Talent

The high school students put on a great show this week. Thank-you.

Visiting poet

The poet Robin Becker visited PDS and talked with students from the poetry elective and high school literary magazine.

She read poems from three of her collections including the most recent Domain of Perfect Affection.

Here is former poet laureate Robert Pinsky commenting of one of the poems - OK Tucker -in the Washington Post

Winter Music Recital

Echoes

We don't own the words of course, but it was fun to come across these words from the PDS mission statement:

Poughkeepsie Day School graduates students who:

• Possess a rich academic knowledge base and know how to think as creative, flexible, independent, resourceful learners for life
• Are intellectually curious, active seekers, users and creators of knowledge
  

echoed in the words of the New Zealand Ministry of Education National Curriculum was issued last November:

Thinking

Thinking is about using creative, critical, and metacognitive processes to make sense of information, experiences, and ideas. These processes can be applied to purposes such as developing understanding, making decisions, shaping actions, or constructing knowledge. Intellectual curiosity is at the heart of this competency.

Students who are competent thinkers and problem-solvers actively seek, use, and create knowledge. They reflect on their own learning, draw on personal knowledge and intuitions, ask questions, and challenge the basis of assumptions and perceptions.

The New Zealand Curriculum: key competencies

Visitors

It was rainy at recess so the first and second graders in Bill and Rachels's class visited me instead. Here they are winding up the toys in the office. They returned to class with two cars from my collection so they could be put to test on the block corner raceway.

And then today Ariana Stokas PDS - graduate from the class of 1996 dropped by to chat. Ariana is working on her PhD at Columbia University . She is also an occasional substitute teacher at PDS when taking time out from her research and thesis writing.

Standing room only

It was standing room only at Radio City for Sir Ken Robinson's keynote speech at the NAIS annual conference last week. I've written before (here) about his TEDTalks address on Creativity and Education that went viral in 2006. His book Out of our Minds: Learning to be Creative is a great read. What a treat, then, to hear his latest thinking on education, creativity and our future.

Here is Sir Ken being interviewed by student reporters from Broughton Hall High School, Gateacre Community Comprehensive School and St Julie’s Catholic High School in his home town of Liverpool.




If you've seen TedTalks and want to see another Sir Ken video go here.

In this talk to teachers he argues that the education system cannot face the future by doing better what it did in the past. No one knows what the future holds for young people in school today but it will be very different from the world now. In his view the traditional hierarchy of subjects must be swept away.