Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

I am not a fan of Halloween

I am not a fan of Halloween. There – I’ve said it! What a killjoy, spoil sport, and miserable curmudgeon! Ok – to explain: First – It’s not a part of my childhood tradition. My personal mental furniture of memory for this season trends toward Bonfire Night, November 5th.  I do remember once bobbing for apples – a game now out…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

A Portrait of Us

Building community means getting to know each other. And that means time. Last week we had the first ASA (all-school-activity) of the year and it was a lot of fun. This year the faculty have divided up the activities for the year and have each taken on the responsibility to be a part of the planning of that event. Our…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Surprise! Deep Learning and Democracy

There’s solid evidence that American students do well when they are encouraged to think for themselves and expected to collaborate with one another. There’s a great Opinion piece by David L. Kirp* in the NY Times today: Make School a Democracy  The story begins in a one-room schoolhouse in Armenia, Columbia with a mixed-age (5-13) group of students grouped at…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Kindness of Strangers

We received a wonderful letter yesterday and here it is: Dear Ms Holford: I volunteer at The Queens Galley in Kingston on Tuesdays. I had the pleasure of working with your students, who volunteered yesterday at the soup kitchen. They were enthusiastic, helpful, industrious and all around fantastic. The teacher who accompanied them was so supportive and positive with the…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

“Three Cheers” for the Fall Festival team

I like these words about our Fall Festival Reimagined:  Three Cheers – from the Poughkeepsie Journal today: To Poughkeepsie Day School’s First Fall Festival Reimagined, an ambitious new festival designed to celebrate the local and the global community. Visitors were given festival passports to mark the places and things they learned about during the day — and there was a…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

We asked…they told: 100% feel safe in school

100% of PDS high school students agreed with all of these statements on the HSSSE : I  feel safe in this school I am treated fairly in this school There is at least one adult in this school who cares about me I feel supported by the teachers in this school Adults in this school want me to succeed Teachers…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Connections: How good ideas happen to good minds

The coffee houses of the Enlightenment; the  Paris salons of Modernism  – two examples of the spaces conducive to innovation and new ideas. Here’s Steven Johnson on how good ideas happen to good minds and how they are incubated over time  and in spaces where  intellectual diversity thrives and connection happens. Could classrooms be like that? Faculty meetings? Admin meetings?…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Born to help

Turns out that we may be hard wired to co-operate and help out. And this behavior occurs in children before, and in the absence of, specific training and in babies as early as  twelve months. Biologists are concluding that even infants are innately sociable and helpful to others. And it’s not a matter of etiquette and social training and it’s…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Tradition and change

From the Poughkeepsie New Yorker (Over 78,000 Read-Round-the-Clock 35 Cents Weekly) December 1941 came this news item about Poughkeepsie Day School. It was the annual Christmas Festival “with many of the school’s alumni present, as well as parents and friends.” It was a community event. There were student made decorations including a clay figures and ornaments that were donated to…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

Student Conflict Resolution: The 30 second solution

“I want the bike,” “No. You can’t have it.” A problem negotiated and solved. Friendship maintained, feelings expressed and managed, resources shared, a compromise reached, peace maintained, fairness asserted, inequality addressed and crisis averted. All in less than thirty seconds. I saw all this happen yesterday in a thirty-second exchange on the playground. It’s the kind of experience that happens…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

Mayhem, Mischief and Malice: The World Wild Web

From UniversityAffairs in Canada comes this technology tale of mayhem, menace, mischief and malice: The Wild Web. There’s even a really scary picture to go with the now fairly familiar story of social networking sites and web 2.0 users run amok. It’s important to think about these things because they are not going away. The article is about the impact…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Sanctuary

There’s an animal sanctuary in Saugerties and today students from the high school were there giving a helping hand. There was a barn to be painted, muck to be raked and animals to care for. Here is a collage of pictures from today’s service learning trip. Thanks Tanya for making the connection, organizing the trip and for the photos. And…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

If you have a problem … ask everyone

Did you catch this NYTimes article on open-source science and seeking collaborative solutions to new challenges? “If You Have a Problem, Ask Everyone”. The process, according to John Seely Brown, a theorist of information technology and former director of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, reflects “a huge shift in popular culture, from consuming to participating” enabled by the interactivity…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

Community

Halloween and time for some fun. It’s one thing to talk about the importance of school community and quite another to devote time and resources to making that talk walk. The ASA – all school activities, a cross divisional group – planned this afternoon’s event. It brought together all ages from kindergarten to the twelfth grade. They worked in groups…

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