When I went into this self study, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do: I would carve out time for myself to write more during the year, attend to and nurture the writer in me that seemed on a distant but parallel path to my teacher-self. Running on what seemed like two parallel lines, these two selves rarely seemed to touch. In the end, while I didn’t actually end up writing, I discovered more points of convergence between teacher Jane and writer Jane than I had thought possible. Continue reading Allow for the Transformation
Category Archives: Upper School
Driving with Headlights
The writer E. L Doctorow famously said, “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” As a writer who studied under E.L Doctorow in graduate school, those word meant a lot to me. At their heart, they are about uncertainty, finding your way by seeing only part of the road ahead. They connect with my own writing process since I often uncover and unearth understandings of my characters and plot along the way. These words also promise an inviting possibility — that on my journey through the world, I can continuously discover my path. Continue reading Driving with Headlights
Exploring Our Guiding Principles with New Faculty & Staff
As we move towards the end of the year, I thought it might be useful to return to some of the work that our new faculty and staff engaged in at the start of the year during our orientation sessions. After brainstorming personal connections to our guiding principles, participants formed groups based on the guiding principles that most resonated for them. These groups then affinity maped the collection of responses that had been generated in the brainstorming exercise. Each group mapped these ideas into one of three overarching themes that they felt amplified the core guiding principles. New faculty and staff were then asked to think about how these themes might serve as a guidepost for their wayfinding and learning work throughout their first year at LREI.
With much work already behind us, perhaps useful for all of us at LREI to ask how these guiding principles and the related themes developed by our newest community members are guiding and supporting our work with learners and pushing each of us closer to our learning edge?
Continue reading Exploring Our Guiding Principles with New Faculty & Staff
Self Portraits of an English Teacher
I’m thinking a lot these days about a recurring project my son did in kindergarten. Every month, they drew a new self-portrait. With a small hand mirror and colored pencils in front of him, my son paused, observed, and drew what he saw. The drawings became more detailed over time, capturing things like skin tone, expression, clothing, and when looked at together they tell a kind of narrative: who my son was at a particular moment and who he was becoming, over time. Continue reading Self Portraits of an English Teacher
Service Learning Lab: Creating the Roadmap for a 14-Year Plan
The current LREI strategic plan states a s goal the need to:
Continue reading Service Learning Lab: Creating the Roadmap for a 14-Year Plan
Math as Witness: who counts? and who doesn’t?
This post originally appeared on The Theological Engineer blog.
I ended the school year with a surprising burst of energy after the students left for the summer. I slogged my way through two straight days of comment-writing. Continue reading Math as Witness: who counts? and who doesn’t?
Exploring Our Progressive Purpose
It’s been an exciting start of the year for students, faculty and families at LREI. I’m privileged in my new role as Director of Learning & Innovation to be able to discover each day more about the rich learning experiences that weave their way through and between our lower, middle and high school and afterschool programs. Continue reading Exploring Our Progressive Purpose
Journey to Cuba
This summer I travelled to Cuba with a group of educators and fellow leaders of school groups abroad. Eight of us were Spanish teachers and we had a great time immersing ourselves in the culture.
The Joy in Terror
Opening a Pandora’s Box of Possibilities
Dear Colleagues,
Consider this as an open letter from our newest colleagues to those of us returning for the beginning of a new season of learning at LREI. In a short ideation session, new faculty identified essential elements of our progressive purpose, stated goals for “being” at LREI and uncovered some questions for which they will look to you for support and guidance.
What if we didn’t finish all of the questions?
This entry was originally posted at https://kellyoshea.wordpress.com/2015/04/27/what-if-we-didnt-finish-all-of-the-questions/
My Physics 10 (a trimester-long class exploring E&M topics for 10th graders who haven’t yet studied mechanics) was wrapping up some extensions to an electrophorus activity. They were already pros at explaining and predicting electrostatic phenomena, but this activity gave them yet another way to test out their thinking, practice their charge diagrams, and add depth and subtlety to their understanding. (I adapted instructions and ideas from this activity that I found in a quick search and that I had left for students last trimester when I needed to miss a day of their class.) Continue reading What if we didn’t finish all of the questions?
“Splat” — On making mistakes and meaning
The following “conversation” between Ana, Michelle and Dave appeared on one of the whiteboards in my office: Continue reading “Splat” — On making mistakes and meaning
Progressive Approach to Practicing: HS Wind Ensemble’s Peer Evaluations
Every music director has made the following exclamation either out loud or silently while lying awake at night: “Our ensemble needs to experience playing music together after all notes and rhythms have been mastered.” Why? This is when the magic of playing music together happens. We want our students to experience how the joy and art of collective music-making is taken to a heightened state when our minds no longer need to be concerned with “what note is that?” or “how does that rhythm go?” What’s more, when students can play their music effortlessly we can put our energy towards exploring and practicing the many nuances necessary for bringing the music to life. Too often directors and students spend their valuable class time going over things that should be tackled before or after a rehearsal. Continue reading Progressive Approach to Practicing: HS Wind Ensemble’s Peer Evaluations
Designing for Innovation
What do you get when you bring together faculty teams from each division and frame mission-focused inquiry around a design thinking framework? You get our first successful Innovation Institute. Over a five-day period this summer, a diverse group of faculty came together to explore the concept of time and how it impacts teaching and learning at LREI. With facilitation by designers from the School of Visual Arts Design for Social Innovation program (@InquiringMonica and @playlabinc), the participants explored how a design thinking mindset can be used to forward our mission through the cultivation of empathy connected to purposeful action. Within in this framework, participants identified questions connected to problems whose solution will have a positive institutional impact on our work and culture. Continue reading Designing for Innovation
Pursue your Passion
This year’s Senior Project is nearing the end! Next Friday marks the end of Senior Project 2014. By far, this has been the most successful project in my eight years as principal because, instead of encouraging internships for each member of the senior project, we refocused the project to answer the following question: