you contact another parent to pick up your child.  For the great majority of parents, we have a rule in place that any GMS parent may pick up any GMS student.  Thank you for your attention to these matters.

Bad news isn’t wine; it doesn’t improve with age! – Colin Powell

Cheers,

Steve

Weekly Message from Steve Warner, Head of School (February 11, 2013)

Greetings, GreenMount Community,

            In 1968, George Land administered a creativity test to 1,600 5-year-olds (Land & Jarman, 1992). The test, which he had developed for NASA to identify innovative scientists and engineers, found that 98 percent of tested children registered at a genius level on the creative scale. But five years later, when Land readministered the test to the then-10-year-old children, only 30 percent of them scored at the genius level of creativity. After another five years, the number dropped to just 12 percent. The same test, administered to 280,000 adults, found that only 2 percent registered at the genius level for creativity. Land concluded that noncreative thinking is learned.

            I recently read this and it got me wondering if, in some way, we diminish creativity in our students as they ascend through the grades.  Do we lessen creative opportunities from kindergarten to grade 8?  My first inclination is to say that at GreenMount we focus on creativity at all levels and that the project-based learning that we incorporate along with our goal to make learning as experiential as possible makes us an exception to this kind of conclusion.  Indeed, I have often said that one of the goals to prepare our students for an uncertain future is to instill a creative nature so that they will be able to deal with all the challenges that this next generation will face.  However, I know that in order to maintain a high creative level in children we must be deliberate in the kind of instructional program we offer and how we provide opportunities for students to be creative and the learn to be creative.

            In the February issue of Educational Leadership, there are several articles on creativity that I will share with the staff in coming weeks.  I have shared with them a rubric for creativity that they can use when assessing the creative aspects of a project.  The rubric assesses creativity from “Very Creative” to “Imitative” and is headed by four basic categories; Variety of ideas and contexts, Variety of sources, Combining ideas, and Communicating something new.  One author suggests that teachers can nurture creativity by minimizing features of the environment that can impede it (social comparisons, contingent rewards, and so on).  Instead, teachers should help students focus on the more intrinsically motivating and meaningful aspects of the work by discussing how students might incorporate their personal interests into the task by acknowledging their creativity (Beghetto, 2013).

I think we do this to a large extent, especially as we allow students to investigate topics that interest them and for which they can use their special talents to express their personal ideas about the topic.  I think you will see many examples of this at our theme event of February 22.  For example, students will be conducting a roundtable discussion about the Bread and Roses strike, which took place during the period of history we are exploring.  The students were given the basic information about this event and then they were on their own to be able to have an informative and intelligent discussion with others who may have opposing views.  They will use traditional research methods to find the information they will need, but they will create how they want to portray the characters they will represent.

            Creativity is a complicated notion.  It is not just thinking “outside the box” and it takes more than just originality.  Creativity requires hard work, effort and risk.  Students need to understand that creativity comes at a cost and that the risks they take may result in rejection, ridicule, or worse (Beghetto, 2013).  This is where the culture of our school plays an important part in minimizing those risks.  At GreenMount, we celebrate risk-taking and students understand when their classmates look at something in an entirely different way.  I think we do a good job with this.

            So what can you do as parents to foster creativity?  Most of you already do it, I know.  Two articles, entitled The Case for Curiosity and The Power of Noticing, say it all.  Even without reading these articles you can see what your job is.  And if you would like to read any of the articles on creativity, let me know and I will make copies for you.

Creativity is just connecting things.  When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something.  They were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. – Steve Jobs

Cheers, Steve