In honor of Don Fried

In honor of Don Fried and his three decades at Poughkeepsie Day School:

• Past and present colleagues, students, parents and trustees gathered from far and wide
• Sidereal sang
• Reminiscences were shared and new memories made
• Alumni brought their children to meet him
• and Don’s service to the school and its generations of students was recognized, celebrated and appreciated

It was a great evening.

Mike Foley and Mark Burns performed an hilarious skit that imagined Don hired by a quite different institution: providing guidance for a violent but hapless prison inmate writing an appeal to the parole board. This fictional Don provided support, grammatical counsel , content analysis and an unflappable calm in the face of dire need. They captured the essence of Don’s kindness, sincerity and expertise as English teacher, college counselor, gourmet cook and lover of music and theater.

Don was hired in 1977 as a mid year appointment to the English department. His colleague at Tabor Academy, Gerard Finn, wrote in a reference: “There have been few teachers I have known who have given themselves so wholeheartedly to their jobs. The authority, confidence and expertise he displayed…were evident to all and he had the wholehearted appreciation of his students…I consider Mr. Fried a scholar, an expert in his own field, and a person who is ideally suited to teaching.”

I spoke to Richard Hansen – the former PDS Director (1977-1985) who hired Don. Unable to attend the event he sent a warm tribute saying,”…I wish I could be there in person to give you a big hug. You were the luckiest thing ever to happen to a … neophyte hiring his very first teacher and you have made a huge contribution to this fine school for three decades. Congratulations and enjoy the appreciation.”

Don was, and is, respected, admired and beloved.

Here are a few pictures of the occasion.

And a note to any alumni who may be reading this: Recognize anyone? How do you remember Don? We would love to heard from you and how you are doing. Please stay in touch and help us make contact with your classmates. Thank-you.

Just in time for curriculum evenings….

The world is moving at a tremendous rate. Going no one knows where. We must prepare our children, not for the world of the past. Not for our world. But for their world. The world of the future. – John Dewey (seen saying just that in the film below)
Progressive education in the 1940s: I don’t know who made this short film but it certainly raises some good discussion points for 2007. And it starts with a skeptical question at a parent-teacher meeting.

"Season of mists…"

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Close bosom friend of the maturing sun;”
John Keats Ode to Autumn (1819)

Early morning mowing in the mist, and then…

…lunch in the sunlight.

Today the 7th and 8th grade set off for their outdoor education trip to Frost Valley

Checking the passports

Waiting to load the bus

Loading up

The final check

And in the Upper School (who begin their trip to Clearpool tomorrow) because today was designated international “talk like a pirate day” it was necessary to dress the part:

Creativity and learning how to learn

“Modern studies indicate that creativity is not a rare, magic gift visited upon the isolated genius; it is the natural birthright of every human child and is a series of cognitive skills that can be taught, harnessed and applied to unleash what we are now discovering is the infinite creative capacity in every child. Learning How to Learn and Creativity need to be … woven into the fabric of every subject.” – Tony Buzan

I discovered this presentation by Tony Buzan on esnips. It goes right to the heart of the thought behind a PDS education and why creativity matters at every level and in every subject.

Here are my quick (linear) notes while listening to his talk, all the words are his:

• there is a decline in creativity throughout a child’s educational progression
• this is a global crisis…it is ademolition of creativity, a demolition of dreams
• around the world there is a cry for creativity
• the bad news: it is global, it is normal
• the good news: normal is not natural
• we are teaching uncreativity…we teach the children to have those natural skills decline
• we first teach how to learn- we teach creativity – and then we apply any curriculum we want
• we learned what to learn, we did not learn how to learn
• brilliance arises in every single one of us…every single child is brilliant
• the teacher is the provider of the soil to nurture the brilliance in every child
• intellectual capital is becoming the world’s greatest asset…60% of all jobs and professions within the next 10 years will be based on creative thinking.
• a new creative age is dawning
• we are not born with a brain
• when we teach we nurture the child’s creativity…the teacher is helping the child with its internal architecture of its thinking machine
• when we routinize and linearize we are physically disengaging their brain
• what more important job could there be on the planet?
• creativity is the engine of all curricula…it mut imbue, suffuse every subject
• creativity is the ability to generate thought
• we have to nurture nature
• there are no limits…brilliance arises in all of us
• every great creative thinker is incredibly disciplined. They are brilliantly focused and ordered. Amazingly imaginative. The ability to be original and make connections building on the thoughts and ideas of others. True innovation comes from making connections and create from there.

Off and running

We added Cross Country to the athletic choices this fall and the team is off and running and doing very well. Clearly we have some outstanding and enthusiastic runners in both middle and high school. The first meet was the Oakwood Friends invitational – the season opener for the Hudson Valley Athletic League. Here are some of the photographs of the event (thank you Michael Gaidis.) In a separate event on Sunday Alex won the Dutchess County Classic 5K for his age group.

Congratulations to all the runners and to their coach Trace Schillinger.

Google docs, Social networking and RSS in plain English

Three more useful short videos from those very helpful clever teachers at Common Craft: Google docs (no more email attachment versions), Social Networking and RSS – all in plain English. George Orwell would be pleased. And if you are not using RSS (real simple syndication) yet to manage your surfing and internet habits here is your chance to find out how easy it is.

Click To Play

Click To Play

Click To Play

Dangerous stereotypes

It can be a worrisome sign when Dilbert cartoons start appearing in the workplace!

Here are the first two frames of Dilbert cartoon that a colleague brought to my attention on Friday.

What is a wiki anyway?

What is a wiki? Sometimes showing is easier than telling so here is a short film from Common Craft. It’s about planning a camping trip. Watch and then imagine the classroom possibilities.

Click To Play

How the arts deepen students’ thinking

There was a great article in last week’s Boston Globe.

The authors – Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland – dismiss the idea that arts education produces higher test scores. While it’s true, they say, that students who are involved in the arts do better in school and on the SAT, it’s not about the test scores. Their own research found no evidence that arts training is what’s causing scores to rise. The correlation is not the cause.

They argue that there are many reasons to teach art but that raising test scores is not one of them. Their research in Boston-area schools found that quality arts program teach a critical set of intellectual habits and skills that are rarely addressed in the other areas of the curriculum. They are critical because they have been identified as crucial to the students future development as thinkers and people.

Specifically the habits and skills taught and developed in the arts but rarely elsewhere include:

• Developing artistic craft – Students learn the specific skills of different kinds of art.

• Persistence – Students in good programs work on projects for extended periods of time and persevere through frustration.

• Expression – Students are urged to move beyond technical skill to create works that express emotion, atmosphere, and their own voice and vision.

• Making connections – Students are constantly asked to find links between the classroom and the real world outside, past and present.

• Observing – Visual arts students are trained to look more carefully and objectively at the world and get past their preconceptions.

• Envisioning – Students are taught to form mental images and use them to guide actions and solve problems.

• Innovating through exploration – Arts classes put a high value on breaking the mold – experimenting, taking risks, or just mucking around to see what can be learned.

• Reflective self-evaluation – Arts classes are not a break from thinking, as many believe, but involve heavy-duty nonverbal and verbal thinking. Good art teachers push their students to engage in reflective self-evaluation, step back, analyze, judge, and sometimes re-conceive their projects, asking questions like, “Is that working? Is this what I intended to do? Can I make this better? What’s next?”

They write: “It is well established that intelligence and thinking ability are far more complex than what we choose to measure on standardized tests…. They reveal little about a student’s intellectual depth or desire to learn, and are poor predictors of eventual success and satisfaction in life.”

The authors spent a year studying five visual-arts classrooms, videotaping and photographing classes, analyzing what we saw, and interviewing teachers and their students.

They found that the skills taught in arts classes taught “a remarkable array of mental habits not emphasized elsewhere in school.” These skills include visual-spatial abilities, reflection, self-criticism, and the willingness to experiment and learn from mistakes.

Winner and Hetland conclude: “We don’t need the arts in our schools to raise mathematical and verbal skills,” conclude Winner and Hetland. “We already target these in math and language arts. We need the arts because in addition to introducing students to aesthetic appreciation, they teach other modes of thinking we value.”

Winner is a professor of psychology at Boston College and Hetland is an associate professor of art education at the Massachusetts College of Art. Both are also researchers at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
“Art for Art’s Sake” by Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland in The Boston Globe, September 2, 2007.

A new schedule

http://www.cagle.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/margulies.asp