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I am a life-long film aficionado, drawn to movies that challenge assumptions and stimulate debate. So I was particularly glad when Friends Select faculty, staff and administrators, (as part of a professional development day in early January) had the opportunity to screen The Prep School Negro, a 52-minute documentary by Andre Robert Lee, followed by a discussion with the film maker and smaller group conversations. FSS Families for Cultural and Ethnic Diversity will host a reception and public screening with Andre Lee on February 24, at 6 p.m., at Friends Select School.
As the title suggests, the movie is a provocative exploration of one man’s experience as a minority student at a private school. André Robert Lee attended Germantown Friends School in the 1980s on a full academic scholarship, as part of a program designed to bring neighborhood children to the school. On his Web site, Lee describes his film as “a journey back in time to revisit the events of his adolescence, while also spending time with current day prep school students of color and their classmates to see how much has really changed inside the ivory tower.”
As the conversations following the January screening clearly showed, The Prep School Negro’s themes are compelling and complex. What assumptions does the film affirm or shatter? How does the film define “otherness”? How does one cope with a self divided? Is the divide around class, more than race? If the film is a slice in time (20 years ago), what remains the same? What has changed?
Join guests from peer independent schools and the general public to ponder these questions on Wednesday, February 24. A reception with the film maker at 6 p.m. will be followed by a screening and Q&A in the Blauvelt Theatre. RSVP by February 18 to parent association.
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| Barbie JailLower School Message by Amanda Pitt, Kindergarten Teacher |
| One thing I love about kindergarteners is that as long as they have not been overexposed to T.V. and advertising, their understanding of gender usually is flexible, and they do not have many gender-related inhibitions. I was struck on our garden trip this fall when one little girl joyfully picked up a bug and shoved it in a friend’s face, squealing, “I love bugs!” Her squeals were met with a chorus of, “I love bugs, too,” from boys and girls alike.
But how do we help children hold onto this lack of self-consciousness?
I have seen research that shows that girls who were considered “Tom boys” as children are more resilient adolescents, and boys who are given the outlets for expressing their emotions and are allowed to take on nurturing roles are happier and more socially competent as they get older. But how do we stand up to pop culture?
Modeling probably plays the biggest role. I am often the person who eagerly takes worms out of the worm bin, and Tr. Mwazhuwa is often the person who takes crying children for a walk to cheer them up.
As a school community, we also strive to have shared expectations about how we talk about gender with our classes. The other day in the hallway, a boy from another kindergarten class turned to me and said, “Tr. Amanda, there’s no such thing as girl colors, right?” He wanted me to support his assertion in front of a friend who had said otherwise. The first child was coming from our pre-K where he had clearly already had this discussion last year. As a community, we also insist that children don’t play boy vs. girl games. My students recently started trying to play a boy vs. girl tag game, complete with “Barbie Jail.” That incident prompted me to read the book, Oliver Button is a Sissy, as a jumping off point for talking about gender.
The book is about a boy who is teased for doing “girly things,” such as dancing, but in the end his classmates are impressed because he is such a good tap dancer. In our conversation, many children talked about friends that defied the gender stereotypes presented in the book. One child, however, said that although he mostly agreed that there aren’t many “boy activities” and “girl activities,” he didn’t think girls liked to play football. I told him how I loved to play football with third grade teacher Brian Hueber and he suddenly remembered how his sister who is a third grader in Brian’s class likes to play football, too. After their examples I said, “See, there are no such things as boy things and girl things.” If our students keep hearing this message year after year, they will keep believing it and (I hope) not be limited by stereotypical gender roles.
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History teacher John Colgan-Davis doesn’t mind shocking his middle school students a little. “Much of what I teach you I never learned in school,” he tells them. “But I did learn to be a thinker and a researcher.” And that’s what middle school Search is all about.
By the time students reach sixth grade, they have a toolbox of basic research skills gained through the “Become an Expert” projects completed in third, fourth and fifth grades. In middle school, it’s time to step it up a notch. Sixth graders conduct research that corresponds to their themed study; this year, they are exploring Africa. Seventh grade Search projects focus on family history. In eighth grade, students select research topics about the ancient world.
Appreciating the life-long value of research, sparking intellectual curiosity and refining the skills required to be a productive researcher are the broad goals of the middle school Search curriculum. Each student produces three end products: a narrative (similar to a research paper), a visual display and an oral presentation. The students also keep an on-line journal, in which they record notes and personal reflections on their progress.
Students’ “reflective” journal entries help Colgan-Davis enter into an ongoing conversation with his students about how they are thinking, in addition to what they are researching. “I want to get kids used to assessing the research process as it unfolds,” says Colgan-Davis. “They are in the habit of only looking forward, so looking back in a nuanced way may not come easily to them. I want them to understand themselves as researchers and students and do honest personal assessments of their strengths and challenges.”
“For a while, I have been behind in this search project,” reads one student’s journal entry, “but I took it upon myself (as I should, for I am a student) to begin searching, not just glancing.”
In an entry called, “What I don’t know that I want to know,” another student lists: Why was there a need for the Maccabee games in the first place? How much did the Holocaust affect the Maccabee Games? How did the Maccabee games bring Jews together? A final entry reads: “Ask him his opinion on why there was a need for a Jewish Olympics.”
In a third student’s journal, buried amidst pages of detailed notes, is the comment, “I need to find information on what I don’t know, so that I can bring my relative to life.”
An important part of the Search process involves learning to ask questions. A good question, says Colgan-Davis, is one that leads you to another question. When a student asks the question, “Where did you grow up?” and hears the answer “Brooklyn,” that is just the beginning. What was it like? What was it like to be Italian in Brooklyn? What was it like to be a kid in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn during the Depression?”
The "Search" process--never linear, occasionally frustrating, always unexpected--teaches lessons students are likely to value more with each passing year, says Colgan-Davis. They learn to break a project into doable chunks. They learn to ask good questions. They learn to use a wealth of resources to unearth information. They learn to put it all together and present their findings coherently and persuasively.
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| Lately, I have been pondering the power of words. Part of this comes from watching my son, Quinn (in pre-K here at Friends Select), begin to read words. It is fascinating to watch him figure out each letter of a word, start to see patterns with the letter combinations and actually decipher simple words—an event that is presently thrilling to him. Watching Quinn learn to read reminds me that it is a skill that every person must work hard to perfect.
We ask upper school students to read a lot and, at the same time, promote literacy as a critical life skill and source of endless delight. We encourage students to read on their own beyond just what is required. As a faculty of enthusiastic readers, we want our students to catch the reading “bug.”
Given that I was an English teacher for many years before becoming a full-time administrator, I am often asked, “What is your favorite book?” This is the question that every reading addict like me dreads. My wife, Rebecca, thinks that I have a serious problem, namely, my books. She is not sure where we are going to put all of the books we own and wonders aloud why I am unable to give up some old books of mine. My favorite book? I (almost) become paralyzed thinking about all the ways I could answer that question.
There are my favorite classic texts (Homer’s The Odyssey); my favorite Russian novel (Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina); my favorite early American book (Herman Melville’s Moby Dick); favorite modern British novel (Virginia Wolf’s The Waves); the first novel I read in high school that I could not put down (Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera); and the book that I felt somewhat of a spiritual connection with (Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha). I connect with each of these books in different ways, but see a common thread among them: The characters in each novel are seeking to understand themselves better, and the stories of their journeys are unique and compelling. They evoke an emotional response in me that leads to personal reflection.
If truly required to winnow down my list of favorites, I might argue that Marquez’s A Hundred Years of Solitude or Wolf’s The Waves are my two very favorites books. Both novels weave together gripping stories in a thoughtful and poetic fashion. In particular, the authors capture what I call “poetic moments,” clearly drawn images of one small moment, be it a passing thought or an embrace with another person. They transport the reader into those moments; the reader is there.
Reading fiction is a passion for me. It teaches me empathy; it pushes my notions of what is right and wrong; and it makes me consider what is important to me. I am always looking for a good book to read. Any suggestions?
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