“What do you want to do?”

Cultural Competency I Digital Citizenship I Learning and the Brain I Project-Based Learning I Wellness  

There was no obligation to be on a team. Sometimes teachers do so much already, are in such overload there is just no more room on the plate for another thing.  I’m delighted however, that almost all faculty have chosen to join a team. (We are a small school so this still means teams are small.)

• I wanted to get a group of people together to plan how our next steps with the Digital Citizenship project funded an E.E.Ford grant that we matched last year. What once seemed an out-there on-the- edge concept had become mainstream and where once the available resources were scarce they were now in abundance. I needed a team to focus on more than staying safe online and handling cyber bullying. We need to focus not only on the ever moving target of digital literacies but also the  ethical opportunities obligations to use the tools and our talents to make a difference.

• Dr. Judy Willis came to PDS last spring and her work with teachers stirred up considerable interest. We already had a Cognitive Science elective in the high school a well as a number of faculty delving into the implication of new learning in neuroscience and how an understanding of the brain can help learning. So a Learning and the Brain team seemed a natural “no-brainer” and teachers like Jake Lahey were really interested in pursuing the implications for the classroom and curriculum.  So what stated as an idea for one group was now two.

• At the same time I was involved in a series of conversations with trustee Hamid Azari-Rad about  a wide range of topics including what we came to term Cosmopolitanism. ( It’s one of Pat Bassett’s “Six C’s) We opened a google doc to share ideas and resources about cultural competency, diversity and global awareness. These are topics close to heart of many on the faculty.

• So now I had three teams forming on sheets of butcher block and I started mapping out interconnecting circles. It was clear that interest in these topics crossed the usual school boundaries of division and department. They were important for all of us to grapple with and make collective and individual headway. I began trying these ideas out on anyone who crossed my path.

• And then every time I sat down for lunch with one group of teachers or another, these themes started to weave in to their conversations and it was obvious many of them were formulating plans and fomenting ideas. I was hearing from Emma Sears and others about a new health and life issues curriculum, a school garden, nutrition and about various green initiatives. What better way to corral these into a Wellness team.  Laura Graceffa had been sharing ideas about  professional culture and evaluation so why not include the all-important issue of school health in that mix?

• It’s funny how in education – as elsewhere – an idea comes to the fore and begins to sweep all before it. PBL – Project-Based Learning – steam-rollered its way to a high profile in the last year or so. It builds of course on time-honored progressive and constructivist principles and practice, but suddenly every one was talking STEM to STEAM, tinkering and PBL.  Many teachers were already passionate about PBL and excited to take it further. So PBL became the natural fifth team – an opportunity for teachers from different disciplines teaching different age-groups to delve into that zeitgeist, to explore, pursue and build on the existing good work and take it further.

So now I had the five teams. I created this visual to capture the big picture. It’s  an exercise in how many words, labels, slogans and topics can you squish onto one slide.

To create and bring mindful change and innovation to Poughkeepsie Day School in order to improve learning and teaching.