EDUCATOR
Dear Upper School Families, On Wednesday, October 25, all students in Grades 9-12 are invited to lead a 25-minute conference with their advisor and parent(s). Students will share their goals, present demonstrations of learning, identify curiosities and strengths, and seek feedback to support and challenge their progress. Through this experience, we desire students to: Take…
Observing Faculty Reflection VTR Wins – 94% of families participated – SLCs are scaling to Lower and Upper School – I participated in 21 conferences, seeing all but 2 advisors. – I observed teachers giving feedback on goals, badges, and student behavior. – I learned a lot more about specific students. – Teachers contributed to…
Students Take the Lead – Spring 2016 On Wednesday, February 17, students took the lead for the second time this year with student led conferences. In the fall, students shared their goals with parents and teachers. This time, students ran the show from start to finish. Introducing parents and teachers to one another, the students…
Piloting Student Badges in Study Skills Since launching ‘central station’ and the designs of our XLR8 summer grant in August (thank you Amy and Chrissy), Middle School faculty have earned over 100 badges. To ensure a successful roll out to students in the future, we are intentionally focusing on the faculty experiencing and understanding the…
Learning Transcends School Do you believe learning happens only at school? Probably not. Yet somehow, we act like it’s true. It’s like the matrix – a kind of false sense of reality. It’s similar to “God is experienced only at church.” Hogwash. God is everywhere. And learning happens everywhere, too. For years, we have conditioned…
Feedback from Student Led Conferences On Wednesday, September 23, the Middle School team launched the first student led conferences at Mount Vernon. Following the event, we surveyed students, parents, and teachers for feedback. Below, you can review the results of those 3 surveys. The names of students, teachers, and parents have been scrubbed, but all…
Formative Assessment via Entry, Transfer, and Exit Tickets Formative Assessment = a range of formal and informal assessment procedures conducted by teachers during the learning process in order to modify teaching and learning activities to improve student attainment. This morning’s faculty meeting was a lesson in formative assessment. We started the meeting with an entry…
Launching Student Led Conferences One of our major initiatives, Student Led Conferences, is about to debut. In order to prepare, conference mentors will meet with their mentees this week instead of Advisory. The purpose of the second meeting is two-fold… 1) Cultivate deeper relationships with your mentees (get to know them well) 2) Coach them…
How might we expand the ways we monitor student progress and the measures of learning beyond quantitative, numerical systems that are not always reliable? Since May, eight dedicated educators have engaged in four summer grant opportunities to accelerate the work of our entire team, all with the purpose of expanding our ability to measure and monitor student progress…