Many schools spend the first six weeks of school building community in order to establish a foundation that will support learning through the rest of the year. I can relate to the hope ofl developing caring relationships and problem-solving strategies that will keep us away from conflict. As a person who would inherently prefer to …
“It is important to practice problem solving strategies so we can use them solving our problems. We get better and better the more we practice! We might not even have to think about it next time.” -Ben, age 6 I strongly believe that all children hope to bring the best person they can be to even the toughest …
In order to read the world, we must be moved by what we see.In order to create, we must have a strong desire to examine what has moved us.In order to sustain this world we have made and seen and read, we must understand why we were moved.We cannot be moved without relationships. L.C., teacher-participant …
My recent post, Say What You Mean, began as this post — but I got so tangled up in thinking about the relationship between knowledge and meaning and learning and relationship and power and vulnerability that I realized I’d better split these posts in two. In this post, I’ll share the experience I had recently …
We’ve been infected with this kind of pathological impatience that makes us want to have the knowledge but not do the work of claiming it. I mean, the true material of knowledge is meaning. … And the only way to glean knowledge is contemplation. And the road to that is time. There’s nothing else. It’s …
In the start of the school year, it is my practice to offer experiences that might build relationships between children and materials in order to build relationship between children. Knowing that, I need to both be open to the inevitable surprises and the unexpected, while being intentional about what materials I offer. This year, I thought about materials that might demonstrate …
Emotions and feelings exist inside all of us as a type of energy that has potential to be expressed, utilized, and shared outside of us and into our worlds. Our learning community puts in great effort to share and make visible our different emotions. When we label and discuss them, we normalize their existence and welcome everyone …
It’s been a stunning, bewildering, shocking ten days. I’ve heard people across the political spectrum call the rapid-fire developments chaotic and confusing. It’s hard to know how to respond. Today I listened to an interview with a musician born in Syria who has been living in America for sixteen years. Out of the country to perform …
This year, in the Primary Group, we are thinking deeper into the idea of “self.” As stated in our Letter of Intention to parents at the beginning of the year, we are particularly curious about the children’s growing understanding of themselves. We believe understanding of self is foundational to all relationships – relationship to one another, to the environment, …
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. ― Albert Szent-Gyorgyi As the children shared images and reflections of their trip to the Portland Farmer’s Market, they stumbled upon a discovery — that there were many unexpected surprises of all kinds within our trip together. We wondered: How might the sharing …