Academics
Our education system is getting derailed, and as parents, we are unwittingly becoming part of the problem. Somehow, we have lost what education and school are all about: learning. We want our kids to love learning and thrive in school. However, as a culture, we’ve become obsessed with achievement and accolades. Grades serve as academic cliff notes, becoming an easy and frankly inaccurate measure of how well our students are learning. What grades really measure is how well our students follow the rules. Our kids are smart and have figured out that good grades lead to praise and attention, which become their goal. So, they figure out how to maximize their time to get the best grades. Sadly, learning is not prioritized. Linda Flanagan writes about the pitfalls of grades in her article The Emotional Weight of Being Graded, for Better or Worse by Linda Flanagan, Mindshift 2016. She makes…
Read More
Ecosystems Experience Blog – by Jon McKenney At The Sycamore School, instead of separate core classes, students engage in transdisciplinary experiences each semester that weave together content from english, science, history, and math under a unifying theme. Past themes have included Identity, Civilizations, Motion, and Forensics. This year, our Middle School 2 cohort (6th and 7th graders) is participating in the Ecosystems experience. Some central questions of the experience include How does climate change impact ecosystems? How do humans, animals, and plants all interact? How can I as an individual make a positive impact on my local environment? These are all big questions, ones that professionals can devote years or lifetimes to studying. They are also questions that the Middle School 2 cohort wrestles with on a daily basis here at The Sycamore School. Transdisciplinary Learning At TSS, we like to do things differently. From our mixed cohorts to our…
Read More
Over the summer, we created a comprehensive COVID reopening plan which offered our students the choice of full time in-person or remote instruction. The vast majority of our students chose in-person and it has gone incredibly well. We certainly had our share of adjustments but overall the fall in-person instruction was quite successful. I think being able to offer in-person learning had significant positive effects on our students’ mental health. It also gave us an opportunity to onboard new students, establish rapport, and get our students comfortable with our routines and approach to learning. Read more about our first week of in-person instruction on our blog “First Week of In-Person and Remote Learning.” An essential feature of our reopening plan was having a planned switch to remote learning from November 30th-January 18th. We anticipated that COVID rates would be high, it would be the height of flu season, and that…
Read More
We strive to do our best as parents and teach our children how to grow up to be self-sufficient adults. We also want them to become kind and generous adults. Good people. I recently read an article titled For Families: 5 Tips for Cultivating Empathy which reminded me that raising kind and generous adults is not an easy task. How do we cultivate empathy in our children? Our children learn from our actions more than our words. They pay attention to what’s important to us, how we spend our time, and how we treat others. If we want to cultivate empathy in our children, we need to model that behavior ourselves. How do we treat others? Not just our friends, co-workers, and family members who we deem to be our peers, but also the many individuals that make up our community, including waiters, cashiers, custodians, solicitors, and mail delivery people?…
Read More
At The Sycamore School, we regularly participate in professional development training. They cover a wide range of topics over the course of a year from familiarizing staff with our on-line platforms, authentic assessment, and executive functioning supports, to anti-bias training and social-emotional skill-building. Last week during our teacher workday, we had professional development training on Mindfulness, specifically Mindful Educators. This was the third workshop in a series facilitated by Erin Sonn, M.Ed, ERYT, YACEP, who is a yoga instructor and mindfulness coach. In this workshop, Erin introduced the idea of a beginner’s mind, a Zen Buddhism concept, which is similar to a growth mindset or having a blank slate – opening up our mind and freeing it from past experiences and preconceptions. When applied to learning, it’s the idea of approaching learning with openness and curiosity. For example, sometimes we approach a subject with preconceptions that color our experience; for…
Read More
Back to School 2020 has necessitated months of creativity and planning. The hard work paid off when our in-person learners walked through the door Monday for their first day of school. Simultaneously, our remote learners were logging on to start their first day. Each was exciting and eventful in their own unique way. But we all started this school year together as a community. It was an exciting, busy and eventful week. We were reminded that while proper planning and preparation are important, maintaining a positive and open mind is equally important. We have put in the months of planning and now we need to execute our plans being mindful of the current environment. Flexibility is our mantra for the year. Masks Not a big deal. Despite all the worry and anticipation around wearing masks, all the students wore their masks and didn’t complain. They seemed happy. Over the course…
Read More
It’s one week before we open our doors (literally) for the new school year at The Sycamore School! It’s been a wild ride since we had to switch to a virtual model this past spring and as we’ve been preparing to resume class in-person next week. Every summer at this time, staff wish for an extra planning week to get just *one* more task done. Even though our core team works all summer preparing for the upcoming school year, it never feels as if we have enough time. There is always more we want to do to prepare for the upcoming school year. This year is no different. While there are still those little items on our to-do list that we are scrambling to finish, the hard work is done. We are ready. There is always excitement in the air the last week before school starts. This year the excitement…
Read More
The Sycamore School was founded on the fundamental belief that learning can be engaging, enjoyable and personal. We encourage students to be active participants in their education through our student-driven learning model. Throughout high school, TSS students are continuously presented with opportunities to guide their learning to topics and areas of interest while developing the core competencies necessary for graduation. The culmination of choices and the final demonstration of mastery in the core competencies is a final year Capstone Project for our high school students. Passion Project One of the core tenets of Mastery-based learning is applying skills to real world problems. In order to demonstrate this skill, our students are asked to create and complete an academic capstone project. Students pick a topic they are passionate about and create a project around that passion. Applied Learning Capstone projects require students to use the academic and socio-emotional competencies they’ve built…
Read More
Public schools in our area are asking parents to make a choice for fall: keep your child/ren home for 100% virtual, or choose a hybrid model where they are in school for a couple of days, and virtual the rest of the week. It’s a difficult choice for many reasons – and a large one is the uncertainty. How long will this last? Are you equipped to manage your kids on your own at home? What if you send them to school and they get sick? What if they start the year at school but then it shuts down again? The lack of certainty is maddening…and can be frightening. At The Sycamore School, we are planning for every contingency. While we can’t offer certainty about how the pandemic will play out in our community this fall, we can offer our families the peace of mind that we are capable and…
Read More
Every Friday, students at The Sycamore School go into the community for Field Study Fridays. Outings include field trips related to their coursework, community service activities, and some fun team building adventures. Faced with a stay at home order, these Fridays have looked a little different. Thanks to collaboration, creativity, and student choice, The Sycamore School has been able to continue with its Field Study Fridays. TSS formed a virtual Friday staff committee to think outside the box and craft Friday activities that would offer students a variety of choices designed to connect their learning to our larger world, continue our community service Friday focus, and give our core teachers some critical planning time. Although students couldn’t venture out of their homes, they were given a variety of options, enabling students to pursue interests of choice. Our virtual Fridays started with an all school meeting, where students could touch base…
Read More
Shifting to distance learning has been an adjustment for students, staff, and parents. At The Sycamore School, we offer individualized instruction, so our unique challenge was determining how to offer the same level of support remotely, recognizing that: Many of our parents work full time, so they have limited ability to monitor and check in on their students while they’re working from home. Many of our students struggle with executive functioning skills, so we had to figure out how to get them into a routine that worked for them and their family; Once it became apparent distance learning was not a short-term endeavor, we divided up our students between our staff. Each staff member was the point person for a small cohort of 10 students, checking in with them daily and helping them create and maintain a daily schedule. While this was a good starting point, it wasn’t always enough.…
Read More
The week of March 9th felt like a month. At the beginning of the week, the coronavirus still seemed at arms length. By Wednesday evening it became clear to me that we would need to shut down our school facility and support our students remotely sooner, rather than later. On Thursday morning, I explained the situation to our students and crafted a letter to parents. That Thursday afternoon, I held a staff meeting to flesh out the details of our remote learning. All week, staff had been bouncing around ideas. Our challenge? How to continue the same level of personalized educational support and guidance remotely. Fortunately, all of our students had laptops and were accustomed to doing the bulk of their work on a computer; and we were already on a google classroom platform, so we spent the next two days teaching students how to navigate google chat and hangout. …
Read More