With school closed for the day there was time for a walk. Buttercup Farm Sanctuary off Route 82 just north of Stanfordville has one path that tracks along Wappingers Creek as it runs down from the head waters at Thompson Pond south toward the Hudson. It was quiet except for the rustle of squirrels, a few birds – juncos, jays…
Objectified – a film about the creative process of influential product designers – those people who create the “must have” gadgets and those design upgrades to toilet brushes and other quotidian items that Daniel Pink spoke of in A Whole New Mind. The film explores our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them. It’s…
Deferred gratification – that ability to work for something now at the expense of immediate reward in order to receive a greater reward later – has long been a social staple of the middle class. Work hard in school,earn a place in college and get a better paying job. Save for a deposit and buy a house. It is a…
This morning’s presenter at NYSAIS – Mark Hurst – author of Bit Literacy And here they are: the techniques to liberate ourselves from enslaving technologies: 1. Empty your inbox every day. And he promises this is doable and easy. Delete, delete, delete, store, move to action list. 2. Use a single to-do list. 3. Do one thing at a time.…
“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…
In September we announced that we would be seeking a name for the PDS Sports teams (as well as for groups that compete in other challenges on behalf of the school). We asked for names and received well over 100 different name ideas from students, teachers, alumni, trustees and parents. We posted it on the PDS Facebook page and gathered some…
The Poughkeepsie Eagle-News Saturday Morning July 14th 1934 NRA – We Do Our Part 3 cents a copy Here it is: July 14th 1934: the first media mention I can find of the beginning of PDS. Headline: Old Spaulding Home sought by New School. The new school was PDS and the Spaulding House was at Hooker and Grand Avenues. It’s below…
A great video of our local bridge – the newly opened Walkway across the Hudson.
The history of Nigeria and African colonialism is not Chinua Achebe and Things Fall Apart; the Holocaust is not Anne Frank and The Diary; Mumbai is not Slumdog Millionaire. Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear…
There’s never a shortage of advice for teachers. And because everyone went to school – everyone is an expert on education and ready to offload opinions – good, bad and indifferent. Handwringing about how much better things used to be is a popular pastime – completely ignoring the fact that – to use the tag from Disrupting Class – disruptive…
We asked the captain what course of action he proposed to take toward a beast so large, so terrifying, and unpredictable. He hesitated to answer, and then said judiciously, “I think I shall praise it.” Robert Haas. Epigraph to his second book of poems, Praise: 1979 If you work in a school you get two chances at a new year. …
Great essay by Daniel Roth in Wired magazine about “geeks” and school. Some extracts: “The driving force in the life of a child, starting much earlier than it used to be, is to be cool, to fit in,”….”And pretty universally, it’s cool to rebel.” …. “The best schools….are able to make learning cool, so the cool kids are the ones…
Every year at the annual Eagle Society poetry reading a lower school student demonstrates that s/he has spent homework time memorizing Shel Silversteins’s twelve line epic that begins: Homework, oh homework I hate you, you stink. I wish I could wash you away in the sink. If only a bomb would explode you to bits, Homework oh homework you’re giving…
PDS has had a longtime commitment to service learning and getting involved to make a difference. I was pleased to find these photos deep in the archives. The first one is from 1962-1963 and shows children and a rescued squirrel and the others show PDS volunteers involved in a horse rescue project in 1999. This past year high school science…