I don’t know what started it but I found myself launching into manifesto mode! And this is what it led to – a kind of 9 Pillars of Education. I know I’ve left so much out. Feel free to critique these and add what’s missing. Change is inevitable. We need to help children to lean into the unknown with courage and…
A simple Sunday night tweet from a PDS English teacher is enough to fire up the engine on the magic carpet of the mind. “The Waking” is apparently one of Theodore Roethke’s best known poems but it was new to me. Read it below and let it take you on a journey into consciousness. I wake to sleep, and take…
The high school Enviro Club reports that the new recycling facility has been rolled out and is ready to use in Gilkeson! Faculty advisor Brent Boscarino reports: I’m super proud of everyone who contributed to it- Li and her students are really to thank for the design of the central “cool bin”- it is truly cool and major props to…
Video well worth watching:
I’ve been pondering Seth Godin’s recent column What if you stopped? and applying it to PDS. What if Poughkeepsie Day School went away? Would anyone miss it? Would it matter? Would anyone care? I’ve adapted his questions here. What would happen if we shut the doors tomorrow? (I know what would happen to those of us who work at PDS but that’s not the…
Science teacher Jonathan Heiles sent a link to all of us about the international public campaign to name the surface features of Pluto and Charon. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will fly past Pluto in July and that far off world and its moons for the first time. Together with the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the New Horizons team will assign names…
Panel on the Future of Education from the NAIS Annual Conference, Boston 2015. With college presidents Rebecca Chopp, Nan Keohane, Paul LeBlanc and Pamela Gunter-Smith Moderated by NAIS President, John E. Chubb Featured photocredit: Dana Critchlow
Have you ever seen a ton of starlings or red-wing blackbirds swooping about in unison as if they were in some kind of mechanically choreographed mass ballet? Of course the correct and archaic collective nouns to use there would be murmuration for the starlings and cloud, flock, grind, or merl for the blackbirds. But whatever – you know what I mean –…
Tom Little’s lifelong passion for progressive education emerged directly from his experience with its antithesis. I was six years old, and the youngest of six children, when I lost my father to cancer. On the day after his funeral, I raised my hand in class. I held my hand in the air for what seemed like a very long time…
The Hungry Mind The Origins of Curiosity in Childhood That’s the title of Susan Engel’s new book and it’s about the recent standardized testing mania and how it misses the point about what really matters. The key thing is the desire to learn. We are born curious – born with a hunger to learn. The book is an exploration of…
Not content with sweeping the international testing stakes Finland is setting about radical school design and reform – again. And given some rather gloomy economic outlooks maybe not a moment too soon. Maybe they know that topping the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) test pile is not the holy grail and that these scores don’t tell us anything very useful …
I’m not sure when PDS became a member of NAIS (National Association of Independent Schools) but it was a long time ago. A few years back they published their short and quite excellent wonderful online A Guide to Becoming a School of the Future. The first section makes the case for schools of the future and if there’s anyone out…
The first day of alleged spring and another day disrupted by the rituals and routines of early dismissal. By mid afternoon the buses had come and gone and all after-school activities and athletic practices cancelled. Students and faculty had wisely left ahead of the icy roads. Luz – our wonderful cleaner – was vacuuming the Kenyon staircase and apart from…
It’s been a cold winter here in the Hudson Valley. Poughkeepsie records only go back to 1949 but this February was the coldest with a whopping 12.7 degrees below average temperature. And then March came in like the proverbial lion breaking another record with -2 degrees F in the first week. And then there was the above average snowfall. With…
Dropped by the prek-k last week and found them deep in a pattern block exercise (well it actually felt like a game) with the help of their teachers Amy and Judy plus the PDS math guy Stephen Currie. And then – when that was done and dusted – it was time to find a book. This one is Families Around the…