Of all the advice that my father’s grandmother passed along to him, the one he chose to share routinely is still etched in my memory. Interestingly, what he shared had nothing to do with growing up in segregated Mississippi, admonitions about police brutality (although I am certain those were made too), or about future career choices. Instead it had to do with ironing. One day I watched my father iron a dress shirt for church and asked him how he learned to iron. He told me that his mother taught him when he was very young – she also taught him to cook, wash his clothes, and sew. She insisted that he learn because she said, “when you grow up and marry, I want you to do so out of love, not because you need someone to take care of you”. As an 8-year old, I was more concerned about Jim Palmer’s ERA than girls so the advice passed over my head. I am certain that he considered this advice an irreplaceable gift.
Dear Parents,
I hope that your family had a relaxing and restful spring break with friends and family. It’s hard to believe that we are entering the “home stretch” – only 8 short weeks left - of the school year. Coming off two very successful school-wide activities, Spring International Day and Friends and Family Ocean Day, our April and May calendars will keep us all busy with many exciting and informative events. These special occasions help to build our strong community and keep us informed about what is happening at school and what our future holds. I am hopeful that you will be able to make time to attend.
One of the casualties of a culture that demands immediate feedback is the loss of time to pause, reflect, deliberate and respond thoughtfully. Most of us have fallen victim to the sensation of stopping a colleague, friend, or spouse as we pass in the hall and commenting, “I sent you an email about an hour ago…” While we will let this phrase hang in the air as if it were merely a declarative statement, we expect them to have read and responded. This expectation denies us the opportunity to be careful and measured in our responses and causes us to respond in a way we might not otherwise, and may not represent our most civil selves.
As part of our faculty professional development system, I conduct a series of formal observations of teachers throughout the school year. These formal observations, and the informal drop-ins that accompany them, offer a window into our teachers’ work with your children, the preparation that goes into crafting an engaging lesson, and the high level of expertise and professionalism that our teachers bring to their work. At a K – 8 school, I am exposed to students’ working through various academic challenges, from early literacy skills to complex geometric proofs. At times one can forget how difficult it can be to acquire, process, synthesize, and incorporate new material.
The host committee at last week’s the National Association of Independent School (NAIS) conference in Seattle, selected “Innovation: Imagine, Invent, Inspire, Dream” as their theme for the two-day forum. Among the innovative speakers was Bill Gates, John Medina, and Raymond Van (of Digipen Institute of Technology). Inspirational speakers included Sara Key, spoken word performer and founder of Project V.O.IC.E. (http://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_kay_if_i_should_have_a_daughter.html); John Hunter, inventor of the World Peace Games (http://www.ted.com/talks/john_hunter_on_the_world_peace_game.html); and Dan Savage of It Gets Better Project (http://www.itgetsbetter.org). There was a third group of speakers who opined more philosophically on contemporary approaches to parenthood and education. The two most provocative were Stephen Carter (author and Yale law professor) and Amy Chua (author and Yale law professor).
I left the Cabrillo Theater last night exuberant and energized from Dr. Siegel’s talk about parenting the whole-brain child. For those of you who have read Dr. Siegel’s book The Whole-Bran Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind, Survive Everyday Parenting Struggles, and Help Your Family Thrive or were at the talk, we learned that by integrating the parts of our brain, and our bodies, we can help our children to become resilient, empathetic, compassionate adults.
Watching my daughter toil away on her biography report – delving deeply into minute details of her subject’s life and getting excited about and sharing each newly acquired fact – reminded me of the biography reports that I wrote throughout elementary and middle school. For my parents, this exercise was an opportunity to deviate slightly from the school’s curriculum and learn about the contributions of African Americans who shaped our country, and instilled in them a sense of pride not easily derived from the school texts and curricula in Marshall, Texas (mom) and Hattiesburg, Mississippi (dad). Even after they moved to an integrated Los Angeles, their primary school experiences had scarce references to people who looked like them. If they were to believe what their texts told them, African-Americans made little to no contributions to American progress. They knew that this was not the case, and they were intent on making sure that their three children understood and appreciated the countless political, scientific, social, and economic contributions that blacks in America made to this country.
Among the many wonderful experiences I had during my during my two-week fellowship at Teachers College at Columbia University, the most inspiring ones came from a class on the Philosophy of Education that allowed me to re-visit the works of John Dewey for the first time in over 10 years. John Dewey was our first public intellectual to write about education and its public purpose. He was as prescient as he was prolific. Dewey was among the first to discuss the moral principles and ethical aims of a public education system which was originally formed to ensure a stable, prepared, and some might argue compliant, workforce.
I want to thank the parents, faculty, and staff for attending the Head of School Book Club on Wednesday, January 18th, to discuss Dr. Dan Siegel’s The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind, Survive Everyday Parenting Struggles, and Help Your Family Thrive. The conversation was lively and insightful, and the company was delightful.
We are very fortunate to host such acclaimed speakers (first Dr. John Medina, now Dan, and we are hopeful to announce our 2013 speaker soon) and to be able to offer parents and educators in the Santa Cruz community the benefit of these speakers’ ground-breaking brain research. Our speaker series distinguishes Gateway School as an educational leader in the community.
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On Saturday morning I will board a plane to New York City to begin a two-week fellowship at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College. This award, granted to just twenty heads of school annually, provides independent school leaders with an opportunity for focused professional enrichment, renewal, and reflection. The 2012 cohort includes Heads from all areas of the United States in addition to participants from the Czech Republic, Canada, South Africa, Croatia, Latvia, Venezuela and France. For more on the Klingenstein HOS Fellowship see http://klingenstein.org/content/heads-schools-program.
