Weekly News & Notes

The Holiday break is (almost) upon us.

First, thanks to everyone who contributed to our celebration, and to Katie and Julie for hosting us in their space. It's always nice for us to get together amid good times - probably something we need to do more frequently!

To all, we wish you a happy, joyous week with family and/or friends; if you happen to be traveling, do so safely! We'll see you back here in 2014.


ATTENDANCE MONDAY

As you can no doubt imagine, there is a distinct possibility that a number of students will be absent on Monday. For those of you who have a B-block class, please do an extra meticulous job with taking attendance to ensure that you have marked those students absent who are in fact absent. (To those of you who are accurate every day, and we know who you are, just do what you do... to those who make mistakes on a more, ahem, frequent basis - please take two minutes around 8:10-8:15 to check and doublecheck).

Holiday Toy Drive

To second what Kathy and Sharon posted on the high school conference, awesome results for the Holiday Giving project! Last year, we collected more than 500 items, and this year, the number, officially, was 543 gifts! Wow!

We did, in fact, #stuffabus ! Awesome job, Medway!

The Milford Daily News ran a feature on this in Thursday's edition.

Service Distinction Diploma

At the next School Committee meeting, Student Government will be proposing a Service Distinction diploma, which will entitle students who complete a certain number of service hours to earn a service distinction upon graduation.

The full proposal can be seen here. Many kudos to Julia Tranfaglia, who coordinated the writing of the proposal for Student Government, and who will be presenting this to School Committee on January 2.




Weekly Resources:

A couple of pieces from the Marshall Memo, a collection of readings compiled by educator Kim Marshall - we get these every week, and frequently there are pieces relevant to the high school classroom experience:

What Constitutes Rigor in High-School AP Courses?

            In this American Educational Research Journal article, Walter Parker, Jane Lo, Angeline Jude Yeo, Sheila Valencia, Diem Nguyen, Robert Abbott, Susan Nolen, John Bransford, and Nancy Vye (University of Washington) report on their comparison of traditional Advanced Placement U.S. Government and Politics courses and more project-based courses on the same content in 12 classrooms in four high schools. Their conclusion: the traditional AP course “emphasizes fast, superficial learning at the expense of meaningful learning, which is problematic because meaningful learning appears to increase the likelihood of adaptive transfer… We believe that gearing advanced high-school courses on government and politics toward depth of understanding, engagement, and adaptive expertise rather than bare-bones test prep actually matters. It matters not only for student learning but also for democratic institutions such as independent judiciary, checks and balances, and equality under the law. These institutions require agents – citizens – for their maintenance and invigoration. The AP platform places severe limits on this aim by packing too much curriculum into a single course and then capping it with a high-stakes, breadth-oriented exam.”

“Beyond Breadth-Speed-Test: Toward Deeper Knowing and Engagement in an Advanced Placement Course” by Walter Parker, Jane Lo, Angeline Jude Yeo, Sheila Valencia, Diem Nguyen, Robert Abbott, Susan Nolen, John Bransford, and Nancy Vye in American Educational Research Journal, December 2013 (Vol. 50, #6, p. 1424-1459),

http://aer.sagepub.com/content/50/6/1424.abstract; Parker can be reached at denver@uw.edu.

A Formula for Student Motivation

(Originally titled “Minds on Fire”)

            In this article in Educational Leadership, author Kathleen Cushman describes the research she’s done on what sparks motivation in teenagers. She’s boiled it down to eight conditions under which students get inspired:

-    I feel okay.

-    It matters.

-    It’s active.

-    It stretches me.

-    I have a coach.

-    I have to use it.

-    I think back on it.

-    I plan my next steps.

Under these conditions, says Cushman, students “experience a rush of feeling when they start to understand some hard, new thing – and they want more of it. Teachers feel it, too. Kids sit up straight; something shifts in their attention, in their voices. Maybe our teaching has taken them by surprise. Maybe we’re noticing and building on their stories and their strengths. Students differ in countless ways, so there’s no single way to draw them into a given challenge. But when something we try lights the fires in their minds, we can harness that energy to inspire excellent work.”

“Minds on Fire” by Kathleen Cushman in Educational Leadership, December 2013/January 2014 (Vol. 71, #4, p. 38-43), http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership.aspx; Cushman can be reached at kathleencushman@mac.com.

If you're looking for the full listing of resources, they can be found here.

Finally...
A holiday wish - one of my all-time favorite Christmas/holiday-themed television sketches, and always gets me thinking about my five wishes for the season - The link is here (Blogger wouldn't let me embed directly from Youtube). Don't forget to smile! (There are a bunch of others that SNL does for the holiday that I'm sure we all enjoy, but we can all come up with 5 Holiday wishes!)