When I wore the dean of students hat at a boarding school in NH, I spent a good chunk of my time talking to parents about how their kids were doing and feeling.

From parents, the communication was often concern that their students weren’t listening, growing, and or assuming responsibilities as fast, or to as large an extent, as the parents desired.

My advice- much like any advice that I offer- began with “breathe.” I would then take the parent(s) through where their child stood, how the family communication was working, what they should expect from their student, ending with a reassuring conclusion that most of the behaviors and thoughts they were seeing was what they should expect.

Hyde Schools‘ admission office posted a nice primer for exasperated parents titled “Attention Parents…They’re Just Rebelling” offering their best advice for frustrated parents.

I like Hyde’s advice. Be supportive. Keep your distance; let your student garner experiences and grow; set clear boundaries; and let them know that you’re there to support them.

“…Let them know that their struggles are their own and that you believe in them and their ability to overcome. Let them know that they can ask for help anytime and that they are always accountable for their actions.

Remember that they (kids) do care.”

Hyde, and I, can’t stress enough- connect. Keep communicating.

Autistic; she thinks in pictures; she has difficulty reading social situations with people; author; and noted large animal veterinarian.

You listen to Temple Grandin speak and wonder “how did all of this complexity get wound into one person?”

Grandin is the subject of the upcoming HBO movie “Temple Grandin,” (Saturday, 6 February, 8-10 PM). Reviewing the movie, Barry Garron writes in The Hollywood Reporter (Temple Grandin- TV Review):

“…Jackson’s (director) genius is his decision to give viewers a second perspective on Grandin’s life. He shows us how the world sees Grandin but also shows how Grandin sees the world. With black-and-white images, line drawings superimposed on video and sequences of pictures triggered by words and phrases, Jackson provides crucial insight into the character and, just as importantly, removes the shroud of mystery that surrounds autism…” (THR)

Especially noteworthy to our audience is the power of educators and teachers in Grandin’s life.

Director Jackson shies away from the well known parts of Grandin’s story, focusing, “particularly on her life as a student at Hampshire Country School, a private boarding school where she was turned on to science, and Franklin Pierce College, also in New Hampshire, where she further developed her intellectual powers.” (THR)

Grandin’s is a great story and it’s great to see Hampshire Country School’s work playing a leading role.

Learn more about Dr. Grandin and read excerpts of her works. Chapter 1 from Thinking In Pictures is available here.

Editor’s Note: Winter is a long, slow time in boarding schools; there’s just know way around it.

The days are short and cold. In New England, the sun rises after 7AM and sets before 4:30 in the afternoon. Along with the seasons, students and faculty can find themselves in a rut- routine wise. The newness of the school year has worn off and it’s too soon to anticipate spring. Lethargy can set-in. The community needs motivation and reasons to get up and out.

Every school has their winter dose of fun- winter carnival, singing groups, a great basketball team. Events that mobilize large swaths of the community to get-up and moving despite the cold- something to break the inertia.

Sherri Bergman at St. Andrew’s-Sewanee School sent us this piece about an annual tradition that the school uses to mobilize the community each winter:

The Search is On!

Long before The Amazing Race, before Harry sought out the Sorcerer’s Stone, St. Andrew’s-Sewanee School (SAS), a small boarding and day school in Sewanee, Tenn., had the Search for the Golden Beaker. SAS science teacher and Golden Beaker mastermind Lisa Keith-Lucas concocts vexing clues in this annual cure to the post-holiday mid-winter doldrums.

Keith-Lucas started the school-wide treasure hunt in 1995. The Golden Beaker is hidden on campus, and students follow a trail of 25 clues to find it. The student, or group of students, who solves the puzzle receives the undying admiration of his or her peers, permanent recognition in the annals of Golden Beaker history, and a bit of swag. Past prizes have included Periodic Table T-shirts with glow in the dark radioactive elements and Golden Beaker mugs.

Last year’s puzzles had a theme of “firsts” and included: “Your clue for this are four countries: Great Britain, Russia, Germany and The Netherlands.” The answer was a series of words represented by blanks. Letters derived from the clues unscrambled to spell “Marathon Open Water Swimming”, a new Olympic sport (in which the four countries won medals). The clues involve history, literature, current events, school history and traditions, science, faculty, students, puns, and play on words. One puzzle spelled the full name of a character from The Lord of the Rings. The last search spelled out a geological event (the collision of two tectonic plates that caused the tsunami in Indonesia). The clues are quite easy at first, but get more difficult. Solving the puzzle requires information from all of the clues, so finding the beaker accidentally (or clue 23) does not give a treasure hunter an advantage.

Last year the school’s new Head, Father John Thomas gave it a try. “I started the quest because I thought it might help me to discover some things I didn’t know about the campus,” said Thomas. “I realized, though, that the hunt really gets to the essence of the sort of education we offer here. It calls upon a lot of cross-disciplinary skills. It requires research not just on-line or in books, but also the type of research that requires you to seek out information from people beyond your closest circle of friends or teachers. It’s all about problem solving.”

Last year’s beaker was hidden in a bottle of cupric sulfate. In past years it has been found in a refrigerator, in a cracker box on a shelf, in a trophy, and in a ceramic pot. One year a clue was left on a leased bus, which was returned in the middle of the hunt. Keith-Lucas still wonders what the rental agency thought when they found it. Last year’s Golden Beaker was found in two weeks, but one year the quest went on for over three months.

Share this with math teachers.

“English In Real Life” was a fixture of my classroom. It wasn’t a set lesson. It was a few minutes at the opening of the period where students could share and show that they’d connected something that we’d covered in class to the larger world.

Their connections ranged from reading/finding words that had been on a vocabulary quiz- to character concepts and traits that they’d connected from reading to movies- to showing how an advertisement worked to manipulate readers through language. The goal- as always- was to connect the dots and see how everything fits together.

Easier done in English class than in math class. Math just seems to carry more phobia with it. How many times have you heard a variation on “I just dont’ get math?”

It shouldn’t be that way. Everyone needs to understand as much math as possible. Math is gorgeous, so necessary, and ubiquitous in our daily lives that we ignore it- and we miss out on so much- at our own peril.

For the math averse and all of us, Steven Strogratz, Cornell University is now contributing to the New York Times “Opinionator” blog.

Strogratz brings great communication skills to his space. He is the winner of the “Communications Award, a lifetime achievement award for the communication of mathematics to the general public.” Here’s the lead from his post (From Fish to Infinity):

“From Fish to Infinity”
“I have a friend who gets a tremendous kick out of science, even though he’s an artist. Whenever we get together all he wants to do is chat about the latest thing in evolution or quantum mechanics. But when it comes to math, he feels at sea, and it saddens him. The strange symbols keep him out. He says he doesn’t even know how to pronounce them.

In fact, his alienation runs a lot deeper. He’s not sure what mathematicians do all day, or what they mean when they say a proof is elegant. Sometimes we joke that I just should sit him down and teach him everything, starting with 1 + 1 = 2 and going as far as we can.

Crazy as it sounds, over the next several weeks I’m going to try to do something close to that. I’ll be writing about the elements of mathematics, from pre-school to grad school, for anyone out there who’d like to have a second chance at the subject — but this time from an adult perspective. It’s not intended to be remedial. The goal is to give you a better feeling for what math is all about and why it’s so enthralling to those who get it….”

I’ll leave the explorations in his first post to readers. I will say his angle is promising and I respectfully encourage our high school math teachers to bring it to the attention of their students. Little is better than math made meaningful. Math is the foundation of every technology we use. That’s real life.

Photo credit: akirsa

As an independent school educator of some thirty-plus years and a director of admission at a number of highly-selective independent schools for twenty-two of those years, I must admit that I am becoming increasing concerned about the overuse of the term “gifted child.” Now, as a disclaimer, I believe profoundly that every child has a gift for something and that those gifts are often overlooked in large or small schools. And no, I am not talking about that hard-working A’s-all-the-time, terrific test taker. We all have them; we all identify them easily; and, of course, we love them as much as we love all our students. But, I am seeing so many applicants whose resumes list Gifted and Talent Education (GATE) programs or participation in the one of the many programs designed for the “high-performing student” that I beginning to wonder who is not “gifted.” Many of these students are happily spending their summers studying forensics, psychology, writing, economics and I applaud those interests. It sure has to be better than spending the summer locked in front of the newest version of World of Warcraft. But there are so many of these programs and the vast majority use your typical battery of standardized tests to identify such students; the result of which is that now we have seventh graders taking some version of the SAT and that is implicitly encouraging parents to prepare sixth grade students for the SAT. Oh, to be in the SAT prep business today! And how very sad this is all becoming. Just the other day, I had a young parent ask me if I would accept her child’s SAT results in place of our typical standardized assessment test for admission. “And what grade is she in, may I ask?” “Well, she’s gifted, you know, and she took the SAT in grade 7.” “How do you know she’s ‘gifted’?” “Well, look at her test scores.”

Some years back, I had the privilege of working as the director of admission for a school whose entire focus was the truly exceptional (we call them “highly capable”) learner. I was simply captivated by these remarkable students, for how one captures their attention and imagination goes well beyond what I am seeing in many a school’s classrooms. These are the children that learn in a completely different way from most children. Their minds are working in overdrive and everything seems a world of wonder. Placed in your standard “I teach you; you learn” environment, they either explicitly rebel or check out. They might see solutions to math problems completely outside the norm. Some have extraordinary individual talents (I am thinking of the boy I took to the National Geographic Geography Bee finals in 2001. He won.); some have extraordinary verbal skills. What they have in common is that they are such uncommon learners and I believe they are among the most misunderstood and poorly served in educational institutions where standardized tests, SAT results, and registration in AP courses are used to determine what many believe defines a “gifted” student. It is not so.

During my interviews I can pick out the child of which I am writing. I am thinking of a boy – let’s call him Joseph – who sat in my office and could talk about whatever esoteric subject came to mind. During those thirty minutes we explored black holes and the possibility that if the Big Bang means the universe started from nothing, then nothing must be something. We analyzed the meaning of the word “should” and engaged in solving a physics problem of motion. He was a talented animator and designer of computer games but he never played them. His head was full of ideas; his room full of books. On paper? A “B” student. He didn’t turn in his work as, for many of these children, the homework we demand is pretty much mindless and I would agree. This is not the kind of student who can sit quietly solving the odd-number problems in the back of the algebra text. Most likely, he knows the material without expending much intellectual energy. Answer the questions in the back of chapter four of A Survey of World Literature? I don’t think so. The result? Well, instead of attempting to discern what this student really knows or can demonstrate mastery of, he gets a “C” since 40% of his grade is mindless homework. So, he disappears to the middle of the classroom, unnoticed and certainly forgotten in big schools. He doesn’t bother anyone and is never encouraged except for the rare instance that a special teacher opens her eyes and reaches out. She notes the student who confounds her with his questions that seem to come out of nowhere and whose verbal dexterity can only be matched by his remarkable insights no matter how seemingly inane. I know because I worked with such students like Bert, all of 10 years old, who assisted me on a tour of the school with a father, an engineer. Upon viewing a class where algebraic solutions were scattered across the board (this was fifth grade), the engineer suggested an alternative solution to the problem. “No”, remarked Bert. “That would be wrong. Let me show you why.” He was right. I can still see that father’s eyes. Bert and all his classmates used to call all teachers and administrators by their first name. “Hi, Leo.” It would only work there. I just loved the place because everything was so very different from what I was used to. And we had waiting lists.

I always worried for these children because after they graduated from grade 8, there really were no schools for them. Yes, of course, there were the schools hyping IB programs or their lists of AP courses and, horror of horrors, universities that purported to “accelerate” these children bypassing any notion that developmentally they were still only fourteen years old. What’s the rush? I wonder. But IB/AP does not necessarily address the needs of the truly exceptional, highly capable learner. There are few schools that are addressing their needs and certainly not in the public sector. The task is left typically to that special teacher of whom I remark; and given the size of their classes and the independence from state mandated standards, I believe many independent schools, particularly boarding schools, are well-suited to address the needs of such students.

Teenagers want to be known, and once known they do remarkable things. Imagine then if that highly capable child who possibly does not understand his talents or gifts – they seem too natural – is identified in a caring community such as we have in boarding schools. The possibilities for that child are enormous. I love seeing these students on my campus and I can tell stories about every one of them. And I can do so because they seem to thrive in the intellectual freedom provided by schools like ours. When you sit around a table with fifteen students and engage in a Socratic dialogue about Robert Frost’s take on the American Dream, or take your students on a field trip to the Utah wilderness to search for a newly identified miniature T. Rex, you open the possibility for such students to reveal themselves. It is when you let them stretch their minds without the burden of meeting arbitrary rubrics for success that the highly capable child begins to see that the world has meaning for him or her. And when we teachers hear them think, it is something to behold.

Leo Marshall serves as the Director of Admission and Financial Aid at The Webb Schools in Claremont, CA- a coed, boarding school offering grades 9-12.

In “It’s Not Just Basketball,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch writer Bryan Burwell chronicles the rise of international calibre high school basketball at Brehm Preparatory School.

Brehm sudden ascention in the international and collegiate basketball scene has raised some eyebrows. In Brehm’s story, you see and hear the echoes of the reasons other boarding schools commit to high level academic programs and the reasons colleges continue wanting to participate in the NCAA Football Bowl Series (only this story profile replaces NCAA money).

“…Aaron Lee (Breem basketball coach) knows what you are thinking. You have heard that a talent-rich, nationally recognized prep basketball program sprung up almost overnight in the middle of a small college town in the heart of Southern Illinois. You have heard that they have stocked it with tall and talented kids from Nigeria and Cameroon, Latvia and Chicago, Canada, Florida and Carbondale, too. You have heard that in less than two years of the basketball program’s existence, a prep school previously known internationally only for its outstanding work with educating junior-high and senior high school students with complex learning disabilities has suddenly become a haven for some remarkable high school hoop talent and is luring college recruiters from across the country to this tiny gymnasium with the funky floor.

And if you are not skeptical, you are, at the very least, extremely curious.” (St.L P-D)

Writer Burwell himself arrived at Brehm with a healthy dose of skepticism and much of the article is devoted to documenting that Brehm has a plan and a handle on the how’s and why’s of upgrading their basketball program. Lee has been on the Brehm faculty 17 years (and an AAU basketball coach for 15). Brehm recruits international players and provides them with academic structure and support that they seem to appreciate.

Daniel Daudu came to Brehm two years ago from Nigeria: “This is a great place to come to get your education and play basketball…”It’s not an easy thing, but it has become a home away from home. But they push you hard and it’s been a great transition so far.” (St.L P-D)

Interestingly, Behm basketball plays fit into Brehm’s traditional market- students with learning differences with student receiving varying levels of support.

In the end, coach Lee makes his case telling Burwell:

“We have nothing to hide…What we’re doing here is good work for kids who need the help. It is about basketball, but it’s not all about basketball. We’re here to help kids who otherwise wouldn’t get it. If people want to doubt us, that’s OK. I know what we’re doing here. This is a good story. This is a great story. Tell everybody what we’re doing here.” (St.L P-D)

The video below is of the school’s athletic director. In he talks about the programs and its roots:

Charles Mathias, the three term Maryland Senator and classic “party of Lincoln” Republican died this past Monday.

Noted for his “bold stances that were often at odds with the prevailing views of his party” and his unwillingness to participate in the Southern Strategy Senator Mathias practiced an honesty and belief that sometimes put him at odds with emerging modern Republican party philosophy. (Washington Post, Former U.S. Sen. Charles McC. Mathias Jr. of Maryland dies at 87)

“I’m not all that liberal,” he said in 1974, describing his political views. “In fact, in some respects, I’m conservative. A while ago, I introduced a bill preserving the guarantees of the Bill of Rights by prohibiting warrantless wiretaps. I suppose they’ll say it’s another liberal effort, but it’s as conservative as you can get. It’s conserving the Constitution.” (WP)

This kind of integrity and honesty is often missing in today’s public and political discourse.

Senator Mathias makes the blog today because I enjoyed meeting him as T-P student in the mid-1980’s on his return to campus. Senator Mathias spent a year, 1939-1940, at the then named Pawling School before entering Haverford College.

Robert Semple penned a glowing rememberance of Senator Mathias in Wednesday’s New York Times. Noting that Mathias signature issue was civil rights, Semple concludes with these paragraphs:

“…The lofty way to describe him would be to say that he voted his conscience. But as he saw it, he was simply voting for things that everyone of conscience ought to support: respect for constitutional rights, respect for the environment, respect for the balance of powers.

He once told The Times’s Tom Wicker that the senators he most admired were Democrats J. William Fulbright, Mike Mansfield and Philip Hart, and Republicans John Sherman Cooper, Jacob Javits, George Aiken and Clifford Case.

Why these? “Individual responsibility,” he answered. “Each one of these people would take an issue on his own responsibility. They wouldn’t have to have the cover of some ideology. They’d simply come to the conclusion that this was the right thing for the country.” That describes Mac Mathias.” (New York Times, A Responsible Man)

At Kents Hill School (Maine) we have a longstanding sister school relationship with Kent College Pembury in Pembury, near Tunbridge Wells, in Kent, England.

KCP is an all-girls, boarding and day school, elementary through seniors. Each year, KCP sends 2-3 girls to Kents Hill in the winter trimester, and we send 2-3 girls over to KCP in the spring.

In addition, the drama programs enjoy an exchange, with KCP bringing a drama production over in the fall every four or so years, and KHS sending their spring musical across the pond in late May. We have also sent our field hockey team over twice in the last five years to play hockey with KCP and other area schools.

This fall, I travelled with my husband, Varsity FH Coach Randy Richardson and 12 members of the V & JV field hockey team over to KCP during the Thanksgiving holiday to play – 11 girls and 1 boy (yes, Kents Hill has one boy on its varsity team.) We planned the trip for months. The team raised over $1,000 selling KHS calendars that they designed, sponsoring a dress down day, and selling snacks and hot cider at fall athletic events.
We spent spent the first three days in London – seeing such sites as Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, and the London Dungeon, with an evening spent seeing the musical Billy Elliot.

More important, however, were the building and rekindling of relationships with KCP students and faculty. It was absolutely wonderful seeing the school again, and at this point so many of the students know each other that it was a real KCP-KHS reunion.

Three of our team had experience at KCP as part of the drama and/or student exchange. Two KCP girls who had been with us in Maine are now Head Girl and Deputy Head Girl at KCP and we were reunited with our exchange students from last winter. Two more of our KHS field hockey players will be spending the spring term at KCP.

The team spent the rest of the week at KCP – practicing field hockey every day, going to classes and going home with KCP girls each night. Our KHS team played three games – KCP’s First XI – losing 3-0, KCP’s Second XI – tying 1-1 and another school, Priorsfield – where they won 4-2. In a longstanding KHS tradition, our team selected two players from each opposing team and awarded them KHS Sportsmanship Pins.
The team had a truly memorable ten days. They loved London, were awed by Westminster Abbey, and thoroughly enjoyed Billy Elliot- asking lots of questions about Margaret Thatcher and the miners’ strikes of the time. We celebrated Thanksgiving in a variety of ways with each host family. Our players shared American Thanksgiving traditions with KCP’s boarding population. Our team tried all kinds of new things with their host families and played some great field hockey. Their last game was truly a high point – for the five seniors it was the last time they would play together. Two of this group are our daughter and son.

Asked for their opinions on the plane back home, one player summed it all up: “My favorite memories? Winning the Priorsfield game; having fish and chips, crumpets and muffins; and walking around London.” And that’s what these experiences, these trips, these exchanges are all about.

About Anne Richardson:

Anne Richardson joined Kents Hill School in July of 1998, and currently serves as the  Director of College Counseling and the Director of the International and ESL Programs. In addition to working as the Director of College Counseling, she was also the Academic Dean for 6 years and the Director of Communications for 5 years.  Anne is also active in the New England Association of College Admissions Counseling (NEACAC), serving on the faculty and as chair (2006) of the Summer Institute from 2002-6, as Vice-President in 2007-8, and is currently serving as President-Elect of the association. Anne teaches ESL and serves as the faculty advisor to Kents Hill’s Amnesty International program.

Prior to 1998 she was Dean of Middle School Students at Hamden Hall Country Day School in Hamden, Ct. In addition to teaching English there, she also served as Director of Community Service and Director of the Summer School. Ms. Richardson earned her A.B. in English from Oberlin College and her M.A. in Liberal Studies from Wesleyan University.

Photo credits: Kents Hill School

The campus visit with its requisite school tour and interview- a boarding school a tradition and right of passage- have, like so much, come under economic and social pressure as families push against busy home, school and work schedules as well as financing a single purpose trip to visit a prospective school.

Affording such a trip- airline tickets, hotel rooms, rental car- as well as missing work is a daunting proposition. The costs and the time add up and can seem prohibitive to interested families.

But, as a people business working the fluid and imprecise world of adolescence, boarding schools continue wanting to meet student and family as they all work to find the best fit for the student.

A few schools have gone the college route, bringing alumni into the fold as admission interviewers across the country. In these situations, families meet with the local alumni representative on an afternoon, weekend or evening with the alumnus providing feedback to the admission office.

Many schools will also arrange interviews with traveling admission officers when they visit a family’s city or town. Others use tools like Skype to conduct interviews via the web.

These approaches are quick, local and convenient. But, the school never meets the student face to face and student and family miss the opportunity to experience the school first hand. Out of necessity, admission offices use the off campus, alumni interview, or virtual interview. But it’s an imprecise tool, short on building the connections between school and family.

A $25,000 challenge grant has allowed American Hebrew Academy to respond to family time and financial constraints in way that I’ve never seen before in the boarding school world.

The grant, from the family of a recent alumnus, will reimburse prospective families and students visiting campus under auspices of the Academy’s Honor Society up to $250.

Through American Hebrew the donors explained:

“The Academy was a transformative experience for our daughter and we have been searching for ways to give back. As anyone who has visited the campus can attest, a visit is ‘priceless.’ Our first visit to the campus literally ‘took our breath away.’ In addition to the world class education the Academy offers, we believe a visit is an incredibly powerful recruitment tool. We are honored to be able to contribute in this way.”

The grant will support the all important of step of connecting the prospective family to the school through a personal campus visit.

Leslie Grossman, American Hebrew admission director explains:

“Statistically, we know that 90% of mission appropriate students who visit the Academy will ultimately enroll. This incentive program marks an important step in the Academy’s ability to attract students and reduce costs for families.”

This creative solution might serve as an industry catalyst in spurring creative approaches and offers as admission offices work to maintain broad and diverse applicant pools.

See, “American Hebrew Academy Receives $25,000 Grant To Support Honor Society Travel Stipends…” on Facebook.

J.D. Salinger is of course noteworthy in this space because The Catcher in the Rye ranks as one of the great boarding school books of all time.

Salinger’s protagonist, Holden Caufield, presents a mid-twentieth century picture of teenage angst and cynicism.

Often taught as Holden losing innocence and becoming disillusioned, I find the book much more sad. It’s the chronicling of Holden going through what we colloquially call a “nervous breakdown” and heading toward institutionalization through his refusal to leave childhood, or, bluntly, grow-up. Holden’s inability for complexity and nuance seem static from the book’s opening to its end.

In the words of my old headmaster, Holden “defines the world in terms of himself” from beginning to end.

The Catcher in the Rye became a boarding school staple because Holden is expelled from his boarding school, “Pency Prep,” spending three days wandering New York City on his way home after getting kicked out.

At some point, every high school student sheds their rigid definitions and begins to see the world in shades of grey. Holden’s mental illness keeps him from seeing in grey scale. Instead, Holden persists in seeing, and defining, the words and deeds of others only in his version of clearly delineated black and white. An absolute world view is difficult for anyone to hold. An absolute world paired with Caufield’s inability to empathize with anyone presents a symptom of his mental illness.

I taught the book for several years. With some work, my students gained some insight and empathy into what was happing. But, I have to say, I quit teaching Catcher. It became dated.

Modern students arrived to class with greater and wider experiences than Holden and many students brought at least a rudimentary understanding of modern student mental health to their readings. Period terms and slang no longer resonated with students. The book’s appeal skewed far too much toward boys over girls. And, some of the novel’s imagery/symbolism seems downright hokey.

Criticism aside, The Catcher in the Rye continues worthy because it presents an adolescent failure of empathy to an adolescent audience. As I’ve made the case through the years in presentations to both faculty and students, one of the primary reasons our students are in school with us is to learn empathy. Failures of empathy produce frightening results.

I’m off to pull my copy from the shelf. It’s been there a while.

Photo credit: quiltingmick / michelle