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Parent Blog: How TSS Changed My Life (and My Daughter’s)
This blog is a part of a series where parents of The Sycamore School’s students share their experiences on what it’s like to be a part of the TSS community and the impact TSS has made on their children. Through these blogs, we hope you’ll gain inside knowledge and understanding of what to expect when…
The Educational Value of Field Trips
Part of our personalized experiential learning approach at The Sycamore School (TSS) is connecting learning to our larger world, and one of the ways we do this is by regularly taking students on field trips. We call Fridays our community-based learning day — students go on field trips related to what they’re studying, participate in…
Parent Blog: How The Sycamore School Helped to Transform My Daughter
This blog is a part of a series where parents of The Sycamore School’s students share their experiences on what it’s like to be a part of the TSS community and the impact TSS has made on their children. Through these blogs, we hope you’ll gain inside knowledge and understanding of what to expect when…
A Love Letter to Teachers
Teachers and healthcare workers are the unsung heroes of this pandemic. We keep dumping more and more on them and then expect them to keep going, undaunted. Perhaps it’s time to flip the script. How can we recognize our teachers as experts in their fields and give them the support and resources they need to…
Parent Blog: How The Sycamore School is Helping us Navigate the Middle School Years
This blog is a part of a series where parents of The Sycamore School’s students share their experiences on what it’s like to be a part of the TSS community and the impact TSS has made on their children. Through these blogs, we hope you’ll gain inside knowledge and understanding of what to expect when…
Pandemic Learning Loss
Educators across the country are noticing that students have lost many of the skills they acquired before the pandemic. In some cases, our younger students never developed the skills we expected them to have. For example, lower elementary school teachers are encountering students who have accidents at school because they are not used to asking…
5 Signs Your Kid’s School Isn’t A Good Fit: Pandemic Edition
*This is an updated version of 5 Signs Your Kid’s School Isn’t A Good Fit, originally published in August 2018. As we continue to navigate education in the wake of a pandemic, many parents are assessing whether their child is thriving in their current school setting. For some families, the mix of asynchronous, hybrid, or…
What Do We Want Our Children to Get Out of School?
What do parents want their children to learn in school? To learn specific academic content? To be an independent learner? To be compliant (e.g., follow directions and rules)? To successfully navigate peer and adult relationships (e.g., social skills)? To cultivate a range of study skills, which work for them? In an article What Do Parents…
TSS Teacher Credentialing and Skills
The Sycamore School (TSS) has a unique approach to learning. We utilize a mastery-based approach to meet students where they are, address any gaps in skills, and move them forward at their own pace. Learning is engaging, purposeful, and individualized. Instead of traditional grades, we offer narrative feedback and authentic assessments to tell students where…
High School Psych Experience
At The Sycamore School, each cohort has a different experience class. This transdisciplinary class weaves together language arts, science, history, and math under a common theme. This year, our high school cohort’s experience theme is Psychology. They will read fiction and nonfiction books, participate in book talks, conduct psychology experiments, and learn about historical events,…
Return to In-Person Learning: How You Can Help Your Child
This fall, parents around the country took a deep breath and cautiously, worriedly, and maybe even gleefully sent their children back to school for a return to in-person learning. As our students return to school, parents may still be filled with anxiety asking themselves questions, such as: Will my child be safe at school? Will…
Why Your Student Needs a Progressive No Grades High School
What if a high school has no grades? No Advanced Placement (AP) classes. No International Baccalaureate (IB) program. To most parents in Northern Virginia, this is profoundly unsettling information. They ask, “How will my child get into college?”. The current model is not working for many students, but parents are afraid of the unknown. What…
TSS Earns Cognia Accreditation
“Is your school accredited?” Since opening The Sycamore School, that has been one of the most common questions. Answering that seemingly simple question was not easy and required some explanation. Schools can only apply for accreditation after they have been open for at least three years; some accreditation organizations require five years. As soon as…
Let’s Take A Walk Experience
How do I fit into my community? How does my community affect my identity? What about my environment shapes my point of view? These are the questions we pondered this past year in the Middle School experience class, Let’s Take a Walk (LTAW). At The Sycamore School, instead of separate core classes, our students engage…
A Unique Approach to Math
At The Sycamore School, we take a different approach to math instruction. As an independent private school, we are unencumbered by arbitrary year-end standardized tests. Students are free to follow their choice of math concepts throughout the year in a manner that makes the most sense to them and a timeline that works for their…
Why Grading Erodes our Students’ Love of Learning
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…
Ecosystems Experience
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…
Cultivating Empathy
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…
Capstone Project
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…
COVID-19 Update
TSS plans to resume in-person learning 5 days a week this fall. As part of our return to school plan, no visitors (to include parents) will be allowed into the school for the foreseeable future. Newly enrolled families will be invited for an in-person tour of the school in August. School meetings and community workshops will continue…
Fall School Planning
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…
First Week of Remote Learning at TSS
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…
Don’t Panic! How parents and families can respond to the COVID-19 outbreak
Parents, help mitigate panic and communicate realistic expectations to your children. It feels as if individuals are falling into two camps in response to the Coronavirus outbreak: panicking or dismissive. Neither reaction is helpful. Instead, we need to take preventative measures seriously and think beyond ourselves. Panic: A Selfish Response Panic can bring out the…
Coronavirus Response and Updates
The Sycamore School Announces Changes In Response To Coronavirus After much deliberation, we have decided to move to distance learning and instructional support starting Monday, March 16th. The TSS facility will be closed until April 14th. This means that we’ll be supporting student learning remotely for the three weeks up until spring break. This is a…
Are Gifted and Talented Programs Dumbing Down Our Students?
More and more frequently, parents of young students are pushing for their child to be identified as “gifted and talented”. Parents might think they are benefitting their children by advocating for that label and, to be honest, parents like the recognition themselves. We must have done all the right things if our child is identified…
Does Nagging Work for You?
At some point, every parent has nagged their child. It is just in our nature as parents. We nag because we are frustrated and don’t know what else to do. We want to instill some life skills in our kids, but they’re not internalizing them. Nagging puts us in charge of tasks our kids should…
Uncovering and Addressing Executive Functioning Struggles In Students
Late, Lost or Missing Homework? Uncovering and Addressing Executive Functioning Struggles In Students Another week and another missing assignment in the grade book for your student. It seems like all their peers complete and turn assignments in on time, so why is it so hard for your child? Late, lost or forgotten homework can be…
Summer Reading Picks
One of the things I love about summer is that I’m able to read a lot. I lean toward mysteries and modern fiction. This summer, I branched out a little and read a few young adult books, which were really good. Below are several lists of recommended books. Some are for parents, others are for…
Average isn’t a four letter word
A recent Washington Post article, by Jacque Gorelick, There is no room for average students these days. Here’s why that worries me.” highlights many of the reasons that I started The Sycamore School. I saw a critical need to respond to the stress and pressure being placed on students at increasingly younger ages. As Gorelick writes,…
“Finding a Love of Learning”
A Conversation with Karyn Ewart, Ph.D. on Radio Hotline with Dennis Price Why can’t school be fun and engaging? When did school become all about worksheets? Why does learning stop at the walls of the school? Founder and Head of School Karyn Ewart discusses these topics and why she started The Sycamore School on the…
Get Off Your Screens, There’s So Much Summer To Do!
My Wish for Students this Summer Over the summer, I’d like our students to explore, inquire and enjoy. Many parents are already struggling with managing their child’s screen time, and frustrated with kids who don’t know what else to do. Here are some ideas of activities that might engage tweens and teens (and adults!) From…
In Defense of Failure
We don’t want perfectionists, we want risk-takers who will fail and learn from their mistakes. I want our students to make mistakes and [gasp, shudder,] even fail. Making mistakes is a great way to learn. Learning is disorganized, perhaps messy, and not linear. And yet, mainstream education presents curriculum in a manner and sequence that…