Welcome to the bi-weekly parents' newsletter from the director’s office. Here you will find notes from Director Emily Jones, upcoming events, updates on schedule changes and links to our most recent website news items. Comments, feedback or requests should go to Emily via Pat Dodge.
February 3, 2012
Parent Newsletter
Happy February!
In case you have not seen it, here is the link /http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203806504577181351486558984.html to an article from the Wall Street Journal, asking the question “What’s Wrong With the Teenage Mind?” It is worth a read. Of course those of us who work with teenagers do not think that there is anything ‘wrong’, per se, but we do recognize that teenagers are not just big children or young adults. They are different creatures, with brains that don’t entirely look like ours.
Human brains, and the developmental stages they go through, evolved over many years of hunting and gathering, and they have not had time to adapt for the modern world at all. As this WSJ article points out, children used to hit puberty later, and become part of the adult world of work sooner. The stage cultural we now call ‘adolescence’ is a relatively new one, culturally, although not in the development of the brain. One of the exciting and also daunting things about working with adolescent brains (and the bodies they come with) is that they are still enormously plastic. We talk colloquially of ‘learning by experience’, but the actual biological reality is that brains do what we ask them to do, and by so doing, create those neural pathways. That’s what learning is.
I also recommend a book called Born To Be Good, by Dacher Keltner. He explores the Darwinian roots of the pro-social emotions and social tools: compassion, empathy, laughter, embarrassment, even teasing. He explains why ‘survival of the kindest’ over thousands of generations has created human society in which altruism and generosity are actually built into our genome. Apparently Darwin understood this, and it is later selective use of this work that has left us thinking of Darwinian world as a dog eat dog one, something I didn’t realize. It is interesting to think that in our efforts to nurture these pro-social behaviors, we are acting in concordance with our students’ natural tendencies, rather than against them, and understanding this will influence the way we think about this part of our education.
A reminder: Mid-winter break starts after the last commitment on the 8th. This is very unlikely to be before lunchtime, and we ask that you absolutely positively not take your children out sooner. It is very disruptive to classes and disrespectful to the teachers when students decide to ‘catch an early bus’. Students need to be back before 7:00 pm on the 12th. We require that every student let us know where they are going, and with whom.
All the best,
Emily
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020380650457718135148655898...
Parent Newsletter January 18, 2012
Dear Parents,
Last weekend we had a terrific visit from 16 students and two teachers from the Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day High School. This school is primarily for immigrant students who need to work while they finish high school, or are too old for a traditional program. The group that came was on the ‘green track’ and spent a lot of time with our sustainability squad kids. By the end of three days new friendships had been forged as well as new understandings of the diversity of cultures. On Monday, we celebrated Martin Luther King day with a special program designed to have students talk together about race, class, religion, stereotypes, how to have difficult conversations, and other topics which will help them to become more culturally fluent. We define cultural fluency as the ability to move among cultures with ease and grace, and we know that it is learnable, rather than innate. I am impressed by the wisdom of many of our students, and their willingness to listen and learn from each other.
At the beginning of the winter term I gave our students some unsolicited advice, as I often do. I told them that for the most part they had done a really impressive job of looking after themselves in the fall – getting enough sleep, getting exercise, eating reasonably well - all the things that go into making people happy and able to be productive. And I told them that if the fall was the learning stage, the test is whether they can do it in the winter. Winter at Putney is fast and busy, and also cold. We amuse ourselves by having Dorm Olympics, which involves silly contests of all sorts, from dorm songs and hula hoops to spelling bees and haiku. We have the Green Cup Challenge, in which dorms compete to see which one can lower their electricity use per person the most. We ski and skate and sled and make bonfires in the snow. We are working on preparations for celebrating Chinese New Year on January 23rd, and will have fireworks. There is plenty to do, and it’s good for the kids to stay active and resist the temptation to hibernate and look at their computer screens for hours on end. If you get the sense that your child is doing less well than they were in the fall, please encourage them to think about these things.
A reminder that mid-winter break is February 9-12. Students are free to leave after their last commitment on Wednesday the 8th, and should be back by 7:00 pm on Sunday the 12th. This is a really good time for families whose children are coming home to include one or more international students. Many thanks to all of you who are regular or sometimes hosts – the students love you!
All the best to all of you,
Emily
Parent Newsletter December 15th, 2011
Dear Parents,
Happy Holidays! Your children will shortly be arriving home, and some of you have not seen them since September. Parents of day students see changes and growth so incrementally they sometimes don’t really notice it. Parents who have not seen their children in a while often have the same experience that we have when students return after a summer away. In three months teenagers can grow up a lot, or they can decide to try on a new self for size, or they can just get a really bad haircut. In any case they are not quite the same kid they were three months ago, and we have to look carefully to welcome this new and older kid, not the one they left behind. .
Depending on your child, and your own family dynamics, you may find that your child is delighted to revert to their younger self when they are home. They will want their favorite childhood foods, to be sure their room is just as they left it (including the stuffed animals) and to do everything in the most traditional way for your family. Others will find that fitting back into an old routine is more difficult. They may not feel as connected to their friends at home, and perhaps have the sense that they can’t explain their world here to their world there. Some students have far more freedom at home than they have here, and will revel in that. Others have more freedom here than they do at home, and will bristle at moving back into those restrictions.
In any case, I hope that you can get them telling stories of their lives here, talking about the projects they just did, about the projects they saw other students working on, what they hope for the rest of the year. Perhaps for seniors an agreed moratorium on talking about college is in order. Your children will want you to recognize their new maturity, even if it comes with a bad haircut (there are really not that many of those, I promise…) and to be seen as who they are at this moment. My own daughter arrives home shortly, and I am eager to see how her first six months as a college graduate and working girl have shaped her.
Thank you very much indeed to all of our parents who made phone calls on behalf of Putney’s Annual Fund last week, and to all those who graciously answered those calls. We were able to contact over 100 parents in the course of the evening, and were gratified by everyone's positive response, and your generosity in supporting the school in this important way.
All the best,
Emily
Parent Newsletter December 5, 2011
Dear Parents,
This past weekend our Board of Trustees met, as they do four times a year here on
campus. Our meetings are much like those of other independent schools, in that the
administration reports to the board on the finances and other affairs of the school, and the
board helps chart our path to the future. They are unlike other schools’ board meetings
in that they last all weekend, are open to all members of the community, and have time
for broad ranging conversations in which trustees from a variety of areas of expertise
bring their understandings of the world to bear on what we do here at Putney. We are
enormously lucky to have a highly talented group of trustees who are passionate about
Putney and the future of progressive education.
We keep a close eye on the demographics of the board, as well as their areas of expertise,
and I thought you might be curious to know what it looks like. At this point our board
- is 54% alumni
- is 37% parents or past parents (some of whom are also alumni)
- is evenly split by gender
- is 79% Caucasian, 21% of color
- includes two faculty members and two students, elected by the faculty and
staff, and the student body, respectively.
This weekend the board heard presentations on the new American Studies program, and
the integrated course that next year’s 9th graders will take. They looked at our newly
completed master plan, and discussed the process of weaning Putney off fossil fuels.
They had lunch with a group of students to discuss the school’s values and start the
process of drafting a new strategic plan, and they attended the winter music and dance
concert on Saturday evening. And they talked at length about how we can find the money
to pay for what we know we need to do here. Which leads me to my next point….
On the evening of Wednesday, December 7, you may receive a call from a fellow parent
asking you to make a gift to the Annual Fund, if you haven’t already done so. We are
very aware of the sacrifices some parents make to send their child to Putney, and we
are asking that you make a gift at a level that is comfortable for you. For some that may
be under $100, for others it may be over $5,000. Your gift to the Annual Fund supports
all the programs your student benefits from, and shows the larger world your support
of Putney. Our goal is always 100% participation by our parents, (currently families of
ninth graders are leading the way, and senior class families are right behind them.) You
can make a gift by going to the website, or just respond when you get the call.
And this letter comes with enormous thanks to all of you who have already given to the
annual fund this year.
All the best,
Emily
Parent Newsletter November 15, 2011
Dear Parents,
I have recently returned from the bi-annual meeting of the Progressive Education Network in Chicago, a gathering of progressive schools from across the country. Chicago is a fitting place for this gathering, as John Dewey and Francis Parker did much of their early work on progressive education there in the 1920’s and 30’s. Our own founder, Carmelita Hinton, worked for Jane Addams at Hull House in Chicago, and as a young woman rubbed shoulders with some of these most forward looking educators. There is more evidence of progressive thought in public schools in that region than in most of the rest of the country, and many public school teachers were at the conference, which was a good sign, I thought.
The PEN conference was in a way a coming out party for the Progressive Education Lab, the teacher training program that Putney is launching with three other schools. Glenn Littledale and Kevin Feal-Staub were in Chicago to meet with the other Lab teachers and to spread the word about our program to the six hundred progressive educators who were at the conference. I hope you will have a look at the Lab’s recently launched website, www.progressiveeducationlab.org, and if there are young people you know are interested in pursuing teaching as a career, point them our direction.
More recently I attended the 100th anniversary meeting of an organization named, somewhat astonishingly, The Headmistresses of the East. Founded when there were few women heads of school, it has become a powerful professional group (and includes a few lucky men!) We heard, in quick succession over two days, the presidents of Princeton, Barnard and Connecticut College, as well as Anna Quindlen and Michele Norris. We discussed trends in university education, the concepts of education for civic virtue, how to talk usefully about race, and, of course college admissions. I enjoyed the chance to discuss and debate with my colleagues from other schools, and returned, as always, so grateful to be at Putney, where we can often live the values that others hold but cannot design their schools around.
On a more mundane note… this is the time of the year that our Health Services begins to see an uptick in viruses and other illnesses. Our primary care doctor, Dr. Denise Paasche in Brattleboro, recommends flu shots, and Thanksgiving break is the perfect time to get one - especially now that flu shots are available in most pharmacies on a walk-in basis. On our end, we do our best to educate students on preventative measures, such as hand-washing, better sleep habits, and good nutrition.
All the best to all of you, and Happy Thanksgiving,
Emily
