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From Rob Brisk, Wellington Head of School. |
3/12/2008Alright, I know what you're thinking. Where has the blog been lately? Certainly someone as technologically savvy as Rob could not have stayed away from the blog for so long, you think. Well, that is where you are wrong. Sadly, I am from the other side of the technological divide.
Recently I had the opportunity to gather with independent school educators for the annual conference of the National Association of Independent Schools. There I heard Sir Ken Robinson (author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative) speak about what he calls the largest generation gap since the 1960s. Then, generations were deeply divided over politics and philosophy. Now, Ken Robinson asserts, we are separated by a technological divide. He sees our children as digital natives, having grown up with nothing other than a digitized, universally-connected world, and my generation as digital immigrants. We come from a world of rotary phones, pencil and paper notes, and vinyl record albums. We have entered the digitized world but it is still new and strange to us. Our children were designed with technology in mind. I see my generation's adoption of technology as retrofitting – we rewire, rethink, and practice to fit in.
This difference has led to lively conversations about the best way to educate students about technology. Digital immigrants instruct digital natives on the use of technology in too many schools. Too often, this work serves to straitjacket, frustrate, and slow down students. It is one of the few areas in which students are way ahead of us. Certainly, some of our lessons about the Internet are crucial for students to understand. Too often, I am surprised to learn that our children do not understand basic crucial truths of the digital age. Often students do not understand that what they post electronically is not private and that what they post exists forever. And with any media, students need help to ascertain the difference between a good and valid source and those that are not. We still have much to teach our students in the areas of technology, but we should not lose sight of the fact that we are retrofits and they are naturals.
That leads me to our school building. It, like me, is a retrofit. Every wire, cable, and server has been added to a building designed for blackboards and chalk. I found out shortly before taking the job at Wellington that my aunt had been a student in the Fishinger Road/Lower School part of our school. (To keep myself out of trouble with my aunt, I should mention that because of generational crookedness, she is only four years older than I am.) The truth of the matter is that the building is largely the same as when my aunt attended, despite how much both education and students have changed. Our digital native children are ready for the next great age, and we are bound to provide that for them.
Note to self: ink a reminder on my desk calendar to write another blog in the coming weeks.
12/21/2007
I start this blog by wishing you all a restful and joyous holiday season. The Brisks will be spending the entire break in Columbus, our first in Ohio.
I just spent half an hour reading Yoon and the Christmas Mitten to the Lower School students during the annual "Story under the Tree." It is a delight to experience the various Wellington traditions. One tradition that at first I did not understand was that all 200 students were wearing one shoe. It turns out that the other shoe was elsewhere being filled with holiday treats by Père Noël.
One of the joys of the "Story under the Tree" tradition is that it highlights the joys of reading. While research shows that being read to and reading from a very young age is the best thing anyone can do to prepare for standardized testing, the fact is that reading can and should be a joy for us all. One of the things I love most about Winter Break is the sure knowledge that I will have some hours of uninterrupted reading. To be sure that I have great books to read, I've taken to the habit of purchasing a few books for myself, handing them to my wife and asking her to wrap them and put them under the tree for me.
Let us all try to read over the vacation. And let us use this blog to comment and to share with each other the great books, serious or light, that we read over the break. Please feel free to respond by including a list of your favorite titles from 2007 and any great reads this holiday season brings you.
One book I enjoyed recently is A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. Pink writes compellingly about what it will take to succeed in the 21st century. A second current favorite is Andrea Barrett's The Air We Breathe, which tells the story of tuberculosis patients recovering in the early part of the 20th century. That doesn't sound like much fun, does it? But it is beautifully written.
Let's celebrate our love of reading and of learning.
Have a joyous holiday. I look forward to seeing you in 2008. 12/6/2007Yesterday I faced one of the most difficult decisions for a new head in a new school in a new part of the country: a decision that is never discussed at heads conferences and was never the topic of study at the Harvard School of Education during my time there: to call or not to call a snow day.
In my eight years in Portland, Oregon, we experienced a total of six inches of snowfall. And the key indicator of snow day calling was not how many inches would fall around the school, but at what elevation would the snow start to fall. In Portland, one block on top of the hill may be snowbound while two blocks away and in a slight valley might be a scene more reminiscent of spring. Of course, all such topographical training is useless here in Ohio.
The decision to call, or not to call a snow day is made in a similar fashion to many other decisions at the school. We look at the best practices. What do other schools renowned for excellence in snow day calling do? We examine carefully trends and decisions made by other local institutions. We build a team of experts to assess the situation. The invaluable Randy Saxour, Wellington transportation coordinator, joins me in a 5 am assessment. Brenda Bell and other administrators are available for consultation. Beyond that, we have a plan in place to disseminate the news if it is a snow day. Ultimately, it is my call.
In one key regard the snow day decision is unlike most of our work. Because many of our students rely on busing from school districts around Columbus and beyond, our determination is made largely on the basis of whether local district buses are running. Therefore, on this issue, we depend on others and are not so independent. Where we seek in other decisions to be a leader, here we must be a follower.
Did we get this one right, this December 5 "no snow day" day? As with most decisions, there is controversy. One key constituency, perhaps my most important one, my children, tell me I got it all wrong.
I hope you all enjoy this light and fluffy and benign first snow.
11/20/2007Last Tuesday (Nov 13) was an exciting night at Wellington as we invited members of the community to engage in a discussion of curricular innovations, specifically for the Upper School. It was exciting for a number of reasons.
First, the faculty members who spoke presented some interesting and imaginative possibilities for the future of the Wellington Upper School. They shared their ideas for programs that would make students designers, researchers, creators, and authors. These experiences, in some cases, would make our students national leaders in areas of science, theater, and the arts. Further, teachers spoke about approaches to making our students lifelong leaders. It was heady stuff.
Equally exciting was the fact that nearly 100 people showed up for the event, well beyond what we expected. Each attendee was handed a packet of post-its and a Wellington blue pen and was asked to note any ideas sparked by what they heard from the faculty.
As good as the presentations were the most exciting part of the evening came next, when guests were asked to take an active role. These parents of children in all three divisions and some of our faculty colleagues took the post-its which they had been studiously annotating throughout the evening and stuck them to boards spread around the room, giving the faculty feedback and suggestions regarding each of the programs presented. Parents got into deep discussions with each other and with faculty. What was billed as a one hour event continued for two, not because the program ran long but because the ideas just kept coming.
Faculty members and parents worked together to create, design, and author – just as we are hoping our students will. Tuesday night's experience strikes me as a model for how together we create a learning community. I look forward to similar adventures in the future.
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