Taking a Leap

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I should probably start by apologizing for the crickets emanating from this blog for these many months. The two most concrete expressions of my musings in this space have been Intersession and our Mindfulness initiative, and these two have been dominating my time of late.

Nonetheless, I have made a decision. One of my goals in this work is to break down the “silos” that divide our work into disciplines and departments. For next year, I will be making a first tentative swing of the sledgehammer; I will remove the textbook from the A.P. World History syllabus and replace it with an anthology of World Literature. It is, frankly, an exhilarating and daunting prospect. Every time I read a section of the Literature book, I become more convinced that this is a change that will enliven the class and deepen the students’ learning and appreciation for world history. I also realize that our son Ben has far more experience teaching literature than I do (inasmuch as he was an English major and taught English for one year). I know that I will not be teaching literature as he did; I will be using literature as a frame of reference for teaching history. Nonetheless, this will be largely new ground for me, and that is the daunting part.

I realize that this is hardly a trail-blazing leap into interdisciplinary studies, but it is a start.

Mindfulness Update

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As planned, I have implemented a Mindfulness program in classes this fall. Eight gracious colleagues allow me to invade one or more of their sections for ten minutes once a week to introduce their students to Mindfulness. While this has substantially complicated my own schedule (I present Mindfulness at fourteen different class meetings – not including my own – each week), it has been worth it. I began this week to survey the students about their thoughts on the Mindfulness classes to date, and the early returns are encouraging; of those surveyed to this point, 31% say they try to practice Mindfulness outside of our class sessions, and 39% say they either would or probably would take advantage of further Mindfulness programs, were the school to offer them. This comes from a relatively small sample size (46 students so far), but it does suggest that there is a place for Mindfulness within our program and that Avon students would be receptive to it.

Visiting Committee

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I am off campus for the entire week of October 23rd, and I spent the first part of that time, from Sunday afternoon to Wednesday afternoon, serving on a visiting committee at a school undergoing a NEAS&C reaccreditation. While it would be inappropriate to say much about the school itself, I would encourage colleagues interested in intense professional development to accept any invitation to serve on one of these committees. Full disclosure: it is a lot of work. My committee met until 10 on Sunday night, 10:30 Monday night, and nearly midnight on Tuesday night, and we were at the school before 7:30 on Monday and only slightly later on Tuesday and Wednesday. When you are on campus, you are either frantically seeking out people you want to interview or working on the written report; off campus, you meet with your committee to discuss the school and the standards and to write some more.

It is intense, but it is very fulfilling. It is fascinating to take such a thorough look at another school, and, inevitably, it is an occasion for reflection about your own school and work. It is also a chance to get to know ten or eleven colleagues from other schools and to spend a few days in serious conversations about about teaching and learning, residential life, coaching, and everything else that we do.

If you get a chance, do it. It will be challenging and exhausting, and you will really enjoy it.

Mindfulness at Avon Old Farms

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The Mindfulness program got under way formally last week in sixteen different classes involving four different disciplines. The course will involve eight roughly ten-minute sessions and will introduce students to the concept of Mindfulness, its many benefits, and several Mindful practices. The early feedback has been encouraging; several students have expressed an interest, and participation in Club Med is up (with the new participants coming from the classes introduced to Mindfulness).

I will solicit student (and faculty) feedback more formally toward the end of the course, but I am encouraged that a high percentage of the students seem to be receptive to learning about Mindfulness.

More about Mindfulness at Avon here.

What Am I Thinking – New Year

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As we get fully under way with the ’16-’17 school year, I am thinking about a number of curricular initiatives. First, at least chronologically, is the introduction of a Mindfulness program. While Club Med has a small number of consistent participants, I am looking for ways to introduce more Avonians to the benefits of a mindfulness practice. I have created an eight-session brief introduction to mindfulness, based in part on the secondary school curriculum of the good folks at mindfulschools.org, in part on material in Meena Srinivasan’s Teach, Breathe, Learn (which you are welcome to borrow from the Clark Room’s Recommended Reading shelf), in part on Chris Willard’s work (and you could borrow his Growing Up Mindful as well, once I have finished it), and in part on my own experience. I will be looking to share that brief introduction in any way I can. More on that soon.

As always, I am engaged in a formal curriculum review. This year, I have two things in mind as I ponder our curriculum. One of course is the self-study we are preparing for NEAS&C and the curriculum description that will accompany that self-study. The other is an effort to “break down the silos” between the academic departments. I am looking for ways to help the students see connections between the work of scientists and artists, or mathematicians and historians, for example. It might involve themes common to several departments at the same grade level. For example, the theme of English 3H involves American Identity, while my U.S. History course was also built on the question “What does it mean to be an American?” That theme may not translate well to other disciplines, but perhaps others do. Another approach would be the creation of interdisciplinary courses.

I continue to be interested in creating some kind of Global certificate or Global diploma program that would recognize students whose work has involved inquiry into a large number of the diverse cultures this world features. A related question is whether/ we can increase the percentage of our students who study, or at least travel, internationally while they are at Avon.

Another question on my mind is whether we should offer a “capstone” experience of some kind for highly-motivated seniors. This might combine with the above interests in that it could conceivably involve travel, or at least greater exposure to another culture, and it would involve some sort of culminating, interdisciplinary project for the student.

Come To the Clark Room: Exams!

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With exams looming and faced with writing a new one myself, I am thinking now is a good time for a conversation about exams. We could confront “big picture,” philosophical questions such as what is the real purpose of exams, and is the traditional format the best way to achieve that purpose? Or we could deal with nitty-gritty questions such as whether the content on the exam should be cumulative or more recent stuff, how to write an exam for the designated time frame, and the proper ratio between questions that test content knowledge and questions that test skills.

If this seems like a conversation you would like to have, complete this survey, which was also emailed to you, and I will schedule one or more conversations during “free” periods in the Clark Room. Perhaps I will even be able to offer refreshments.

What Am I Thinking? – Mindfulness

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This is Part II of a series in which I share with the faculty more of what I am thinking and doing in my role as dean of curriculum and instruction. In that spirit, I hope you will feel free to offer comments, questions, and suggestions.

Mindfulness. I am increasingly convinced that Mindfulness meditation, and Mindfulness practices more broadly, would serve our students very well both now and in their future, and there is an ever-increasing volume of scientific evidence to that effect. Mindfulness, you may recall, is defined by Jon Kabat-Zinn as “paying attention, in the present moment, on purpose, non-judgmentally,” and it involves a number of simple practices, meditation chief among them, designed to help people focus on the present moment in a way that allows them to respond, rather than react, to the world around them. Studies tie Mindfulness practices to a number of health benefits; for our students, two important ones would be an enhanced ability to focus and significant stress reduction. For more on Mindfulness and how it might work at school, take three minutes to watch this video about Mindfulness at Middlesex School.

While there is already some enthusiasm for Mindfulness on campus – “Club Med” enjoys modest but consistent participation and at least two Intersession courses had a Mindfulness component – our intent is to build a Mindfulness program slowly, with the long-term goal being active participation by students, faculty, and interested local parents/alumni.

One of the speakers in the video linked above says “To be present for their lives is a huge gift,” and it is a gift we want Avonians to have.

What Am I Thinking?

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In the context of the Self-Study in which we are all engaged – and the self-evaluation aspect of my annual review – I have realized that I need to share with the faculty more of what I am thinking and doing in my role as dean of curriculum and instruction. In that spirit, I offer this post (and future posts of the same title – I have a long list) and ask that you feel free to offer comments, questions, and suggestions.

Come to the Clark Room. One aspect of my role at school – the aspect at which I have been least successful to date – is to be a general mentor to the faculty in terms of their teaching and to make my office into a space where faculty come to read about and/or discuss teaching and learning generally and their classes in particular.

With regard to being a mentor, I do not present myself as someone with all (or even most of) the answers, but I have been doing this work for quite a while, and I may be able to help. I would be happy to come to your class(es) and watch for anything you name and/or to offer feedback generally. If something is not working, let me know; perhaps I can help or offer a useful piece of advice. (Keep in mind that one thing I do not do is evaluation. If you confess a weakness to me and ask for help, it will not turn up in your performance review.)

With regard to the Clark Room, I would invite you to come by whenever you can. I have a number of teaching-and-learning resources available, and I would love to have a conversation about whatever is on your mind. I have already had one “Come to the Clark Room” event – on Mindfulness – and I hope to have a few more before the summer. If you have something – a successful technique or an app that you use to good effect in class, for example – let me know, and I’ll arrange a “Come to the Clark Room” event at which you can share with interested faculty.

More to follow.

Small Teaching – Understanding

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The second section of James Lang’s Small Teaching concerns “Understanding,” and “will give you a set of small teaching tools for creating classroom or online experiences that deepen student understanding, improve the ability of your students to analyze and improve their own learning, and become mindful practitioners of a range of cognitive skills.”

The first of the three chapters in this section is called “Connecting,” and its focus is helping students make connections among the major themes and ideas of the course work. It also plays on the reality that when we learn, the neurons in our brain are literally making new connections, so our primary goal is always to help students make connections. Lang points out that you cannot make connections for the students – at least not the ones in their brains. Hence, simply informing them of connections in the material we present is not helpful; helping them to see the connections for themselves is helpful. By way of example, he cites an experiment in which students were given, prior to class, either a full set of notes on the day’s topic or a partial set consisting of “headings and titles of definitions and concepts, which required students to add information to complete the notes.” (Cornelius & Owen-DeSchryver, 2008) The outcome? Students in the two groups did equally well initially, but on the final exam the group given partial notes outperformed the group given complete notes, particularly on the conceptual questions. Lang points out that the partial notes gave students a framework which encouraged them to make the connections themselves, and this is why their conceptual understanding was stronger. This notion – providing a framework which the students complete with their own connections – is one of Lang’s five suggestions for small teaching in this area. The others are: solicit students’ prior knowledge of the material at the outset (which will inform your decisions about what to present and how to present it), have students create concept maps to answer questions or solve problems, offer examples from everyday life (or have students do so when they can), and use the Minute Thesis. This is an exercise of Lang’s devising in which the instructor lists important items from the material (he is an English professor, so his are works they have read and themes they have encountered) and asks a student to circle two that are connected; he then has the whole class conjure up the thesis for a paper on the connection between the circles items and uses the students’ theses as fodder for a conversation.