Children are natural learners. It’s what they do. And the learning is joyful and the thirst for knowledge, understanding and mastery of skills insatiable. The primary task of school is to keep that connection with joyful learning vibrant and intact. The second task is to expand the horizons of learners – to provide opportunity, to create new contexts and scaffold…
The pre-k children know a lot about bees and their wall display shows it. I found this on their classroom wall and it reminded me of a wonderful interview Listen to the Bees in About Town – the local community paper for northern Dutchess that I picked up at the grocery store. My mother kept bees and I have always…
Do you suffer from email apnea? Are your hunter-gatherer instincts affecting your attention span and productivity? Help – or at least serious recognition of the problem – may be at hand. See today’s NYTimes Lost in E-M ail,Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast. Photo: Jeremy Bishop
The end of the school year and an express train filled with events, final exams, feasts, pageants, displays, presentations, performances, ceremonies, farewells and of course graduation commencement. Read more about graduation from The Poughkeepsie Journal I took this unofficial picture of the graduating class at the outdoor adventure trip last September.
Graduation was on Wednesday and all the students were gone by the end of the day. And then the rains came and the leaks in Gilkeson began. An investigation of the roof indicated raccoon damage – teeth and claw marks. All fixed now. These pictures are of a raccoon on the Kenyon House roof this spring. Steve Mallet to the…
Nice article about two PDS students in the Poughkeepsie Journal Students to study theater at Powerhouse Hannah and Wiley, rising seniors, have been selected to participate in the Powerhouse apprentice training program at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie this summer. Read more Wylie and Hannah were seen recently in American Life in the James Earl Jones Theater at PDS For information,…
Doug Belshaw has been working on what it means. What’s your version of digital literacy?
…you don’t have to be a scientist for science to be transformative… Some years ago I had the pleasure of hearing Brian Greene explain string theory to a group at an NAIS national conference in Boston. His audience comprised a majority of non scientists and he made his work in theoretical physics both fascinating and accessible. Here he is on…
This was the culmination of a year long study, investigation and exploration of the life and history of the Hudson River. This first and second grade presented their work with a puppet show that had it all – river creatures great and small, river people famous and unknown – birds, fish, ice-boats, the lighthouse, tugs, PCBs, pirates and singing with…
It’s testing season and here’s a timely reminder that traditional testing for ability is not the last word in thinking about what makes for success. This is from a May edition of Education Week Robert J. Sternberg often writes about a lecture-style psychology course he took as a college freshman in which he got a C. “There is a famous…
Part One: The Audacity of High Hopes Part Two: What to do If praising kids for being smart saps motivation what are we to do? Here’s the sidebar to the article and Dweck’s advice on what to do. What do we tell the kids? You have a bright child, and you want her to succeed. You should tell her how…
The maple wood blocks . . . are in my fingers to this day. – Frank Lloyd Wright I have recently rekindled my interest in the work of Friedrich Froebel – the educational pioneer often recognized as the inventor/ creator of the kindergarten. One aspect of this story is the connection between the toys, blocks and shapes that were commonly…
It was part of a math number and counting project and then both kindergarten classes brought in their personal collections to share. Glass beads, shells, coins, cards, model cars, photos of India, quarters and stamps. And the stamps included this one honoring the teachers of America issued on July 1st 1957. I had this one in my childhood collection too.…
The effort effect on display at Buttercup Farm Nature Reserve, near Poughkeepsie. See below for a photo of the dam. Intelligence is not fixed. It is it is learnable and teachable. It can be changed. The way we approach learning and thinking makes all the difference. It is our ‘mindset” that keeps us back. If we believe, and if we…
Seeing red, going green, in a purple haze , once in a blue moon. Pictures from the first and second grade.