Mindfulness in a Quaker School

Quakers have been pursuing mindfulness in education from the founding of each Friends school. There is nothing like the experience of Meeting for Worship for slowing down the mind. Sitting for 20 minutes or 35 minutes or 60 minutes (depending on the age of the children), gives students time to reflect, to listen to their inner voice, to hear the messages shared in the silence, and to experience the sensation of being alone with yourself in a community of  others. Meeting for Worship is also about worshiping and waiting on the Divine.

Playing With Fire

A few weeks back my friend Kathy and I took a class on glassblowing at The East Falls Glassworks. We worked with our instructor and as a team so that we each produced a  drinking glass. I have never been in a glass making workshop, never been around such intense heat, never gotten to work with such a potentially dangerous and equally fascinating material. I didn’t get burned, though the heat was intense even with my yellow Kevlar sleeve. And I walked away with a glass, an imperfect somewhat clumsy, fully operational drinking utensil. And yes, I have used it for a recent drink of water.

Highlights from Cook. Craft. Create. – Be the Change

By Jamie Richie ’88

The American Culinary Federation National Convention

New Orleans, LA

July 15-19, 2018

Chef John Folse opened the convention by taking us through his career. Growing up the son of a Cajun trapper in the bayous of Louisiana, he followed his dreams, and put in the hard work to become one of America’s leading culinary entrepreneurs. He started his own publishing company, opened the first American restaurant in Moscow, and cooked at the Vatican state dinner. He repeated that he was not bragging, simply conveying that if he can come from nothing and do these things, then anyone can.

Summer Projects Come “On-Line”

Last June Leslie Barr was one of the 30 teachers who participated in our PBL 101 workshop. She bravely led off the year with the project she created. “Chemistry Cookbooks” was a means for reintroducing students to the Chemistry Lab and to review and study reactions. Students explored the chemical processes involved as basic ingredients like baking powder and chocolate chips become cookies or mozzarella and pineapple become pizza and then are broken down again within the human digestive system to become nutrients for our human system. The students created a website to share out their recipes and their discoveries.  I believe they will be cooking for their peers soon.

Learning From Our Colleagues

Well over half of Westtown’s faculty engaged in some sort of active, beyond reading a book, professional development this past summer. In our opening of school meetings I experimented with a forum for faculty to share what they did and learned with colleagues. I invited ten faculty who had  attended week long or longer pd experiences to create posters of their learning. I arranged for a reception complete with cheese crackers, freshly backed chocolate chip cookies and beverages. I made sure there were no other conflicts with the time of the reception and I invited the community to a gallery walk/poster talk session. The posters were hung around our Science Building Lobby. Colleagues visited with each other, stopped to ask about the posters, and heard what was learned.  High school teachers learned from lower school colleagues about social emotional needs of learners. Math teachers discussed the effort to create depth in images depicted on clay. Everyone wanted to learn to play the ukulele. One of the recurring laments of teachers is the lack of time to hear about their colleagues experiences.  One of my long term goals is to insure that our professional development investments reach out beyond the individual attendees of workshops. In this session cross pollination and appreciation for each other’s questions and wisdom were very much in evidence. This first ever experiment was well received and will be repeated. Below are images and short explanations of the posters or topics discussed.

Robert Frazier attended   The Kendall Betts Horn Camp, an intensive week of individual instruction and ensemble playing. He even learned to play the “natural horn.”

Karyn Payton attended “The Neuropsychology of Learning Disabilities: Developing Interventions to Help Students” at the  Learning and The Brain Conference, Santa Barbara, CA.

Lulu Cossich attended the Eastman Kodak Conservatory’s Orff Level II certification course. She also developed a ukulele curriculum for Lower School students.

Joyce Nagata spent her summer sabbatical at Watershed Studio in Maine. Her focus was on stepping back into her own practice as an artist. More of her work will be on display in the faculty show in Westtown’s gallery in September.

Brian Blackmore spent several weeks at Westtown’s sister school, Heritage Academy in Ghana. While there he taught World Religions and helped further school director, Kwesi Koomson’s projects.

Barry Vargo and Alana Kilcullen both attended the Anja S. Greer Conference on Mathematics and Technology. They each came back with different practices to implement in their math classrooms.

Marion and Marc Dear spent a week at the Social and Emotional Learning Conference. “Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions (www.CASEL.org).”

Sue Gold’s poster focused on her research into her missionary ancestors. She spent several weeks of her sabbatical in the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University reading the papers of Adoniram Judson Tuttle and Frances Davidson Tuttle. You can read about her research in her blog.

Summer Is for Relaxation, Reflection, and Generative Learning

By Susan Waterhouse

Last week I attended the 100th Leadership Forum at Silver Bay. It was a great group of people, a mixture of educators, consultants in the area of leadership, and people with a variety of roles in industry – many in human resources and talent management.

There were some interesting talks on the future of work and a strong feeling that corporations need to partner with schools to help identify and support adjustments to educational systems to help prepare students for a continually changing landscape of work.

I hadn’t had a lot of time to read about the speakers before I signed up for the conference, so I was excited when I learned that among those speaking and networking at the conference, was Ken Montgomery the founder of Design Tech High  on the campus of Oracle in California.  Also, in visiting with the parent of a student that Ken Montgomery brought along, I met a Mandarin teacher from Nueva School.  Around the edges of conversations with educators from North Carolina, New York, Indiana, South Carolina, and Vermont, we were talking about the benefits of building leadership into the culture of a school and about the role of grades vs. proficiency.

At both this conference and the one day workshop I went to in April, I was quite aware that we have been doing really good professional development around issues of race and diversity as a school, and I am becoming more able to lead related conversations in settings such as the one I found myself in last week.  (I did some work with a small group talking about how to begin to create change in under-resourced schools through implementing leadership skills in curriculum. There were dynamics in my small group that made me extra grateful for the work we have been doing on microaggressions etc.)  We aren’t done with this work, but when I go out into the world with people from other places, I am reminded of the long way we have come.

So, In addition to getting access to some interesting leadership tools for workshops and working with kids at school, finding out about great STEM videos that help showcase a variety of voices and talents, and thinking through my own style with the support of executive coaches etc, I got to think a lot about design thinking, creative problem solving, and what models of education might look like in the coming decades.