Communing with Nature

When I was a little girl my Dad used to take me out every Sunday afternoon to do what he called " commune with nature". We would go to a park, or vacant overgrow lot and explore. Our favorite places usually had a creek or pond to throw pebbles in or wade into. He grew you on a farm in Ky and had a strong tie to the land and outdoors and wanted me to enjoy nature, as well. As I have grown older, I know how important these Sunday afternoon outings really were to me. It developed my senses and they made me comfortable in almost any outdoor setting. It stimulated my love of gardening, and my interest in all God's creatures. As some of you know, I live on a horse farm and have a beach cottage on the coast of Ga. These natural environments are important to my personal sense of balance in my life. I recently read a wonderful book which spoke to this need for nature in children's lives, particularly today in our tech- oriented world. The name of the book is Last Child in the Woods. You can hear an interview with the author on NPR Archived as 'Saving our kids from Nature Deficet Disorder". We have the book in the school professional library if you would like to borrow it.
Thank You, Daddy!

Best schools in the world

I just read a very interesting article on the school system in Finland which is ranked #1 in the world in both reading and math. Guess what? They have many similarities to our school. One of the most interesting to me is that students stay with the same teacher for several years, just like at CDS. They also do not push formal reading before age seven(I knew this was true for Russia) and yet students do very well by third grade when they first measure their ability. It shows that earlier is not necessarily better! Some other factors were the emphasis on creativity, and the high esteem teachers are given. They stated they took $s which might have been used for early standardized testing and put it towards higher teachers salaries...makes sense to me. I have visited the schools in Denmark, and they too have many things like CDS. We have done exchanges whereby our teachers have visited and taught in schools there and we hosted a intern from there recently.

Spring break

I hope everyone will enjoy a week off and that the weather co-operates so that the kids can get lots of free outdoor time.

Race to No Where gets National Media attention

NBC Nightly News will feature community groups screening and supporting the concepts presented in the film tonight, March 8 . Our RTNW HSV support group meets tonight at CDS at 6:30 to plan action items to bring to our community. One suggestion is a community wide homework free night!
The film was also featured recently by CNN. And Katie Couric did a nice interview with the films director. Jon Stewart of The Daily Show has done pieces on it with Matt Damon and education expert, Diane Ravich.
My read on all of this is that a grass roots movement is growing to support a more thoughtful and humane educational reform effort. It is push back from the failed No Child Left Behind effort and the new but equally insane Race to the Top. Both bash teachers and hold high stakes standardized testing as the measure of success. Neither supports real learning for kids....ask any teacher for their thoughts about this issue. I think a real battle is about to begin. Sure hope it will be an outcome that is good for all our children and grand children.

Our neighborhood school

Did you see in HSV Times where Providence Elementary had three times the amount of discipline problems of any other HSV school.....how very strange....what is going on over there?

Follow up meeting on Race to No Where community group March 8

We will meet at The Country Day School to follow up our discussion of the concepts presented in the Jan. 25th screening of the film Race to No Where. The meeting will be a Country Day School starting at 6:30 PM in the Great Hall. We hope to see many of you there to let you know what is going on around the country to promote awareness of valuing our children and helping balance their education. recently Vickie Abeles, the film"s creator was interviewed by Katie Couric. It was a thought provoking piece via national media. Also Diane Ravich gave an interview on the concepts of the film regarding the misuse of standardized testing on NPR.
hope to see you at the meeting next week.