After reading Dan Pink’s ideas regarding “design thinking” as a 21st century skill in his book, A Whole New Mind, we decided to find out about “design thinking” and see how it might be used in schools. IDEO, the d.school at Stanford, David Kelley, Tim Brown and Sandy Speicher have been the biggest proponents of design thinking as a methodology for problem solving in many different fields. Along with a number of people at IDEO, notably Sandy Speicher, Ellen Sitkin and Annette Diefenthaler, a team at Riverdale decided to produce a resource for schools, teachers and students that would help them understand the process and try out using it in schools. We hope that people will do so and share their thoughts and work back with the global education community.

Before I move on, we are all trying to do more to foster more of a sense of school community. Sometimes it is as simple as just saying hello and introducing oneself. I hope that as you move through this day that you will, in addition to meeting your sons’ and daughter’s teachers, you will also meet fellow parents by greeting them and getting to know each other.

Now for the denser part of today’s talk. I would like you to think about a moment. A moment when you learnt something that was challenging—a moment that was an a-ha moment for you. Think about it. Relive it. OK. Take a step away from that moment. What was it like? What characterized that moment for you? Think of three-five things that helped make that a good learning moment for you?

Fine. Keep those 3-5 things in your head. Now, think about a moment when you felt that you demonstrated character. When you lived by a principle. When you felt righteous. OK. Relive that moment. Now take a step away from that moment. What was it like? What characterized that moment for you? Think of three to five aspects regarding that situation that made it a moment of character growth for you?

Keep those characteristics in your head. Compare and contrast the character moment and the learning moment in your head. Is there anything in common? Remember that answer.

NOW-Here is a process I would like you to consider:
We face challenges.
We stumble and make mistakes.
We are motivated to be successful, though.
We recover and reflect on things.
We adapt and now do things slightly or significantly differently.
We are then successful, and yet, we remain humble.

Now—this process is about learning, about developing our minds, and it is also the way we develop our character. We are challenged in math. We are challenged in our belief in honesty. We make mistakes in math and in life. We want to be successful, we want to be better people. We change the way we approach the problem or the situation with our friends and do things differently. We end up being successful in our math class and also in our quest to develop ethically.

Now, another question—what capacities do you need to be ultimately successful in this learning process?

Yes—we need some intelligence. That is true, but since we cannot really increase our IQ significantly in itself we need to also develop capacities that we can shift—capacities that leverage the intelligence that we have. What are those capacities? Here are some: curiosity, zest, optimism, gratitude, self-control, social intelligence, grit.

How well do we do in teaching to and supporting the development of these capacities in our homes and our schools? Well—it is difficult because we do not always agree on what we are aiming to develop in young people. So I am going to share with you a hypothesis in a moment that brings together many thoughts and research. It brings together Stoic philosophy, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. It combines some cognitive psychology and educational research. It combines a bit of Plato with John Stuart Mill. Some Freud with Mischel. Perhaps bit of Bach and Beethoven.

A few moments ago, I asked you to think back to a learning moment of note and a moment when your character crystallized around a certain act. I asked you to relive those moments, reflect upon them and then see if there were any commonalities to those moments. Think about your sense of overlap between those moments and compare it to my hypothesis.

So I believe that true learning, learning that develops both our minds and character is characterized by these three things:

GOOD LEARNING IS SOCIAL
GOOD LEARNING IS HARD
GOOD LEARNING IS SENSORY

Let me talk about each of one of these for a few minutes.

LEARNING IS SOCIAL
We do not learn in isolation. It is true that some learning does happen when one is chained to a desk late at night, but in some ways that is more preparation for learning than actual learning. Learning takes place in the alchemy of a moment spent with others, in debate and discussion, in the moment of feedback from a peer or an expert. That is where one understands that there is a difference between my conception of something and someone else’s conception. When one apprehends the difference, then one seeks to resolve it, either by changing one’s mind—by learning something, or by reconciling the two views. Therefore, we having to learn together, and it is true that the best learning happens in communities.

At the same time, good learning or character development is highly emotionally charged. Positive emotion helps learning and helps us become more characterful. Why is it that one learns well when one appreciates one’s teacher’s sense of humor, his or her knowledge, or just the way they dress. It is because good development is linked entirely to our emotions. We remember more when we can tie skills or knowledge to concrete emotions. When someone makes you happy, you will remember that moment and what happened.

Like social networking, good learning is also connective. Good learners link past learning to future learning. They link ideas across disciplines. That is why we are so firmly an interdisciplinary school and are moving significantly in that direction for our future. We need to support the idea that learning in a discrete subject is only valuable if it can be linked and supported by learning in other areas and subjects.

There a number of books that have come out recently such as Multipliers or Linked by Albert Laszlo-Barabasi that talk about a “social multiplier” effect. Basically, it means that we are smarter as groups rather than separate individuals. Put a group of collaborative and smart people together and you will have a group IQ that will outmatch the individual. This is important for us. We are not a bunch of individual strivers here, it is important that all students realize here realize that we are stronger as a community that we can be individually and that there is immense amounts to learn from others. We are starting to ask a few students to blog and share their thoughts with a few of us on a regular basis. As an adult community, we need to learn from our charges. During this next year and in the future, we are going to learn more from the students and understand their experiences in this community. We want to multiply our intelligence as a community.

LEARNING IS HARD
As Anders Ericcson has determined through his research, research that Gladwell has referred to in his recent book, Outliers, it takes about 10,000 hours of deliberative practice to become really good at something. Ericcson has famously said that genius does not exist, that Mozart had 10,000 hours of deliberative practice. The critical word in these last two sentences is “deliberative”. A good teacher does not just get you to practice, but to practice strategically. Busywork is useless, but intentional repetition is important. However, this work needs to be thoughtful practice. This is why one does not learn much if one is constantly supported in one’s practice. Everyone needs to learn how to do things and learn for themselves. I worry that we put a premium in getting the right answer—we all want that—rather than the process, and focusing on the process that will help us finally arrive at the right answer. Someone said to me one time, well, we don’t want a civil engineer to concentrate on the process when he or she is building a bridge. That engineer needs the right answer. Of course, but we are dealing with apprentices, not the adult engineer. We want these students to understand and love the process that will get them to their own right answers.

What this process of independent and group learning entails is failure. How willing are we to see our children fail? Not very, if you are me, and yet, I know, in my heart of hearts that this desire to have Elsa, my daughter, to experience success all the time is at odds with effective learning. In order to learn, one has to fail in one’s learning. At that point, one is forced to take a step back and consider truly one’s learning process. This act of “thinking about one’s own thinking”, of metacognition is an essential part of a good learning process. Nonetheless positive failure depends on the way that failure is responded to by the community. Either there is a tolerance and permission to fail or there is not. In an interesting book called Start-Up Nation that a person in this community suggested to me, it talks about the economic miracle in Israel and how that has been fostered by a cultural acceptance of failure as a way to find eventual success. We need to let everyone here have the room to fail positively.

The other thing one gains from failure is resilience, grit, or, one of my favorite words, gumption that all refer to a personal quality that is a necessary strength for future success. Gumption is required when you do not succeed in order to bounce back and try again. This learned strength that I have referred to often in my speeches as I have talked about Walter Mischel’s famous marshmallow test, is incredibly important to ensure future success in one’s life. Intelligence can get you so far, but it cannot guarantee success. Grit or gumption is critical in helping someone be successful.

FINALLY, LEARNING IS SENSORY
What I mean by this is that the best learning is never one-dimensional. You can learn a scientific theory in a textbook, but until you actually do a lab experiment, it is never really learned completely. You can read Shakespeare’s plays, but you will never truly understand his writing unless you act his words out loud. I can understand how the rules of composition can make for a balanced composition, but until I paint on a canvas, I will never truly understand those rules. You can understand a language, but you will not master the language unless you speak it.

We need to keep learning from books, keep learning from lectures, but we also need to get up out of our chairs and feel the learning. We need to create pictures of learning. We need to dance to learn. I learned about Brownian motion, the seemingly random jig that particles do when suspended in a fluid, by dancing Brownian motion jig with my classmates. I learned about music from playing instruments. This experiential and sensory aspect of good learning also refers to building character. We cannot learn about ethics without putting our ideals to the test. It is not enough to say that you believe something if you do not feel that you can actually live that belief. We cannot really understand loyalty unless we demonstrate loyalty to our friends. We cannot understand honesty unless we concretely feel how hard it is to be truly honest.

So—here is my final message to you all for this year.

Support your children’s social and emotional well-being. Make your children confident by being a confidence coach. This does not mean artificially boosting self-esteem. It means praising hard work instead of talent and ensuring that students feel strong in their potential capacities. Get them to make connections with people in and outside the school that can help them learn. Coach them to be good collaborators in their work at school.

Support the idea that learning is hard and that it demands resilience and resilience has to be built by practice—that means that young people have to feel fine with failure. We have to normalize failure for them and try to lessen the stakes for work that they will do. If a parent gets overly upset about a subpar grade this will not help the student develop as a strong learner. If we help our children cope with disappointment rather than merely react to disappointment, we will make them develop more grit and more strength.

Support the idea that learning and development of character demands varied approaches and experiences. Don’t let your sons and daughters just become commuter students—force them to appreciate the richness of the school activities that we offer and that the world we live in offers by breaking the routines and the norms that we are happy reverting to. Have them visit the city, do a community service project together with them, travel somewhere and get lost, eat odd foods, allow them the possibility of decorating their rooms as they wish. We want our young people to be constantly surprised by the world we live in, not jaded or cynical. We can do that by continually keeping them amazed.

I hope that this year is filled with wonder, with failure and success, with delight and a small amount of dismay. It is only in contrast that we truly understand the joy of our human experience. Live it yourselves and have them live it as well.

What I am going to remark on are trends, an emerging sense of self, and also aspirations as we move forward. We have not necessarily arrived, but I hope that these resonate with you all. These are also strengths that I believe link explicitly to the school’s past—to Hackett’s view that students from NYC should spend time outdoors and that the school should actively prepare people to be global citizens, to our historically strong belief in interdisciplinary studies.

I would like to spend a few minutes talking about what I consider to be our strengths—linked to the type of school we are aspiring to be. This is, of course, idealistic, but I think that many of us entered this profession so as to willingly suspend belief and try to live our lives brushing closer to ideals we hold dearly. One of the things about Riverdale that makes me excited is that I think that we are closer to living our ideals than many schools can ever imagine or dream about. Now I want to see us push more actively in these directions over the next few years. So I will talk about directions in which I think we are heading and link these strengths to some goals for us all to focus upon in the next few years.

We are a school that is more than a school—we are primarily a community. We care about our students, our families, our parents, and each other. What that means is that you cannot just teach here. We get involved in understanding each other and each other’s lives. We believe in basic human values of respect, honesty and trust. We are not here for profit—we are here because we are idealists and we are proud of our idealism—even though, at times, it is masked behind a veneer of NYC cynicism. All of us care about the work we do here and about the people we work with. We maintain rigor with each other as colleagues and with our students, while also being supportive and caring. We care about groups and grades in our classrooms and with our strong dean structure, but we also care about individuals and give feedback that is individualized to the student in our reports, in our meetings and in our chats with students. Even though we are here for a portion of the day, we are proud and happy to be connected to this place and to the people in it.

Some examples:
• The work in all the divisions on building community: the assembly in the Lower School; the community meeting in the Middle School; the work of the deans with the grades in the Upper School.
• Community Development Teams and their good work in having us think about what it really means to be an inclusive community
• Dialogue around current events and difficult issues, such as race and gender equity with events that focus on issues that include the entire community such as One World Day
• The strong showing at all sorts of school events from the Alvin Ailey Dance Concert on the River Campus to Homecoming to our athletic competitions
• Our new 9th grade advising program

We are an intellectual community. As I have said to you in the past, I use the word intellectual intentionally rather than academic. I feel that intellectual summons up for me several ideas regarding our community. As a school that prizes interdisciplinary work, we want students to think both within, across and outside of disciplinary boundaries. This requires a type of roaming intellect that is curious about all sorts of fields and areas of knowledge. We don’t want our students just to become knowledgeable or smart. We want our students to be thinkers, to be wise in the way that they conduct themselves and lead their lives. We also want our students to take what they learn here and do something with it. Intellectuals tend to be more public and engage in the “dirty affairs” of the world more often. We want our students to take theories and ideas and put something into practice. Therefore, we explicitly link mind and character in what we do throughout the school. We expect our students to think on the athletic fields and demonstrate character in the way they conduct themselves in our classrooms. We prize debate. We like the idea that people have interesting conversations, read interesting books, and create provocative art. We like the idea of youthful engagement. We model it and like to foster it in our young charges.

Some examples:
• C.A.R.E. program + C.A.R.E in Action / character ed / Center for Social Change
• dropping AP’s and changing the schedule in short order
• curriculum work, especially our interdisciplinary program and developing strong language and quantitative skills in the Lower School.
• Riverdale Reads and our promotion of reading on both campuses
• the varied speakers who come to both campuses who engage our minds and link our classroom work to the world outside
• senior projects
• One Big Thing project

We are more and more traditional and innovative—usually a dialectic / polarity, but I think that we can be both. I hope everyone in this room feels comfortable and feels that there is permission to try out new things in the school and in your classrooms. We want our students to take risks—to write a paper with a provocative thesis, to try and solve a challenging problem that might be just beyond their ability, to take the ball and run with it, to ask intriguing questions. If that is so, we have to also model that in the way that we work here at the school. We want people to reflect upon their teaching, to reflect upon their learning. It is great if you can be successful in your teaching using a traditional methods such as Socratic dialogue. It is also great if you find a way using a blog or a discussion board to take that discussion and extend it beyond the time and space of the classroom.

We believe strongly in the strengths of a liberal arts education. We believe in close-reading and discussion-based learning. We believe that students need to develop habits of mind, skills that will serve them in their lives and knowledge that enrichens their views on this world; however, we do not do this in a fixed way. How we teach, changes and evolves continuously and should do so. Therefore, as all good teachers do, we try and find certainty while also questioning the certainty of assumptions. We all know how to teach, and yet keep on questioning how we should best teach. This can be disconcerting, but it is also exciting and wonderful and I hope that we all can feel more and more comfort in doing what we do well while also seeking to improve what we do.

Linked to our traditional and innovative spirit, I also believe that we need to be a leader in education. This means that we have to import and export best practices from the world of education. To that end, we also need to, as the best corporations and institutions do, engage in Research and Development. I am happy to support big and small ideas if I think that they are aligned with the direction the school is going and could further the mission of the school. We have developed good projects with interesting implications for schools. I hope we continue to do that in the years ahead.

Some examples:
• Our work with IDEO on Design Thinking that has led to changing the way that we have structured a number of retreats
• The One Big Thing project and our goal of inspiring passions in young people
• Our joining the Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives consortium of schools that are concerned with racial, gender and socio-economic equity
• Our partnership with the Independent Curriculum Group—a group of schools thinking about a curriculum independent of the Advanced Placement program / our stellar interdisciplinary work
• Faculty who have attended and presented at conferences
• Visitors such as Grant Wiggins, Tony Wagner, Anglea Duckworth, Veronica Boix-Mansilla who connect us to research and trends in education
• Our peer coaching groups on the River and Hill campuses that have formed from faculty interest in visiting each others’ classrooms.

Finally, we are both disconnected and connected. I believe strongly that we are strong because we are disconnected from some of the pressures and constraints in the real world, but we are also strong because we are not too much of a bubble—we are also connected to the real world in tangible ways. Our entire community comes here for part of the day and then goes back out to the real world. Our community brings issues from the world and NYC to Riverdale and it is a community that loves debate. We are both connected and disconnected and that is a strength of ours. We engage in reflective navel-watching on our green campuses, but we also are connected in wonderful committed partnerships with other schools and places around the nation and in the world. We are connected with schools and communities in New Orleans, France, Spain, India, Botswana, and the Bronx. There is a Japanese term “dochakuka” that means global localization that has spawned the bizarre neologism “glocal”. Even though I don’t like the sound of the word, we are indeed “glocal”. There is a sanctity in these campuses and the place-based education that we aspire to do here with our gardens on the River Campus and our outdoor classroom space on the Hill Campus, and yet, we are also linked explicitly to one of the world’s greatest cities and beyond in concrete exchange programs and service opportunities around the globe. This is a strength of our school, and I hope we become even more “glocal” in the years ahead.

Some examples:
• Our programmatic belief that it is good to read a book quietly, think reflectively, just sit outside and enjoy our green commons, use our hands to make art with others.
• Our exchanges with schools in Spain and France. Our service-learning programs in New Orleans, Botswana and India and our commitment to sending students on semester-study programs.
• Our shift in the focus of community service to focus even more on social change and social entrepreneurship and our connections within the local NYC community.
• Our focus on sustainability and improving our community’s awareness of environmental issues on our campuses and beyond.

I think that these four ideas can provide us with a better sense of identity and a better sense of directions:

⇒ THAT WE ARE A STRONG COMMUNITY
⇒ THAT WE ARE AN INTELLECTUAL COMMUNITY
⇒ THAT WE ARE BOTH TRADITIONAL and INNOVATIVE
⇒ THAT WE BELIEVE IT IS BEST TO BE DISCONNECTED at times as well as CONNECTED at well-chosen moments

They also provide us with a sense of direction—and I would like to talk about that sense of direction by outlining a few goals for this year and next…

I want to talk about three things with you this morning.

One—we are a community. That is special. It means that you have the privilege of attending one of the best schools in NYC and the world. You are an amazing group of people and we are proud of the leadership the Class of 2015/2011 offers us all.

Along with this privilege comes responsibility. We all hope that you will enjoy the classes, the campus, and the opportunities that this school affords you all, but you also have the responsibility to be honest, to respect others, and to try your best to take advantage of all the opportunities available here, in NYC and in the world.

Let me tell you a bit more about this. We take respect and honesty as a given here. That means if you are dishonest or if you disrespect anyone in this community, you risk being disinvited to this school. For example, if you use racist language, or call someone “gay” or physically intimidate anyone, you risk affecting your permanent record and possibly leaving this school. If you are dishonest and we find out that you have handed work that is not your own a teacher, you do not deserve to be at Riverdale. If you put something online that affects the reputation of the school or disrespects another member of this community, you give up your right to be a member of this community.

I am telling this now to you all, since last year we had a number of incidents where this happened, and the students involved in some of these incidents are no longer here. It is not enough to say, at your age, you did not realize this. The consequences of such actions are clear, and you need to think about things as you move through every day at the school. Live your lives thoughtfully in this community. I do not want to harp on the negative at the start of the year since, for the most part, our community is strong because we care about each other and we want to make the most of our time together, but it is also important that we are all clear on what can happen if one makes a serious misstep here.

One area that we have to do a better job immediately is to leave the Student Center in a better state and ensure that we do not leave trash around the campus. I want to see us all make a habit of cleaning up our tables after lunch or picking up trash on the Jones Lawn and the fields. It is essential that we do this since it is a very concrete sign of the health of our community—we need to care about these green spaces we inhabit together, but also about the people who come in to clean this school every day. I hope that you will join me in ensuring that we leave that space and others free of trash and mess at the end of each day.

Two—we are not just about developing your minds, we are also about developing character. This means that it is not enough just to do school here. You need to do the work, but you, not the teachers or your parents, need to make the effort to link your learning to your lives. Therefore, you can learn about poverty and social problems in your classes, but you must equally work to try and solve the blight of poverty and make this world a better place to live in. When you are in Kindergarten, you could make the point that it is your parents sending you to school, that school is being done to you. Now, you no longer have that excuse. You have much more freedom, but you must start using that freedom wisely. Use it to do something of value. We can all complain about our classes, but such complaints are basically boring. We can all think about all that we have to do in order to get good grades or get into the college of our choice. I would like you all to commit to changing that “norm”. What about committing to becoming the most interesting person you can? If you do that, you will be successful because you are actually interesting and you have done interesting things, not just jumped through the hoops that your parents or school has wanted you to do. This will demand that you take risks, that you try out things, that you work hard to connect your learning to your life and that you are more concerned with how you perform than the grade you receive. This is really more about a state of mind that you have than your actual IQ–that you are resilient, that you are curious and that you work hard. Many people confuse sheer IQ with the capacity to use whatever IQ you have. I would like you all to think about growing you intelligence and using it wisely this year. Not easy, but I think completely possible for everyone here.

Three—connect and choose good moments to disconnect. You are probably the most “connected” generation in the history of mankind. You have access to all sorts of great knowledge via the Internet. You also have access to trash. Therefore, use that connection wisely. In other words, I would like you to understand the value and use social networking tools to improve your life and your work. Understand the world you live in by subscribing to news services or blogs. Keep up with the latest trends and news in the arts, politics and fashion, but also choose to read a book, understand history in deep ways and spend time outdoors talking to friends or just communing with nature. Adaptability has marked the human race throughout its history and the people who have been most successful have straddled both tradition and innovation. They keep their feet in the past while poking their heads into the future. I wish you all the possibility of both respecting and admiring the past while also looking to understand and be a part of the future.

Thus–good luck with your work, your friendships, and your fun this year. Remember to understand and be a part of this great community—respect each other, be thoughtful and be honest. Develop your minds and character in good ways and believe in your ability to grow your minds. Take charge of your learning here and make it your own. Finally, sure learn how to use the tools that you have, such as phones, computers, and the Internet wisely to improve yourself, but also be respectful of good discussion, great lectures, and the close reading of a good book. Be adaptive in how you learn from the world around you.

Again. I wish you the best for the year and feel free to come by and have a chat with me if you wish.

• we are working on our CHARACTER STRENGTHS project with UPenn and KIPP
• we are in the midst of our work with IDEO on having faculty members use the DESIGN THINKING PROCESS to redesign the school experience,  solve problems and work with students
• we are working to transform our community service efforts into a Center for Social Change that will manage our community service, global studies, community outreach and environmental programs.
• we are working with Tony Schwartz and The Energy Project to see how we can DEVELOP PASSIONS intentionally in our students
• we are working with Tony Wagner, Veronica Boix-Mansilla and Grant Wiggins to see how we can have our students THINK MORE DEEPLY and aim for enduring understanding at the school both in the various subjects and disciplines and in our interdisciplinary courses

Behind all this work is the idea that there is a definable “mindset” that will prepare our students to be effective, wise and productive change-makers in our 21st century global community. Basically, I believe that there is a mindset that we are all working towards, a mindset that promotes creativity, wisdom, the application of knowledge and a strong sense of ethics. Being able to define this mindset more precisely and then educating to that mindset is what we are trying to do.

It is interesting as I talk and interact with various institutions, I observe this mindset in the people working there. People working at IDEO, The Energy Project, Harvard Project Zero, The Aspen Institute, Google, the Acumen Fund, Ashoka, Teach for America, KIPP all possess some common attributes. They are all “T-shaped people” as Morten Hansen talks about people with expertise and deep understanding but also with the human skills to make working in teams and with humans in general productive and pleasant. These people also possess a combination of the cognitive and non-cognitive skills to make the most of the situation and be effective problem-solvers. I think that figuring out how we develop this mindset in young people is an interesting questions for school communities to grapple with as we move forward. Improving education should be primarily focused on mindset development and how we can do that in good ways.

CONTINUING WORK with IDEO

Brainstorming boards from the IDEO Workshop

We worked with IDEO, a leading design firm, on our second workshop this month with teachers from 2nd and 3rd grade on how to bring “design thinking” into schools. Essentially, we are asking the question of how we might broaden our approach to solving problems. This work has implications for how teachers problem solve together, but also for how students might work together collaboratively. We tackled the question with a team from IDEO led by Hailey Brewer and Sandy Speicher of how we might encourage more student discovery in our classroom spaces. We interviewed students in the inquiry phase, brought back our stories from interviews and observations, refined our problem, brainstormed around an issue or two, prototyped rapidly solutions and asked students form the High School to give us feedback. It was a great experience and has led to some recommendations to changing classroom spaces on the River Campus.

We have two other workshops scheduled for February and March where some of our faculty will facilitate a day of design thinking and then debrief with the IDEO team after that. We hope to design together a “Design Thinking Toolkit” for schools and educators that might have relevance to all sorts of educational institutions.

VISITORS to help us THINK

We have had a number of visitors to the school in the last few weeks who are here to help us think about curriculum change:

• Tony Wagner, co-director of the the Harvard Change Leadership Group, came to talk to a number of us who had been with him at a conference in Cambridge, MA, in December. It was great to have Tony back to think collaboratively about handling some of the change ahead in our educational program.
• Tony Schwartz, Riverdale alum and Director of The Energy Project, came back to work with our students on facing challenges effectively and how one sustains high energy in all that one does. This is linked to our pilot project, “The One Big Thing” that seeks to help students intentionally develop passions. Tony is coming out with a new book this spring, The Way We are Working Isn’t Working. This work is extremely exciting and the project has expanded from about 15 students engaging in this work last year to more than 40 this year.
• Veronica Boix-Mansilla of Harvard Project Zero came to work with some of our administrators and faculty members on thinking about our expansion of interdisciplinary courses. Her work with Howard Gardner on interdisciplinary studies will be guiding some of our work in how we look at our interesting existing interdisciplinary classes such as Integrated Liberal Studies and Constructing America and on how we develop new courses, such as our course on Global Climate Change.
• Bruce Hammond of the Independent Curriculum Group, a group seeking to join school in an effort to broaden the curriculum development and choices for students in high school came to talk about a conference we participated a week or so ago at Fieldston and to talk about our potential future work together.
• Doug Foderman gave a great set of presentations to Lower and Middle School faculty, students and parents this last week. Doug is the Director of Technology at the Brookwood School and an expert on online safety for children.
• Kelley Nicholson-Flynn, the Coordinator of Teaching and Learning at The Lawrenceville School and former chair of the Science department came to help our Science department with curriculum development.
• Walter Isaacson, the Director of the Aspen Institute, will be talking to our High School students on February 10th on Leadership in America.

MIDDLE SCHOOL LAST WEEK

Milton Sipp, the Head of the Middle School and his team there organized an interesting set of program for his students that tangibly connects the students’ work in the classroom with real life. Below you will find an excerpt from his report on the week.

As many of you know, each of the grades last week were involved with different programs.  My public thanks to our three great Deans, Antoinette Quarshie, Beth Sholtes, and Mike Berical, and to our colleague,Carolyn Kaplan, for all of their efforts to ensure the success of the week for each grade.  Our 6th grade class had a wonderful trip to Camp Becket in the Berkshires, our 7th graders attended workshops, primarily run by our parents, and the 8th grade took mid-year exams in language, science, and math.  I want to also once again thank the parents who participated in the workshops on Tuesday:

• Medicine – Double Jeopardy and Twins -Joanne Stone
• Immigration Law and Reform – Lenni Benson
• Story Starters: Creative Writing – Tania Moore-Barrett
• Juggling – Max Dobens
• It’s Not Easy Being Green – Nancy Orenstein
• Animation Nation – Peter Simon (faculty)
• Pictures, Fiction, and Lies – Peter Simon (faculty)
• Legal Representation of Children – Julie Brail
• Magazine Editing – Will Dana
• Fun With Math – Mike Michelson (faculty)
• CSI -Creative Scene Investigation – Laura Desmond (faculty)
• Global Images of Beauty – Beth Sholtes (7th Grade Dean)
• Intro to Marketing and Product Development – Laurie Lindenbaum
• Cooking: Making Scones – Shelly Schoenfeld
• Creative Advertising – Suzy and Dan O’Shea
• Climate Change – Jeff Gracer

Wednesday involved morning theater workshops by our Drama Faculty and then a trip to Broadway to see “West Side Story” in the afternoon.

Thursday was a day devoted to politics and activism and included a distinguished group of business, political, and community leaders.  A big thanks to one of our parents, Marcia Sudolsky,  for her tremendous assistance and participation in the day and for bringing the panelists and Senator Schneiderman to campus!!!  A schedule of events, that took place that day, is listed below:

Thursday, January 21st – “Politics, Activism, and You”

• Skype Video Conference – “Live From Capitol Hill” with Emily Katz (RCS ’01), Staffer for Senator Wyden of Oregon-Discussion on the Health Care Bill and her role as a lead Staffer/Writer for the Senator.
• Panel Discussion with:Marcia Sudolsky – President of MDS Political Consulting Firm; Ken Jenkins, Chairman of the Westchester County of Board of Legislators;Chuck Lesnick, President of the Yonkers City Council; Heather Grossman, Political Blogger and Reporter. DNA.org.; Menashe Shapiro – Deputy Research Director for Mayor Bloomberg’s Campaign; Bill Weitz – Chief of Staff for US Congressman Eliot Engel
• “Politics and the Campaign/Activism”-A session for entire grade with NY State Senator Eric Schneiderman
• Two Break-Out Groups: “Politics and the Media and Politics and the First Amendment”-Donna Liberman, Executive Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) Will Dana, Managing Editor of Rolling Stone Magazine

OUR WORK ON CHARACTER STRENGTHS with the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center and the NYCKipp Schools

This week we had a number of meeting with the KIPP folk and Angela Duckworth of the Center for Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. I find this work amazing, and I think that it will lead to interesting discussions and work about the character development of our students in our schools. We have been working on several projects: a research study with our Pre-K students, a goal-setting exercise with our Middle and High School students, and work on character “right-side of the report card”. The report card work is moving along convincingly with us trying to create a feedback system on 7 of the 24 strengths defined by Marty Seligman and Chris Peterson, who have been helpful with moving this project along. The 7 strengths the KIPP and Riverdale teams are working on are: curiosity, zest, social intelligence, self-control, gratitude, hope/optimism and grit. We are hoping to pilot some various interventions in the late spring and broaden the pilots next year. We also hope to then be able to share some of this work with others on how to develop such strengths in intentional and positive ways in schools and families.

OUR SPRING TRIP TO INDIA

We are planning a trip to India in March in order to experience micro-finance and schools engaged in social change firsthand. We  are going with a group of students from the High School who have started to do some micro-finance work with KIVA, called Zawadi By Youth. We are looking to make social entrepreneurship a more active part of the Riverdale experience for all students. We already have the C.A.R.E in Action group in the Lower School starting to take the C.A.R.E ethics program and make it more active in the community. We are considering taking our Community Service work, our global studies and work on sustainability and reconfiguring it as a Center for Social Change. The class of 1959 that had their 50th reunion this year is leading the charge starting the Class of 1959 Fund for Social Change to help fund these efforts.

Our trip to India will help raise awareness about this shift of focus. In India we will be working with organizations such as Akanksha, visiting with a number of Social Entrepreneurs and visiting the Riverside School and its amazing leader, Kiran Bir Sethi (go to see her incredible speech at the recent TED conference in India). I think that this will be an amazing experience for the students and faculty going along, and I hope it leads to some interesting changes at the school in the future.

SOME MORE SUGGESTED READINGS

I am always on the look out for new books that will get us to think about schools in different ways. I recommend these three new books:

• Drive by Dan Pink, the author of A Whole New Mind
• Change by Design by Tim Brown the CEO of IDEO
• Honest Signals by Sandy Pentland at MIT

A NEW WALL: OUR THINKWALL

Our New "ThinkWall"

We have a great new wall painted with IdeaPaint in the Mow Building hallway allowing students and faculty to express themselves. This paint turns walls into a whiteboard surface. I have it in my office, and I thought that it would be interesting for people in the school community to express themselves in good ways. Dry erase markers are available in my office-come by and make a contribution. I hope that our “ThinkWall” will inspire more community dialogue, good questions and visual thinking at Riverdale.

As mentioned above, there is so much interesting work going on the school. We hope to continue this work in the years ahead so that we will continue to develop an amazing school experience for our students, but also develop as a global leader in education.

Professor Yoshimo’s presentation was very interesting and touching. I liked how he thought we need to move beyond the concept of assimilation and accept difference in a more sophisticated way by truly accepting and celebrating the “otherness” of individuals. I appreciated the idea that we normalize difference rather than trying to have people “assimilate” to a norm.

Demetra and Latoya gave an exceptional presentation at 10 on Friday. It was only a shame that there were not more people there. Sometimes presentations present ideas with not much sense of the concrete actions one can take to turn the ideas into actions. They both gave people the theory behind their ideas to start up an affinity group in an elementary school, but they also gave people the tangible steps and resources they used to get the SOC’s group up and running. I was proud to be part of community that is thinking about inclusivity in such rich and nuanced ways.

I left Denver with the main idea that there are so many people asking good questions about our society and schools, but also who are taking these ideas, engaging in good dialogue and making things happen. The fight for true inclusivity, understanding and respect is still on, but it seems that the hard work of many is starting to bear fruit in so many good ways.

R+G are Dead

]]> http://blogs.riverdale.edu/headofschool/2009/12/06/rosencrantz-guildenstern/feed/ 0 http://blogs.riverdale.edu/headofschool/2009/11/03/skating-party-at-the-wollman-rink/ http://blogs.riverdale.edu/headofschool/2009/11/03/skating-party-at-the-wollman-rink/#comments Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:53:00 +0000 Dominic Randolph http://rcsblog.com/headmaster/?p=212 The skating party at Wollman Rink for the Lower and Middle Schools was a wonderful community event. Thanks to the Parents’ Association for making this a possibility.

It ended up being a good thing that we postponed this from the previous week since the weather was perfect with a full moon showering good fortune and calm joy over the event. Kris and I so enjoyed meeting and talking to lots of people and watching this peculiarly New York scene: a skating pond amid the trees of Central Park towered over by the buildings on Central Park South. It was a great event with a wonderful community feeling.

Blurry iphone photo of the night