Working backward from the end . . .

We spent Friday afternoon’s half-group time with our buddies in Bree and Rich’s class. This is a high-energy group of first and second graders that help our own students see how much they have learned and grown since they were that age. The focus of the afternoon was on math games. The teachers in both groups offered games that were not beyond the skill level of our younger friends but had enough luck involved that our partnerships could play fairly equally.

In a few weeks ahead, as we begin to talk about human development with all of the young people in our building, they will be able to draw on their experiences and observations about readiness, diversity of learning styles and maturational pace of their buddies, and more. (We will share more about those plans in an upcoming message to parents; right now they are still being fine-tuned.)

We’re moving deeper into our Ireland unit. A video about Ireland from the public television program Nature is showing us how human migration and other natural forces (such as the most recent ice age) have helped to change the landscape. We have moved in a very sketchy way through the Mesolithic and Neolithic times and are moving toward the Bronze Age. We are enjoying the luxury of having multiple copies of several age-appropriate books that cover the same periods, so we can compare, find conflicts and (in)consistencies, and discuss the reasons that the same material might be presented in different ways or with different levels of detail.

When students were doing research in earlier grades, the idea of using multiple resources for the same set of facts was sometimes difficult to appreciate. Students in third and fourth grade — when exhorted to use more than one source — may use one for one part of the information, another for a different part, and so on.  By the time they get to fifth/sixth grade, we expect them to go to more than one source for the same bits of information. How do we resolve a conflict? How do we evaluate and compare the credibility of our sources — online, print, and/or interview? This is a challenge that will not be resolved by the time our students graduate, but we hope to lay a strong foundation.

We are also continuing to read folk tales and legends. We plan to turn some of them into skits to share with our buddies. They may also form the basis for a larger dramatic production in the spring, but there are other possibilities, too. Our students will help us decide.

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On Friday, we talked for a while in our morning meeting about the inauguration of the new president. Our emphasis was on the importance of our fundamental commitment through the Constitution to the “peaceful transfer of power.” It is clear to us that most (but not all) of our children’s families supported a different candidate. Many of our families are involved in protest demonstrations and other actions to express their concern and dissatisfaction with the result of this historic election. But we are working on the idea of respecting diversity within our community and making sure that what appears to be a minority political view is not swept aside. Respect for diversity is sometimes a bit of a tightrope walk — seeking balance while moving toward a shared goal. Embracing true diversity challenges us all. Where are the boundaries? Violence? Exclusion? Ideological dismissal as indefensible by logic, evidence, and/or science?

Clearly, there is not enough time in our day to address all of these questions to the extent they deserve, and our students are at many different places in terms of interest, information, family involvement, and more. We hope that all of you will convey your values and concerns to your children while also expressing your support for the respectful inclusion of those who did not vote as your family members may have done.

We talked about the “100 days” benchmark. What are the powers of the president? Does it matter what has been done it 100 days? 125 days? 200 days? We took some time to figure out when the 100-day mark would be reached. It took a bit of review of the monthly calendar to get us to the 1st of May, give or take a bit. We’ll be talking about goals and actions, process, and outcomes in the many weeks between now and then.

We discussed what was unique about this president. With some wobbling around, we arrived at the fact that he had no previous political experience or military experience, unlike every past president — who has had at least one and often both. One student said, “He’s a businessman.” Yes. Is running our government in any way like a business? Do we have money to spend, profits to make? Are there competitors? Where does the government’s money come from? How do we decide how to spend it?  Who decides how it is spent? Does the president make all of those decisions? We hope you will keep this complicated conversation going at home. Our children are growing up in a politically-historic time. We’d like them to be informed witnesses to it when they are talking about it with their grandchildren.

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Learning to play the pennywhistle is a challenge for some students and easy for others. Among all of the  other ways it connects with our learning goals for our children, one of the major ones is realizing that repeated practice leads to success. For that reason, we spend a little time playing music together more afternoons than not. We take apart the tunes and the fingering — what do we need to practice again and again until our brain-memory of the tune and the muscle-memory required to play it come together?

On Friday, in response to several students’ requests, we wrote out and distributed The Wren Song,  which was our entry and exit song for the mummers’ play we performed at our Winter Assembly. Because they knew the tune already, it was easy for most of them to play it at a good speed the first time they tried. We listened to an Irish band (The Cassidys) playing the very first tune we had tackled (“The Kerry Polka”) and agreed that we were not yet ready to match their speed. The connection between the music and our larger study is easy to make. One of our map-enthusiast students had been giving a close look at a map of a small region in the west of Ireland and was able to point out the town of Lisdoonvarna on that map — a town whose name features in both a jig and a polka that we’ve been learning.

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Coming soon — Life Skills 101, Changes and Choices, new literature groups, a new weekly schedule, and more. Please check in here often.