Rick is now consulting and he will be the featured speaker at the Santa Fe Leadership Conference this fall.

This is a great article from Newsweek. 

Here is the very lovely and very funny video that Lauren wrote, produced, and directed for me. I will miss all of the faculty and staff and hope to see you in San Francisco. 

Rob wrote this reflection and I liked it very much. I highly recommend watching JK Rowling’s Harvard commencement speech. The link is in the text.

Do kindergartners really do better than MBA’s? A great TED talk on why learning by doing and the ability to collaborate matter!

The Zinn Education Project promotes and supports the use of Howard Zinn’s best-selling book A People’s History of the United States and other materials for teaching a people’s history in middle and high school classrooms across the country. The Zinn Education Project is coordinated by two non-profit organizations,Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change.

Its goal is to introduce students to a more accurate, complex, and engaging understanding of United States history than is found in traditional textbooks and curricula. The empowering potential of studying U.S. history is often lost in a textbook-driven trivial pursuit of names and dates. Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and Voices of a People’s History of the United States emphasize the role of working people, women, people of color, and organized social movements in shaping history. Students learn that history is made not by a few heroic individuals, but instead by people’s choices and actions, thereby also learning that their own choices and actions matter.

We believe that through taking a more engaging and more honest look at the past, we can help equip students with the analytical tools to make sense of — and improve — the world today. For a more complete description, read A People’s History, A People’s Pedagogy.

In 2008, with support from an anonymous donor, the Zinn Education Project distributed 4,000 free packets for teaching people’s history to educators across the country. In a follow-up survey, the recipients requested more resources, which led to the creation of this upgraded website to provide teaching materials online. 

This is a great piece on the value of emergent curriculum in early childhood education. Maria sent it out to the TCS teachers.

Biogen Idec has a Community Laboratory and invites seventh graders to participate in a simulated experiment to determine if a patient can take a specific cancer medicine. The simulation involves using DNA to decide if the patient has a genetic disorder which would prevent the patient from taking the medicine. Thanks to trustee Kyle Fraher, our sixth and seventh graders spent yesterday at the Biogen Idec lab in La Jolla. In these photos you will see our students working through some of the steps described in the reflection below from Tati. At the end of the workshop, the students had the opportunity to ask Kyle and Annie questions. Annie told them that there was one question all of the other groups asked that our students had not. This question was how much people who work at biotech firms like Biogen Idec make. Anthony responded that he hoped that when he was ready to enter the workforce, how much money a job paid would not be a primary motivator for him, but rather whether he enjoyed the work and whether or not he felt he was making a difference would be more important to him. Another reason to love what we do at TCS.

Today we took a trip to Biogen Idec Lab. In class we’ve been looking at DNA, genes, traits, etc. We went to the lab and did a simulation. We were asked to test to see if our lymphoma patients were able to take our new drug called “Cancer Killer”. This all depended on if they had the enzyme TPMT…

The Salk Institute is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Located just 2 blocks from my house and designed by Louis Kahn, it is an incredible location for this Dale Chihuly installation. Tom Albright, father of Anthony and professor at the Salk,  toured the NMY faculty through the exhibition today and it was spectacular. Some of the pieces will leave tomorrow as the exhibit ends, but some will stay on site until August.