Scarsdale High School
January 2020
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Dear Members of the Scarsdale High School Community:
I am pleased to present this update on the second quarter at the high school. I have just returned from attending an educational technology conference in London. I was also able to visit the American School in London to learn about their work on global competencies, instructional technology, and the use of time. My take-aways from both experiences gave me greater confidence that we’re asking the right questions and moving at the right pace at SHS, especially in terms of the classroom environment. It seems that educational software companies are focusing on the continued integration of currently separate applications (such as for student scheduling and reporting [Infinite Campus], learning management [Google Classroom], and resource management [SchoolDude, what we use to reserve rooms]). As integration becomes more seamless through APIs and acquisitions, the user experience from the perspective of students, parents, and teachers will likely improve.
Some of the new capacities in terms of the automation of teaching and learning raised some questions in my mind that I’m still struggling to make sense of and critique. The machine grading of student work, even handwritten math assignments, promises to eliminate much of the drudgery of a teacher’s work. Yet I wondered how a teacher’s appreciation of individual student strengths and weaknesses would be affected by not being intimately involved in the evaluation of his or her work, the laboriousness of that in the aggregate notwithstanding. Similarly, I saw a presentation on how word processors can correct grammar in the moment (something we’re familiar with) but also provide ideas to students as they write. Anyone who has used an email app that presents suggestions for completing their sentences is familiar with this concept, but the presentation I saw took it to another level. (I was reminded of an
article
in the New Yorker where the last sentence of every paragraph was machine-generated, and as a reader of that magazine for more than two decades I was astounded.) The presenter took care to note that the software suite he was introducing was integrated with TurnItIn to detect similarities to other writing (I noted he avoided the word plagiarism), and that got me thinking about machines grading writing written in part by other machines and then using yet another machine to detect copying. Then my head started to hurt and I needed a quiet room.
In terms of hardware, the promise of ever more seamlessly integrated student computers and interactive display boards was evident in nearly every display. Many of the most advanced exhibits were approaching the idea that every student’s desk would essentially be a large interactive display. Apart from wondering what this would do to their necks and spines, to say nothing about our budget for desks, I thought about the potential for learning in this type of environment, with digital tools and resources literally at everyone’s fingertips to help continue to shift the focus of education from acquiring knowledge to acquiring thinking skills. The advantages of a technology-infused classroom are many. They ease the burden of integrating resources into instruction (for teachers) and finding and using them in doing research and projects (for students). New tools that make this work richer will be enhancing classrooms just as overhead projectors, VCRs, and SMART Boards did in their time.
The Industrial Revolution transformed human existence and economic output because machines replaced muscle and total output was no longer limited to the power of horses or laborers; artificial intelligence is having and will have a similar effect on human existence and economic output as it augments and possibly replaces the power of the human brain. The power of computers to store and retrieve information and perform enormous computations has been evident since their inception; the effect of machines generating their own information and then analyzing it represents a large leap beyond merely filing and computing.
At the American School in London, classroom design was discipline-dependent. Social-studies classrooms had desks arranged into groups, while English classrooms used Harkness tables. The school had time scheduled in the day where all students and teachers were free to work together as needed, rather than adhere to a fixed schedule, similar to what we have started to do with the Common Tutorial Time in our schedule. Even in a 1:1 device environment, there was a focus on the human component of education. Mini learning commons areas were found throughout the school, where teachers and students could come together to do work. Questions of sustainability and wellbeing were front and center.
The similarities to our use of time and focus on different initiatives were striking. My experiences at both the school and the conference increased my awareness of the possibilities and directions of education at this moment, affirmed much of our work and study, and at times gave me pause. Regardless of the specific hardware tool, software application, schedule feature, or classroom design, the goals that we have for our school and our students should remain creating thoughtful, actively engaged citizens dedicated to the improvement of our community and nation and to sustaining our democracy.
Sincerely,
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The second quarter in the Alternative School was a flurry of activity in every academic subject. In American Studies, students finalized their in-depth literary research papers, which averaged over twenty pages in length!
James McLoughlin’s math students added a team-building activity to their study of math concepts. A fierce competition took place to see who could create the most efficient structure to shield an egg from shattering when dropped from a height of seven feet.
Seniors in Environmental Science held a spirited and informative debate about whether the environmental harms of hydroelectric dams outweigh their benefits, while seniors in American Politics debated thorny issues of business ethics, such as the appropriate use of CRISPR gene editing technology.
Now that January has begun, our students are engaged in the annual Internship Program. A-Schoolers can be found in real estate agencies, hospitals, restaurants, schools, government agencies, law firms, dog training facilities, and more. In all of these pursuits, our students have the opportunity to experience the challenges of adult working life, which helps them develop resilience, confidence, and independence (
more photos
).
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The art department is spearheading a school community building project. We are creating glass tiles that will hang on the fence surrounding the garden. Our goal is to have students, faculty, administration, and staff each make at least one tile. We have had many of the students in several grades make tiles. All ninth grade art students have made a tile and we intend to have every ninth grader make a tile when they enter the high school.
For faculty and staff, Michelle Foligno, Adrienne Sapionne, and Lisa Scavelli offered three workshops based upon an STI Glass class during Superintendent's Conference Day. All participants learned the basic fundamentals of fusing glass to create a unique colorful glass tile.
Students continue to create tiles with Michelle, Adrienne, and Lisa, who are offering a workshop once a month through May for faculty and staff. We look forward to an exquisite fence that will grow and change each year with a little bit of everyone in the community contributing to the whole.
(more photos)
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Throughout the year, the Counseling Department hosts a wide array of programs for both students and parents, and the second quarter was no exception. Our aim is to deliver general information to our various constituencies, while maintaining our overall goal of supporting students individually.
We continued to work with freshmen during their transition in both Freshman Seminar and Civic Education. This included introducing them to many professionals in the building, including our school psychologists and youth outreach workers, in addition to faculty members who provided a lesson on mindfulness. While we will continue our seminar work with sophomores at the beginning of the third quarter, juniors just completed their "seminar" experience, one that focused on the college application process. Seniors worked in small groups with their Dean in "Senior Workshop", a newly developed program designed to provide information regarding the college application process on a monthly basis throughout the fall.
The second quarter also featured programming to parents. Both Sophomore and Junior parents had the opportunity to attend our "Conversations with the Deans" program, and parents of juniors also received an introduction to the college process during our College Night in early December. As always, the Deans are looking forward to a busy winter, as we begin scheduling conferences with our freshmen, sophomores, and juniors, and look forward to working with all our families as we continue to support students throughout their high school journey.
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In the English Department, the second quarter was a time of meaningful conversations about real-world issues as reflected through the prism of literature. Susanne Conklin’s tenth-grade class, for example, students wrote about how Golding’s
Lord of the Flies
still feels pressingly relevant today, exploring issues such as the fragility of democracy and the pernicious influence of misinformation. In Jennifer Rosenzweig’s American Studies course, juniors read texts by Maya Angelou, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Frederick Douglass, and Langston Hughes in order to consider America’s legacy of slavery and how it continues to affect the current state of race relations in this country. Students taking Kimberly Summerfield’s Dilemmas course, meanwhile, are reading literature of the Holocaust, mindful of the apparent rise of anti-Semitic discourse in contemporary society. Whether by reading novels like
To Kill a Mockingbird
, or the poetry of the American Transcendentalists, or dramas like
Macbeth
and
Hamlet
, students in English classes have the opportunity to gain rich insight on the human condition and the way we live now.
Authentic conversations on much lighter topics took place in Wes Phillipson’s junior and senior classes, who had the opportunity to talk with guest speakers about writing and culture.
New Yorker
writer Dan Pipenbring conferenced with students to discuss memoir writing and journalistic endings. Songwriter and producer Richard Rudolph, one of Tupak Shakur’s writers, and artist-in-residence at Tulane University, spoke with the classes about how to create: how to write song lyrics, and how to interpret a work of art.
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The second quarter at SHS brought a variety of opportunities for students to further their connection across world cultures and history. Our travel groups headed to Spain, China and Vietnam have met to prepare for their adventures in April. Juniors were invited to apply for the Asia Pacific Youth Leadership Conference in Singapore, while current 9th through 11th graders were invited to join the sustainability and culture trip to New Zealand this July. The student Global Exchange Club began planning possible future explorations around the world while also considering ways to bring global experiences closer to home.
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Health & Physical Education
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Our students in this semester’s Health classes entered the New Year with a totally redesigned, active learning space. Students arrived to class excited and eager to test out the flexible seating options. Some features of the classroom redesign are height adjustable stools that offer freedom of movement thanks to curved surfaces that stimulate the entire musculoskeletal system, some functional/writable surfaces, standing height and seated height tables and desks, and a lounge seating area. Our classes were given a brief orientation to the new furniture, including proper usage and expectations on functioning cooperatively in this new environment. (Before and after pictures below). The students were then able to work collaboratively in our new space as they prepared for the Health Fair.
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Once again, our 11th and 12th grade Physical Education students were the recipients of an Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Residency! Professional dancers Wayne Williams and Theara Ward, along with percussionist Joe Barnes, visited some of our PE classes for the month of December, bringing their knowledge and expertise of the Lester Horton Dance Technique. Our students learned the fundamentals of the Horton Technique and then proceeded to create and choreograph their own class piece based on these fundamentals. Each class performed their dance to an audience on the last day of the residency. The dances were unique and creative, and a wonderful culmination of the project. (
more photos
)
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As always, classes have been coming to the library for a wide array of research projects and book talks. Our extended study hours during quarterlies continue to be well attended and we thank the Scarsdale Public Library, the SHS PTA and our own faculty who support this initiative.
As a result of updated student privacy guidelines enumerated by the American Library Association, we have implemented several new procedures related to overdue book notifications. Instead of parents receiving overdue notices via email, those will go directly to students. Printed notices that go to homerooms will no longer indicate titles.
Brand new this year, students and faculty are able to print from school Chromebooks to all of our four library printers. This will make printing of school assignments and materials much more convenient.
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Second quarter found teachers using games to teach and reinforce math skills. In Ms. Rauch’s classes, students played Prime Climb to reinforce arithmetic and order of operation skills and table-top twister to reinforce special angle pair vocabulary. In Math 433 and 432, students completed a series of puzzles with Break Out boxes, analyzed graphs, and used problem solving techniques to "escape the room." Math 454 classes also “escaped the room” by practicing their derivative finding skills and played a game of clue called "Who Killed Mr. Slope" in order to review differentiation for functions as well as implicit equations. In Ms. Quinn and Mr. Li’s 443 classes, students played "trivial pursuit" to review topics like trigonometry and how to solve quadratic word problems.
(more photos)
Math Team News
In our Math Madness league, the Math Team engages in collaborative group problem solving. By doing so, our newer members get the opportunity to emulate the thinking process of our more senior players. In addition, after each meet members share their solutions with each other and explain how they arrived at their answers. Students have fun discussing the way they reasoned out their solutions.
The math team has had great success in past years. We have been county champions for the past consecutive eight years and are leading the county this year. The Westchester Interscholastic Math League competitions give students a chance to socialize and enjoy refreshments with like-minded students from 27 different area schools. In essence, our goal is to have fun while learning to solve challenging non-traditional math problems.
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Tri-M conducted several performances at the Burke Rehabilitation Center and The Ambassador of Scarsdale. The highlight was a holiday concert at Blythedale Children’s Hospital on December 22nd where the children enjoyed requesting songs for a sing-along! In addition, all three of our SHS chamber groups were accepted into Lincoln Center’s Chamber Music Society program! They now have a regional competition from which the best ensembles move on to perform at Alice Tully Hall. The regional performance is at the Hackley School on February 2nd at 2pm.
The Wind Ensemble will perform at David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center on Monday, March 30th. It’s a very special program entitled,
REVOLUTION
, featuring compositions celebrating perseverance, progress, and changes in both society and in the creative composition of band music. Each piece was selected to showcase modern wind band writing and the power of color shifts and changes through wind band orchestration. Jason will be conducting one piece.
We’ve received the wonderful final draft of the commission from Katerina Gimon entitled,
Joy of Lilac Time
, which the choir has begun learning and enjoying. Students, Emily Hansen, Jocelyn Lewis and Simran Ruta accompanied their director on a visit to the SMS eighth grade classes recently to recruit for next year’s choral groups.
Congratulations to our drama students on their recent performances of the student-directed one-act plays,
And
and
A Simple Task
. We celebrate your success!
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Traditional topics in geology explore the structure and composition of the earth. This foundation is crucial before the formation and distribution of economic resources, such as mineral ores or petroleum, can be introduced. Last summer, members of the earth science team participated in the
Understanding by Design
course offered by the Scarsdale Teachers Institute.
This course presented a framework that helps teachers to clarify learning goals and develop effective and engaging learning activities and assessments that reveal student understanding. This method of curriculum development uses a process called "backward design.”
After participating in this experience, earth science teachers re-organized their course and activities “with the end in mind.” There is so much interesting content in geology, which is almost exclusively derived from the observation of minerals, rocks, and outcrops. Our earth science and geology courses already had rich activities, which incorporate charts and graphs. However, based on the work in the design course, teachers decided to expand experiences to include rock and mineral samples as well as maps, globes, and other materials.
This shift has helped to address a concern that students see earth science as a series of independent ideas that occasionally overlap. Using updated activities and assessments, students appear more active and engaged. In addition, they are making deeper connections and developing a more coherent “big picture” understanding of geology.
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Students in several 9th and 10th grade World History classes met this past month with Professor Trevor Getz from San Francisco State University. Many of the students had read Professor Getz graphic history Abina and the Important Men as part of their study of Ghana and African history.
Students in Adam Weisler’s AT US Government class visited the editorial room of The New York Times. Students were able to observe the
"Morning News Meeting," which is a conference of all of the editors of the paper in which they plan and discuss their coverage of the news. After the news meeting students also spent time in conversation with Jonathan Ellis, one of the Times' political editors.
(more photos)
In Chris Paulison’s and Jonathan’s Pai’s AT Economics classes, students worked on research devoted to the investigation of various economic indicators. Students look at the relative accuracy of these indicators to measure the macroeconomic health of the country.
Heather Waters’s Peacing it Together class traveled to the United Nations where they toured the General Assembly and Security Council conference rooms. While at the UN, students learned about the various functions of the UN as well current initiatives.
(more photos)
David Sherrin's
Race and Ethnicity
class traveled to Greenacres where they read their own children’s books to 4th graders. The Race and Ethnicity class had written children’s books that tackled the themes of difference and tolerance.
(more photos)
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In conjunction with the wellness initiatives at SHS, the Special Education Department has been focusing on mindfulness in the LRC. Some teachers begin their class by asking, “what’s good or new”; others take a moment for students to share snippets of their weekend with each other. Considering the demands of a typical school day, we understand that incorporating these activities can positively impact our students and provide them with a chance to stop and focus in the moment.
LRC teachers have attended various workshops to keep up on the latest trends and learn different strategies to help support our students. Some of the workshops have focused on Executive Functions and Reading Challenges as well as Transition Planning.
The LRC continues to offer after-school support from Tuesday through Friday. During this time teachers and students can work on test preparation, study skills, homework help and any other areas in need of support. No sign ups are necessary; students can just show up!
Coming down the pike is our College Night for Students with Learning Differences on Thursday, March 5, at 7 p.m. in the Little Theater. Please join us as we hear from a college admission counselor and a Scarsdale parent who has successfully completed the process. Additionally, our annual review testing for our freshmen, sophomores and juniors will be administered on Thursday, February 6.
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In early December, Lisa Yokana, STEAM Coordinator, traveled to Shanghai, China, to accept an award in an international STEAM curriculum contest. Lisa presented Scarsdale’s three levels of STEAM courses as well as the research and philosophy behind their development at the STEAMex conference, held at the
Shanghai New International Expo Center. The competition was
aimed at building an international platform for educators to share STEAM projects and curriculum. There were more than 400 entries in the competition and Scarsdale was selected as one of the 12 semifinalists in early November. After a short presentation of our curriculum, Scarsdale was named one of the three finalists and invited to present at the conference in Shanghai. Chinese education specialists and industry experts served as the jury and selected Scarsdale’s STEAM curriculum as the winner.
AT Entrepreneurship welcomed two entrepreneurs this quarter: Joseph Weisgold of
After
and Sam Chason of
Storage Scholars
came to speak with our students about their entrepreneurial experiences. After has created a board game to encourage conversations about end of life wishes and legacy. Storage Scholars is a storage service for college students and makes the process of moving in and out of dorm rooms easier. Our students did research on both companies and had a chance to ask questions of the founders about their journeys.
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The second quarter began with our annual “SHS Cares” community service dinner where we hosted nearly 400 members of the community who shared in a delightful meal catered by local merchants. The event raised over $8,500 for JDRF. We appreciate the many faculty volunteers and community members who came out to support this initiative! We followed the success of this event with our
Winter Pep Rally
, which successfully included new ideas like a student band, club Hungry, Hungry Hippos, and a faculty scooter plunger relay. School Government elections took place in December, and eight newly elected officers will lead the school in the coming year. They began their term immediately by partnering with class governments, the Help Animals club, and Project Green to sell bracelets and raise money to support victims of the wildfires in Australia. We look forward to sharing more ideas and events as we head into second semester.
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Students are fully immersed in their language studies as we approach the end of the first semester. Approximately 80 seniors in AT Spanish Language (accompanied by 2 teachers and some very kind parent chaperones) traveled by train into NYC to see the classic Spanish play,
La casa de Bernarda Alba
, by Federico Garcia Lorca.
One of our very own AT Spanish students, Jacob Faierman, acted as a guest speaker in another Spanish class to talk about writing and publishing his work,
Voices in the Shadows
. He spoke about his experience interviewing undocumented immigrants in America and the students posed questions to him, all in Spanish of course!
Some French students took part in a new hands on activity inspired by our discussions on Wellness. Students learned about how lavender is grown and used in France, then tied up bunches of cut lavender (from Mme Chan's garden) and hung them around the room to dry. Once dry, students carefully removed the leaves and flowers and put them into little sachets. Some students report that they keep the sachet in their backpack, because the fragrance is very calming.
In December, Latin students celebrated the Roman winter holiday of Saturnalia. They sang songs, played games, held competitions, ate delicious food and organized some teacher-student role reversal activities. Fun was had by all!
Mandarin
students traveled to Chinatown in Manhattan in order to apply their language skills in authentic restaurant and supermarket settings. After the field trip, they put together a presentation based on their experience in Chinatown. It was a very productive and enjoyable outing indeed!
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Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.
- George Washington Carver
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