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| Never thought I’d be a tweeter. I used to believe it was so silly when people claimed that their main news source was Twitter. In September, I embraced the social media micro-blogging platform and have gradually worked my way up to tweeting at least twice a day.
Why did I ever doubt the communications medium? Every day I learn from live ongoing conversations, whether it’s with President Obama, Bishop Desmond Tutu, or commentator Steve Colbert. I no longer have to wait until the 6 o’clock news to be informed.
MS outside the classroom
My tweet: “And now we're touching sharks!”
When the sixth grade visited Adventure Aquarium in January, parents could follow my tweets and get a behind-the-scenes look at our experience. More recently, fourth grade parents were able to follow along with me while their students visited the middle school. I provided parents with in-the-moment comments and pictures; 29 tweets over a span of five hours. Hopefully for fourth grade parents, it was almost like being here with us and sharing in on their child’s day.
Read along with us
Fast Company retweet: “The Creative Brain On Exercise"
Twitter has also given me access to journals that I didn’t even know existed. I am finding informative, meaningful articles and professional discussions that I never would have stumbled upon otherwise. Through Twitter, I’m able to share articles about best practices in education, teenage brain research, meaningful instruction and content with faculty members and parents.
For example, have you read The Creative Brain on Exercise? Only if you subscribe to Fast Company OR get my tweets would you have! If you missed it, the article can be found here. Along the same lines, I never would have known about the Web site, Mind/Shift: How We Will Learn. The articles posted there are quite enlightening. Check out the site. Really fascinating stuff.
Community sharing
Dalai Lama’s retweet: “The human capacity to care for others isn’t something trivial or something to be taken for granted. Rather it is something we should cherish.”
Another benefit that Twitter has brought to my life and hopefully, the life of your child is following and sharing the thoughts of great thinkers such as the Dalai Lama. His messages of empathy, sincerity, and integrity are daily reminders to me of the benefits of a thoughtful Quaker education. In addition, the musings of Ellen DeGeneres remind me to laugh unnecessarily. The postings of Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert urge me to be informed but not jaded. Who are your great thinkers? They probably tweet.
With my constant Twitter updates, now you don’t have to wait for your child to come home to tell you all about the cool happenings occurring around the middle school halls. You can hear the daily highlights at your convenience, on your time, from your electronic device. Obviously at 140 characters once or twice a day, it’s a small glimpse. But it’s enough to know what questions to ask your child when they return home at the end of the day. Or it’s enough to know what to look for on the school’s Web site, flickr and vimeo pages. So try it out. I promise you won’t be disappointed! Click to visit my @FSSMiddleSchool twitter page.
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|  Laurie Morrison, the new Friends Select middle school English teacher, is enrolled in a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts. It's a two-year, low-residency program that consists of five intensive ten-day residencies in January and July and four semesters of individualized work.
From January 9-19, she attended her fourth residency in Montpelier, Vermont, which included workshop sessions during which students’ work was critiqued; lectures on writing topics; and readings by faculty, visiting writers, and students. Morrison will graduate in July 2012 and in her graduating residency, will give a forty-five minute lecture to peers and professors, and a formal reading of her creative work.
Here is her story.
Q. How long have you been teaching?
A. This is my eighth year of teaching.
Q. Where did you teach before FSS?
A. I taught at the University of Arizona and then at Staten Island Academy.
Q. Can you describe your teaching philosophy?
A. I try to be consciously committed to curricular goals and to my students’ needs and interests. There are always certain skills that I know my students need to develop and certain texts and assignments that I want us to get through, but I also want my students to be engaged in what we are doing. I try to be flexible enough to meet students where they are and to accommodate their interests and skills.
As an English teacher, I also believe that studying literature can build students’ empathy, broaden their worldviews, and offer them opportunities to consider who they are and who they want to become. Moreover, I believe that writing can facilitate critical thinking, abstract reasoning, self-discovery, and self-expression. As a result, I think English is an important and exciting discipline.
Q. What will you be focusing on in the classroom from now until the end of the school year?
A. Eighth graders are finishing up reading The Ramayana, an Indian epic, and considering how the story follows the traditional hero’s cycle, what lessons it teaches, and what social values it reveals. Because The Ramayana is one of the most recognizable Hindu stories, we’ve been talking about recognizable American stories, many of which are fairytales. After we finish The Ramayana, students will read some Grimm’s fairytales and write their own updated, “fractured” versions, which may convey very different lessons and reflect different social values than the original versions do. Then we’ll study Serafina’s Stories, a novel set in New Mexico, which includes folk tales of Spanish origins with Native American influences, and we’ll study Sherman Alexie’s award-winning novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar before the year is done.
Seventh graders will be reading two Revolutionary War era novels: Forge by Laurie Halse Anderson, and April Morning by Howard Fast. Forge is an intriguing book because it is written from the perspective of a slave who ends up fighting for the Patriot army, and it raises complex questions about how slaves fit into a war that was fought for freedom. April Morning, meanwhile, is a coming-of-age story that offers anti-war critiques. Both novels will enrich what students learn in history class, will lead to interesting creative and analytical writing assignments, and will enable us to have conversations about universal issues. Before the end of the year, we’ll also study poetry and read The Dreams of Mairhe Mehan, a Civil War novel.
In sixth grade, students are currently writing additional chapters for the novel Seedfolks. In keeping with this year’s sixth grade theme of Africa, they will then read Facing the Lion, a memoir written by an African man from a nomadic tribe, and A Girl Named Disaster, a novel set in Africa. Both of these selections will supplement the social studies curriculum and provide opportunities for students to build their close reading skills and make personal connections to texts set in distant places. We will end the year by reading Laurie Halse Anderson’s Chains, which will set students up for next year’s English and history curricula.
Q. What do you want your students to take away from your class?
A. I want students to leave my classes as engaged and confident readers and writers. I always love it when students find genres or authors that they enjoy reading, and it’s great when students connect to particular writing assignments or come to embrace writing as a means of self-discovery and self-expression. I also work hard to ensure that students leave my classes with transferable skills that will serve them well in the future. For instance, I want students to learn how to approach difficult texts, how to write effective thesis statements and essays, how to craft correct and varied sentences, and how to use textual evidence to support their ideas.
Q. How does your master's writing program reflect the work you're doing in the classroom?
A. My coursework has impacted my teaching in many ways. Most notably, I have to read ten to fifteen children’s or young adult books every month, so the program has exposed me to a lot of contemporary literature, and I’ve been able to share some of that literature with my students. Earlier this year, for instance, Maureen Haurin, middle school librarian, helped me pull together a dystopian fiction unit for the eighth grade. I was inspired to create that unit because I’d encountered so many great dystopian novels through my MFA program. I have also adapted assignments and writing terminology from my MFA program for my students. Finally, the program has taught me to read like a writer and has made me acutely attuned to how all texts are constructed. Therefore, I think it has made me a more perceptive reader and a more effective teacher of literature.
Q. What is one thing that you've learned about our community since you've started?
A. I’ve learned all sorts of new terms, like “dinner leave,” “devotions,” and “worship sharing.” I’ve learned how to get to the balcony of the theater (thanks to the seventh graders who led me there) and what Search Night is. And I’ve learned that I’ve joined an amazingly considerate and supportive group of adults.
Q. What is your favorite thing about teaching?
A. The students. I can pretty safely assume that I’ll never go through a day without laughing, without being surprised in some way, and without learning something new.
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| Students recall their experience during the seventh grade Search assignment at Friends Select:
“Because of my 7th grade Search project, I’ve been appointed by my family to collect and organize all of my relative’s historic photos and facts.”
“I researched my great uncle. His name was Hank Aaron. I uncovered that he was really, really good at baseball.”
“My project focused on women’s history. I explored my mother’s generation and compared her options during that time to my grandmother’s options, and those to my great-grandmother’s options. There were indescribable differences.”
Search is a research-driven middle school project that students tend to appreciate more with each passing year. Students learn to ask thoughtful questions, use a wealth of resources to discover information and then decide what's important to consider. The semester’s project culminates in a daytime symposium for students and a presentation evening with exhibits for parents on December 7.
For John Colgan-Davis, middle-and upper school history teacher and seventh grade project facilitator, Search is a highlight. Colgan-Davis helped introduce Search to Friends Select in 1988, and through the years, inherently nurtured it to what it’s transformed into- a sequential, learning tool for middle school students.
“The goal of Search is to turn students into knowledge makers. It’s not just an academic exercise, but a life skill,” states Colgan-Davis. “Students need to be makers of knowledge.”
Students across all grades work in the computer lab and collaborate with the school librarians during their respective Search projects. They use subscription databases and identify reliable Web sites in an attempt to unearth facts. Noodle (notetaking and bibliography tool) and Inspiration (wed mapping program) are examples of two online resources students use during the Search process.
“Technology skills are important and we strive to integrate them into the research program in a meaningful way,” said middle- and upper school librarian Maureen Haurin. “When working online, middle schoolers understand that all activity must be handled vigilantly. We instruct students to evaluate the source first, to ensure it’s authentic and reliable.”
Once students find and organize all the data, they turn it into knowledge. Search is comprised of a search journal (for reflection about the process and a running record of all work done), a search narrative (the final report), a symposium presentation, and a visual display.
Grades 5-8 Search Projects:
Fifth and sixth graders must identify a theme within their studies of Africa and Medieval Africa and spend all semester researching various aspects of that topic.
Seventh graders focus on American Studies in the classroom and throughout the semester, and research a topic of choice in conjunction with their family history. The culminating trip is to New York City to experience American immigration. During the trip, students travel to Ellis Island to research and assume the roles of immigrants who might have arrived at the facility between 1885 and 1910.
“Seventh graders get excited about the project because it’s a platform to find facts based on their own interests and experiences,” said Colgan-Davis.
Eighth graders study Ancient Civilization in the spring. The culminating trip is to New Mexico to explore ancient civilizations, a subject studied in the Interdisciplinary Sequence, an innovative and challenging course that traces human culture from 3000 B.C. to the present. The mathematics and science independent research projects are conducted in the winter months and culminate in the Rube Goldberg Machine Competition.
Beginning in pre-kindergarten and extending through twelfth grade, the essential skills of research, writing and oral presentation are taught, practiced and refined through participation in special Search projects and everyday classroom activities.
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| by Martha Van Nuis, middle school mathematics and history teacher, and performing arts department chair
Scans of brain activity show that whether a person is studying math, science or English, the traditional academic disciplines, or whether they are listening to music or making a drawing, their brain is busy making decisions, acquiring knowledge and solving problems. We’ve learned that the rigorous work of learning happens through the arts, both visual arts and performing arts in different areas of the brain, but in the same important ways as it does through other academic disciplines.
Today, brain research unveils data showing that art aids learning when integrated into the school curriculum. In my classroom, like in many of the classrooms across each division at Friends Select, there are times when it’s important and appropriate for students to express their knowledge through the arts.
Over the years, I’ve challenged my students to convey their thinking by using different media in various classroom activities. None of the activities are once and done. Like writing assignments, there is feedback and a revision process involved in assignments using the arts. The art of the effort is important as well as the artwork’s ability to convey my students’ understanding of information or ideas.
Examples of learning with art:
Math and board games
Last year, former Friends Select history teacher Sara Wolf presented to middle schoolers about her efforts to help young children displaced by the earthquake in Haiti. When asked how Friends Select might contribute to her work, she mentioned that in the camps where she organized schools, there were few materials and no games.
With my sixth grade math students, we constructed board games to send over to the Haitian children. There were a few conditions: games had to be geared toward children ages 6 through 9 who spoke Haitian Creole, and we had to keep them simple enough so that parts and pieces would not take up room or get easily lost. The students went to work brainstorming what math skills would be appropriate for children of those ages and then they created challenging and fun-filled games to teach those skills. It was also important that each game be visually engaging, and that children who had suffered loss and trauma be given something beautiful. The last step was translating that into a game format that conveyed all of those ideas.
Students had to think about whether directions were needed and if so, write easy-to-understand directions and translate them into Haitian Creole. As a final piece of the assignment, the class held a bake sale and funds went to Sara to aid in her work. This was a great class project that brought together service learning, math, social studies and visual art.
Geography and music
In sixth grade general music class, teacher Dan Capecchi works with students to understand complex and abstract musical terms such as harmony, rhythm, sound, pitch and melody. From that basic understanding, general music students compose sounds using a variety of sources Dan finds online or records himself. This idea becomes the foundation for our work together.
Last year, my sixth grade geography students were learning geography terms. To fully understand what a word means, students worked with Dan to transform the geographic term into a sound, and shared it with their classmates and teachers. After receiving feedback, the students adjusted their work and created a final sound definition. It was certainly a different way to get the class thinking about the meaning of a geography term.
Using the same idea as last year’s project, sixth graders will be working with Dan again this year to transform search topics that they’re learning about in the classroom, into sound. For example, if the topic is West African food and we’re learning that it’s spicy, what might that sound like? If it suggests those sounds to one student, does it suggest the same meaning to another?
Tying the arts into our school’s academic curriculum is a valuable way to see how students think. As a faculty, we recently heard from Daniel Pink and Ken Robinson, futurist thinkers whose work touches on education, and we are reading and talking about how to teach to prepare our students for the future. We know that among the skills they will need are those of creativity, collaboration and critical thinking, and brain research shows conclusively that these can come from incorporating the arts across all academic disciplines.
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| Service learning, either within the school community or outside, teaches the importance and necessity of making a positive contribution to our society. For all Friends Select middle schoolers, there are days set aside throughout the year to perform large-group service projects.
The middle school’s first community service project of the 2011-2012 school year is quickly approaching, scheduled for October 11. During this time, fifth through eighth graders will visit Thomas Mansion in Fairmount Park and spend the morning rolling up their sleeves and getting down to business.
During a service day, students are split up into multi-grade level groups so that students work with other students that they don’t often interact with (5th graders working beside 8th graders, and so on). From there, the groups work. And work hard. The groups are tasked with doing anything from removing invasive plants or clearing trails to mending a fence. At the end of the day, the groups form a circle and pause to take a look around the area.
“It’s a pretty amazing moment to see just how dramatic the change is at the site after working on it for hours," said Terry Kessel, director of middle school. “The school’s service programs build a strong foundation for our students that will enable a lifetime of service learning and philanthropic gestures to their communities.”
Typically, the opening and closing middle school service trips go to Thomas Mansion, but students have worked in Blue Bell Park and Rittenhouse Town before. In addition to going out to Fairmount Park as a division, there are four service days where students choose an organization in Philadelphia to volunteer. Volunteering more than once at the organization helps students develop a deeper understanding of the kind of impact they can make. In the past, students have gone to PAWS, St. John’s Hospice, MANNA, Frankford Friends School, Friends Child Care, FSS Lower School, Laurel Hill Cemetery, and also to Fairmount Park to work on smaller areas.
This year the middle school division welcomes the fifth grade class back to the service program. “For the greater community, the fifth grade class will bring a youthful energy and enthusiasm to our more formal service program," said Ed Rhee, middle school dean. "Their perspective stems directly from all of the creative service projects that they’ve participated in throughout their lower school experience.”
Here is what the middle school class is saying about last year’s service projects:
- It feels like you’re helping the community
- I feel a sense of accomplishment
- I actually like cutting the weeds and stuff; using the tools, getting out and doing something different
- Love being able to choose (the service site)
- Like that the school values service; it’s good to take a break from school and give back to the community, and you’re hanging out with friends
- We became friends (with kids in other grades) through service
2011-2012 Middle School Service Dates:
October 11, November 14, January 9, February 13, April 16, May 2
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| by: Terry Kessel, Director of Middle School and Assistant Head of School for Professional Development
Welcome back to an expanded and exciting middle school! We welcome our newest members, the fifth grade, along with fourteen new students from Lansdowne Friends School, F.A.C.T.S Charter School, St. Peter’s, West Chester Friends, J.S. Jenks, The Philadelphia School, Jubilee School, Tamanend Middle School, and San Francisco Friends, who join a total of 112 middle schoolers.
This means that our orchestra, drum ensemble, chorus, and dance troupe will be filling our stage with wonderful sound and movement. It means our sports teams will field more athletes. Our middle school play - this year an original play written by Director Paul's father - will have a fuller cast. And during middle school service days, more trails will be restored, more parks cleaned up, more kittens and puppies cared for, and more homeless individuals fed, all with smiles. For fifth grade parents, it means new director coffees, new events to calendar, and quarterly report cards with grades in writing, reading, and math. Welcome all!
Also new this year is our English teacher for grades 6 through 8. Please help us in welcoming Laurie Morrison. Laurie comes most recently from a teaching post at Staten Island Academy but returns to the Philadelphia area where she lived during her time at Haverford College. Laurie already knows and loves our city, and looks forward to incorporating it into the middle school English curriculum. (Sounds just like one of us already!) She is busy catching up on her summer reading, all the books your children will be reading throughout this school year. Hopefully your students enjoyed their summer reading. I especially enjoyed The Dreamer which seventh and eighth graders read.
Dates to get on your calendar now are as follows:
Sept. 8 - Registration Day (schedule available here)
Sept. 9 - First day of classes; prospective athletes meet coaches
Sept. 12 - Middle school sports begin - remember children have one week to decide
whether they want to commit
Sept. 19, 6 p.m. - Middle School Back to School Night starting at 6pm
Oct. 7 - School closed for faculty in-service
Oct. 10 - School closed for holiday
Oct. 13, 8 a.m. - Middle School Director Coffee
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