Education, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Edge: A sudden unplanned flight of fancy

         Come to the Edge We might fall. Come to the edge. It’s too high! COME TO THE EDGE! And they came And he pushed And they flew. Christopher Logue “Come to the Edge” frequently misattributed to Guillaume Apollinaire Sail in a new direction Simply by sailing in a new direction You could enlarge the world Allen Curnow ‘Landfall in…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Bouncing Back and the Seven C’s

Here’s a book that looks useful: Building Resilience in Children and Teens Strategies to help kids from 18 months to 18 years build seven crucial “Cs” — competence, confidence, connection, character, contribution, coping, and control — so they can bounce back from challenges and excel in life. The book describes how to raise authentically successful children who will be happy,…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Getting to Somewhere: The Changes They Made

Did you see the film Race to Nowhere? The film challenged the obsession with competition and evaluation in our education system. It looked at the damage done by valuing children and their learning on the basis of test scores, grades, GPAs and college acceptance letters. It was released in 2010 and was shown to groups of concerned and interested parents, students and…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Play again

I love these quotations from the National Institute for Play home page. “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”  Plato “The truly great advances of this generation will be made by those who can make outrageous connections, and only a mind which knows how to play can do that.”  Nagle…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Perils of EdSpeak: Play in Danger

As a follow-up to my post The Perils of Education I was preparing a piece on play.  My chief concern being that the word play – like the word progressive – is itself so plastic and open to so many interpretations that defining it is like holding water in your hand: However hard you try to hang on it dribbles…

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Education, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb, WW1

Darkness and Light

What 60 schools can tell us about teaching 21st century skills. Here’s the TEDx Denver version of the talk Grant Lichtman gave at #naisac13 in Philadelphia. I take my title from an extraordinary compliment that Grant paid Poughkeepsie Day School on his blog where he wrote: “…Poughkeepsie Day School, a school that has preserved the fires of the Progressive Era, un-extinguished, for decades,…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Alfie Kohn is coming to Poughkeepsie Day School

Alfie Kohn is coming on April 25th. Just look at the great header Christina Powers created to herald the news: Go here for more information and to reserve your seat In association with Vassar College and Oakwood Friends School Alfie Kohn will present “The Progressive Schools Our Children Deserve: Helping Students Become Critical Thinkers and Lifelong Learners” on Thursday, April…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Perils of Education

What is more discouraging in history than the way in which, again and again, the human spirit is freed from its shackles only to be more tightly bound by its liberators?         – Opening sentence of The Technique of Progressive Education A. Gordon Melvin 1932. 1932 – two years before the founding of Poughkeepsie Day School and a time…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The School of Now, the Future of Work: Learning by Doing

The strategic planning process to date has primarily been one of listening and paying attention. When we look at the comments from the parent and faculty surveys and the listening sessions we are struck by the thematic congruity. One thread – woven throughout – can best be summed up as Learning by Doing  – a desire for school to be…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Connecting the Dots: Innovation in the Knowledge Age

Connecting the Dots: Becoming a Knowledge Age Innovator Interesting 2009 short article by Deborah Westphal of Toffler Associates Key points include: Innovation is essential to the long-term success of every organization. But innovation isn’t what it used to be. Discovery doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Innovators have always relied on ideas that have come before or are emerging in parallel. The Knowledge Age provides…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Confronting Stereotypes

“Messy, raucous, democratic India is growing fast, and now may partner up with the world’s richest democracy—America.” – Fareed Zakaria  Newsweek (March 6, 2006) I have never been to India but I have an active imagination and a mental map fueled by literature, film, personal friendships, and an appreciation of Indian food and music. However narrow  this perspective these connections…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

“We are not teaching our children … what they need to know.”

The world is moving at a tremendous rate; no one knows where. We must prepare our children not for the world of the past, not for our world, but for their world. The world of the future.    –  John Dewey I met Grant Lichtman when he was on his education journey – a road trip with an itinerary that took him…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb, WW1

An Age of Marvels

If there’s any doubt that we are living in an age of marvels just read these accounts of what happened when school was closed last Friday:  Snow Day  and Teaching Is Never Boring and Snow Day . With the forecasters predicting apocalyptic snowfalls, school was closed but the learning did not stop. Online tools available to teachers are astonishing and…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Why School? Why PDS?

We are at the beginning of a period of focused strategic thinking at school and the Board of Trustees has convened a planning group to lead the process. One of the ways I have been preparing for this has been to compile resources that I think might be helpful in framing the discussion and a shortlist of thought leaders who…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Beneath the Surface: The Hokey-Pokey and Jump Jim Joe

Most Wednesday mornings the lower school assembles in the Chapman Room and parents are welcome.  It’s usually a showcase for the work of the classroom and often includes the opportunity to sing. First the Hokey-Pokey On a recent Wednesday a seventh grader led children, parents and teachers in singing and dancing the hokey–pokey.  It was music, movement and a great…

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