To encourage dialogue and reflection about the importance of making time for us to wonder, our topic/question for the dinner table is: What are you currently wondering about? Time to Wonder (Week of 12/5/21) (This is an anonymous Google Form)
Blake's Guiding Lights
Our Students
Blake's Core Values: Respect, Responsibility, Resourcefulness, Reflection
Our Essential Question: How can we cultivate and curate the progression of student learning and growth?
Our Mission: Blake Middle School believes in a living mission statement, based on the concept that our community seeks and respects knowledge, integrity, character, wisdom, and the willingness to adapt to a continually evolving world.
The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning. - John Dewey
You cannot teach today the same way you did yesterday to prepare students for tomorrow. - John Dewey
After a week that seemed to go by quicker than ever (anyone else feel that way?), it was nice to have some time to step back a bit during the weekend. The Angel Run was a great scene, as always - so nice to see so many students and families together on a beautiful day. Having not run too much recently, I I was pretty sore the next day!
Do You Wear Your Busyness Like a Badge of Honor?
If I am being honest, as I read that post the first time, I thought the author had done a case study on me or had been asked to describe me! Down time and #slowingitdown is a real challenge for me, but I recognize and intellectually know that this is a ‘practice’ and one I really want to keep working on. With these thoughts floating around in my head (and in my continued quest to make sense and connect these thoughts), I am attempting to make space for my own ‘wondering’ with a few ‘shares’ this week that fostered reflection, learning, and growth…
Sampling of ‘positive shares’ from our Department Chairs
** We started the meeting by going around the room and simply sharing one positive ‘thing’ at Blake...
- Students watching/participating in a virtual Q&A with Medfield residents and our local representative
- Students involved in hands-on labs and the upcoming annual ‘STEM’ talk with alumni
- Observations of teachers and students engaged in authentic learning - same ‘content’, but differentiated approaches and experiences
- Planning for upcoming Hour of Code for all of our math learners
- Professional development endeavors for teachers to improve skills at assessing proficiency and enhancing calibration
- Engagement and excitement of our students in ‘the arts’
- Upcoming concerts for our students in their ensembles - first time in a couple of years
- Teachers making individual, meaningful connections with our students
- Cohesive departmental conversations about programming
- Collective and collaborative approaches for supporting the well-being and health of students and families
Tweets that Resonate
** These two tweets came into my feed - they really spoke (and speak) to me and I believe they are worthy of deep reflection and action...
Chris Lehmann @chrislehmann
The very hard thing about schools is this... if we aren't willing to put in the hard work to proactively create the schools we need, we will *always* have to spend the time on the reactive problems that arise, and over time, those will erode all our best ideas and efforts.
Tyler Rablin @Mr_Rablin
I'm still thinking about how @cynn1 referred to assessment as, "Deeply listening to students."
It so beautifully captures why we need to humanize the assessment as much as possible. We've too often forgotten what it's truly about.
Post that Focuses on the Value of ‘Awe’ and Wonder
Awe Might Be Our Most Undervalued Emotion. Here’s How to Help Children Find It
by Deborah Farmer Kris in The Washington Post
Awe is what we feel when we encounter something vast, wondrous or beyond our ordinary frame of reference. It evokes a sense of mystery and wonder. And, given its documented benefits, awe might be our most overlooked, undervalued emotion.
Psychologist Dacher Keltner, the founding director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California at Berkeley, has spent years studying the beneficial effects of awe on our physical, mental and emotional well-being. “It makes us curious rather than judgmental. It makes us collaborative. It makes us humble, sharing and altruistic. It quiets the ego so that you’re not thinking about yourself as much.” It also calms the brain’s default mode network and has been shown to reduce inflammation. In other words, he says, don’t underestimate the power of goose bumps.
“How do you find awe? You allow unstructured time. How do you find awe? You wander. You drift through. You take a walk with no aim,” Keltner says. “How do you find awe? You slow things down. You allow for mystery and open questions rather than test-driven answers. You allow people to engage in the humanities of dance and visual art and music.”
If every hour is filled with activities, pressures and obligations, then children will have less time to wonder, wander or tune in to their emotions and surroundings.
Listening to Our Students
** It is always important to make space to hear the voices from our community - fostering self-reflection
Sampling of Responses from Last Week’s ‘Question of the Week’: How can your imagination and curiosity help you learn?
- Imagination and curiosity can help you learn because if you are curious about things, you will want to learn more.
- By taking myself to a relaxing place
- It can help you participate more in class
- Help me be the best me
- They can help you learn by really thinking through things better then someone that doesn’t use their imagination or curiosity. Also using both of these helps make learning more fun!
- It can help you strategize new ideas and grow your mind
- It can help you learn because you can but your imagination and curiosity roam in a appropriate way and be free
- Discover new things
- It can help because you can go to your happy place and focus :)
- My imagination and curiosity can help me learn because doing those things can help me stay engaged in learning and encourage myself to learn new things.
- By finding different solutions to problems. Imagination and curiosity can help fuel resourcefulness.
- It can help you be creative
- Imagination and curiosity can help you learn because it makes your brain think and wonder. That makes people want to learn more and more and look at things in a new perspective.
- It helps you to be creative with your work.
- It can help you explore more things and be open to learning new things. It can help you learn because if you are curious you will want to learn which helps and an imagination always helps!
- You will have creative ideas which will aid in learning.
- Doing more projects like posters and slideshows instead of basic assignments.
- Your imagination and curiosity can help you learn by creating questions that help you decipher what you are learning.
- It can help me want to learn more and be smart
- My imagination reminds me that the world is constantly evolving and we can create newness each day!
- Because it allows me to express myself
- It can give me a break from trying to get the right answers all the time.
- Imagination can help me learn because I can find ways that help me learn using it.
- You can do stuff in your own ways
- You can think outside the box and figure out problems
- in many ways
- Your imagination can help you learn by picturing the situation.
- Help you create beautiful things
- If you let it lead you then you will learn about things you are really interested about and you would learn more because you would be interested in the subjects you are learning about.
- Imagination and curiosity helps me learn and make it more fun.
- My imagination can help me create something in Explorations.
- Curiosity deepens and widens my learning.
- It can help me think outside the box and learn in a different perspective
- When you are being imaginative it can help you finish in a more creative way.
- If you have a good creative mind you can expand your knowledge.
- It can try and make you wonder about the answers to a question, which you will ask and learn the answer.
- Curiosity can help your learning by asking questions and gaining more knowledge that you might not have learned if you were curious .
- It can help me become more creative in my writing and reading, and really think about things a little more.
- By making me want to continue learning and have fun learning.
- Imagination and curiosity are critical to learning because they naturally engage the mind and put it in a place to be receptive to learning new things.
- My imagination and curiosity can help me learn by helping me think that my learning ability can always be improved.
- If you imagine and use creativity you can think outside the box.
As always, let me know of any questions/concerns.
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Take care.
Nat