Check out this article in the Augusta Chronicle about Episcopal Day School's new 1:1 computing program in which all students in grades 1-4 will be issued an iPad and all students in grades 5-8 will be issued a Macbook Pro. 

http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/education/2015-01-27/eds-students-be-issued-ipads-computers

After nearly two years of study and research, a faculty committee is proposing that EDS adopt a 1:1 program in which every student in grades 1-8 has a portable computing device, “A 1:1 program in the school will provide tools to support our desire to move toward an understanding of learning that is active, purposeful, rigorous, and relevant to the world in which our students live.”

We have gradually increased teacher and student access to computers over the years through careful stewardship of our resources and philanthropic dollars. We began in 1998 with a commitment to having a teacher computer and student computer in every classroom. In 2000, we built a state-of–the-art computer lab, and have kept the lab updated through the years. We added our first mobile laptop lab in 2002, adding a second in 2008, an iPad cart in 2013, and this year gave every teacher an iPad for classroom use. This measured approach saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars over that time compared to what many schools were investing in extravagant or excessive technology purchases.

However, the committee report concludes, “We have reached the point that the student and teacher demands for technology tools for learning are beyond our current capabilities. Both mobile carts and the computer lab are used nearly every hour of the day, often involving negotiations among staff.” Currently computers are being used in classrooms for instruction and assessment differentiation, additional or alternative practice and presentations, research, writing, project creations and presentation, and collaboration.

In addition, the list grows daily of learning options that teachers currently forego because of limitations to computer access. The committee report also outlines a body of research that indicates the multiple benefits - both academic and non-academic - to students and teachers when students have ready access to computer technology in the classroom.

I’m so proud of the progress our faculty members make every year in their undying commitment to preparing our children for learning and for life. That, coupled with our careful stewardship of resources, truly makes EDS the best educational value in the country!

By Saving, Do We Condemn Our Children?

Kay Wyma’s recent talks to EDS parents and faculty were on an old topic but with a startling new revelation. She wove delightfully familiar parenting stories that were alternatingly affirming and provocative.  Wyma has found an endearing style to deliver fairly straight talk to parents about how to work against the contemporary culture of entitlement.  Although this is not a new topic, especially in the independent school world, Mrs. Wyma delivered one piece of information that stopped me cold in my tracks.

Over the past decade and a half, I’ve attended many similarly themed workshops and have worked with the likes of Stephen Glenn (author of How to Raise Self-Reliant Children in a Self-Indulgent World) and Wendy Mogel (author of Blessings of a Skinned Knee), whose books I recommend along with Mrs. Wyma’s Cleaning House: A Mom’s 12-Month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement. Each of these experts in his or her own way has made a compelling case that parents today overprotect children.  We all are familiar with clever terms such as helicopter  parenting, bubble-wrap parenting, and smothering.  However, until Mrs. Wyma quoted some important research, I did not realize the potentially dire consequences of this parenting style.

It turns out we risk far more than merely raising spoiled, entitled young people.  Overprotective over-parenting has been linked to increases in anxiety and depression among young people.  The very issues that lead many to over-involvement in their children’s lives—wanting to protect them from the damaging effects of conflict, disappointment, struggle, and failure—are actually exacerbated by our well-intentioned efforts.  The cure is spreading the disease.

This is counter-intuitive for most of us.  I think parents often justify the trade-off in ways that go something like this, “I will risk spoiling my child a little bit (they’re just precious children after all) in order to protect them from becoming hurt, anxious, depressed, or disillusioned with school or life.”  Others like Glenn and Mogel have questioned whether that’s a good trade-off, but Wyma brings to light research that reveals it’s no trade-off at all.  This is not a question of parenting styles and choices, it’s a matter of consequences.  Quite simply, over-protection is a terribly misleading term, it leads to increases in anxiety, depression, and diminished success in life.

The lesson is clear.  We need to love our children, believe in our children, trust our children, and let them struggle with the challenges that life presents them.  They will be stronger, wiser, and happier as a result.

A Revolution Underway in Education

Here is a link to a youtube video of a talk I gave recently to Leadership Augusta.  It outlines my thoughts about revolutionary changes happening in education and what higher education will look like in the coming decades. I try to make a case that the four-year residential college will be a thing of the past -- and so will the four-year degree.  What will education look like?  Watch....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlEw7bn1VFw
This next video is of my talk to Leadership Columbia County. In this video, I summarize the same argument in the first few minutes, but focus instead on the critical importance of schools more intentionally teaching and nurturing non-cognitive skills (often called 21st century skills) to prepare students for this new landscape.    This talk is about the same as the last one until about 7:30 at which point I turn the focus of this one to the non-cognitive skills that will be needed to be a victor in the 21st Century.  I also offer some of the research on non-cognitive skills as a good or better predictor of academic performance and life satisfaction than grades, IQ, SSAT scores and other cognitive measures.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?edit=vd&v=QHfDk7k2gyQ

Marketing Idea

Here is a link to a nice article about a marketing consortium I helped found.  It's from the newsletter of the Southern Association of Independent Schools (SAIS), of which I am a board member.

This is a link to the SAIS newsletter (see third article down).

This is a link to just the pdf article:

Nimbleness, Responsiveness, Innovation, Accountability: How Independent Schools Meet 21st Century Demands

In his book, “Creating Innovators:  The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World,” Harvard education specialist Tony Wagner asserts that our current K-12 education systems are not “teaching the skills that matter most in the market place.” In an interview with Thomas Friedman, he explains, “Today, because knowledge is available on every internet-connected device, what you know matters far less that what you can do with what you know.”

We all know the world is changing; and changing more rapidly than ever in the history of man.  Schools today must pay attention to those changes and respond accordingly.  Unfortunately most of our schools are not nimble enough to respond appropriately to the changing landscape.  Large, bureaucratic state-run systems are hampered by their sheer size as well as an inordinate emphasis on content and a single standardized state test.  America’s bi-cameral political system is intentionally designed for change to be slow, which helps keep our government from following cultural fads rather than leading the culture.  But this plodding, monetized political process is not conducive to making the necessary adjustments in education that today’s student deserves.

This is the great value and purpose of independent schools.  Independent schools, which are locally run and funded, can be nimble, responsive, and innovative while being truly accountable to results.

Nimbleness: Independent school can respond to changing conditions in thoughtful, incremental ways that keep the students’ needs central.  For instance, because they have site-control of budgets, they can make sensitive and sensible adjustments in economic downturns without resorting to draconian measures – such a reducing services, eliminating critical programs, or reducing teaching days -- that impact students and learning.

Responsiveness: Independent school communities are small by design and engage parents and the larger community with intention.  Independent schools are student-centered and have as their mission the individual growth of individual students. This allows for appropriate responses to individual student and family needs, as is mission appropriate for the school.  Most importantly, independent schools can focus time, energy, resources and instruction around what Thomas Friedman calls the vital “soft skills,” such as resilience, creative problem solving, collaboration, cultural competency, and ethical values.

Innovation: Again, because the governance is located at the school, Independent schools have a greater ability to be innovative, to quickly implement good ideas and new technologies, to run pilot programs, and sample curricular changes.

Accountability:  Independence does not mean freedom from accountability. In fact, the best independent schools use a variety of assessment tools and data to evaluate their performance and outcomes – both academic and “soft” skills -- including multiple nationally standardized tests, competitive high school and college placement, teacher observation and assessment, and tracking alumni performance in school and beyond.

Tony Wagner says, “We teach and test things most students have no interest in and will never need, and facts that they can Google and will forget as soon as the test is over.” By contrast, a good independent school’s mission is to exercise nimbleness, responsiveness, innovation, and accountability in ways that take into account the development of the whole person with the skills and attributes necessary to lead meaningful, productive, and satisfying lives in the 21^st century.

The Attitude of Gratitude

This year I had the unusual pleasure of attending Thanksgiving chapel at three different Episcopal schools.  It’s as if God knows when we need to hear the message more than once! Here is the message I heard in three, different, compelling ways with three different communities: as we move away from the holiday of Thanksgiving and into the season marked by giving and receiving, let us take with us the attitude of gratitude. If we could adopt the spirit of thanksgiving all year long, everything – yes, everything – would change.

At our Thanksgiving chapel this year, Bishop Scott Benhase reminded us that “the prayer of thanksgiving precedes all prayers, and the attitude of thanksgiving precedes all other virtues.”  An attitude of thanksgiving must come first before all else.

At the Thanksgiving chapel at St. Andrew’s School in Middletown, DE, the Headmaster, Tad Roach, described various levels of gratitude.  At its simplest level, thanksgiving is expressed in notes and cards, by saying please and thank you as we teach young people to do, and acknowledging an act of kindness from someone.  At a higher level of gratitude, we contemplate and consider the blessings of many people in our lives – parents, friends, teachers, mentors, and others who have loved and supported us.  At a higher, more developed stage of gratitude, we begin to understand the countless unknown people who have contributed through sacrifice to our well-being, safety, and pursuit of happiness. When we think about the concept of Thanksgiving this way, Roach says, “We see that giving thanks frees us from the temptation to see ourselves as the center of the universe, magically entitled to privileges, rights, resources, and honors…When we give thanks, we begin to peel away what George Eliot calls ‘our moral stupidity’ – our inability to see that our own desires, our own needs, our own anxieties, and our own preoccupations fade away in complete insignificance in light of the human drama going on all around us.”

The highest level of thanksgiving, according to Roach, is expressed when we live out this gratitude in celebration of the human spirit and God’s love for us – when we become the giver of sacrificial support rather than merely the recipient.  When we choose to live, speak, and act in ways that are more civil, more humane, and more generous, we become Thanksgiving.

So let us not leave Thanksgiving behind. Let us embrace it and take it with us into this season of Advent.  Let’s make an attitude of gratitude our shield and defense against the selfish, profane lopsided priorities that can so easily hijack the season of Christmas and the entry into a new year. If we could adopt the spirit of Thanksgiving all year long, everything – yes, everything – could change.

The EDS Advantage

GREAT NEWS! Please read this, because you probably either don’t know it or you take it for granted.  We all do. It’s hiding right in front of us in plain sight, but we get distracted and become focused on other, less important matters.

Here’s the bottom line: as parents we are missing the boat when we hyper-focus on singular, narrow variables in an academic program (e.g., relatively minor variations in grades, test-scores, class sizes, homework, etc.).  We disadvantage our children when we protect them from adversity, conflict, and even failure.  We disservice them when we de-emphasize the value and importance of non-academic learning and experiences.

Don’t get me wrong, I am as big an academic snob as anyone you will find, and I want students on the most rigorous path for which they are capable.  But the research is clearer that this can only be achieved if students are simultaneously developing non-cognitive skills and character traits. Even more importantly, the deliberate development of non-cognitive skills will lead to greater professional success and sense of well-being.

Here’s what’s not news:  This is the fundamental principle upon which EDS was founded. EDS wasn’t created because there was a shortage of places for Augusta’s children to learn math and read great works.  EDS was created to help young people develop their whole selves into well-rounded and well-grounded citizens and children of God.  We are intentional and purposeful about this in ways that exceed any other schools in the area. We understand that attention to this aspect of development supports academic progress and leads to more effective citizens with higher levels of satisfaction. For example:

·      We are the only school in the area that has a required PreK3-8th religion, religious history, and theology course of curriculum, complemented by daily prayer and pledge, weekly chapel, and monthly communion, led by a full time ordained chaplain.

·      Our students have the most extensive available public speaking and presentation training, practice and experience in PreK-8^th grades.

·      We have an intentional leadership curriculum, including authentic leadership roles and experiences, that has been upheld as a national model of excellence by the Council for Spiritual and Ethical Education.

·      We don't just take school trips, we’ve taken the care to develop a scope and sequence of integrated experiential education programming into all grades as community experiences.

·      When anti-bullying programs became the trend, EDS aimed higher and developed CORE, an integrated approach, involving parents, teachers, and students in an ongoing effort to promote the kind of school culture for which we strive.

·      Our teachers have worked to identify a specific set of non-cognitive, affective skills as part of our Core Outcomes, along with rubrics for determining progress.

·      Our teachers all believe that the character traits they are teaching are as central and important as the academic content.

·      We create formative experiences in which students face appropriate challenge, conflict, and adversity as teaching tools.

·      We are one of only 18 top schools in the country who take this information seriously enough to partner with ETS in developing the first-ever, scientifically supported non-cognitive skill assessment for middle school students.

I could go on, but you get the point.  I haven’t even touched upon our commitment to the formative programs in the arts and athletics, the fact that we have a full-time nurse unequalled in her qualifications and experience, the team approach we take to problem-solving and conflict resolution, and our commitment of time and money to professional development.

The links below clearly reveal that these things matter.  They help academic achievement and they lead to success, meaning, and satisfaction.  At EDS we don’t just strive to do schooling better, we strive to do better schooling.

This American Life podcast from 9/14 about non-cognitive skills:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/474/back-to-school

Which Traits Predict Success from Wired.com science blog:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/what-is-success-true-grit/

Back to School: Why Grit is More Important Than Good Grades from Time Magazine

http://ideas.time.com/2012/09/05/why-grit-is-more-important-than-grades/

Research from the Universities of Michigan and Rhode Island show the positive results of perseverance, love, gratitude, and prudence:

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55841/1/398_ftp.pdf

My Sept. 10 blog entry (in case you missed it) about the Stanford study of the impact of awe:

http://beyondmurraysmusings.blogspot.com/