Stoneleigh-Burnham School students Hannah and Mary share their thoughts on the SBS experience.

Academics at Stoneleigh-Burnham translate into college success. Stoneleigh girls work through a series of introductory foundational classes before moving on to advanced, or IB, level classes in the 11th and 12th grades. Core curriculum classes include work across the subject areas with emphasis on theater and visual arts, research and research paper writing. Research practice begins in the ninth grade, with the five colleges of the Pioneer Valley (MA) providing extensive research opportunities.

This is Stoneleigh’s first year as an International Baccaulaureate, or IB, school with students appreciating the rigor and global perspectives offered through the program.

Stoneleigh requires two arts credits of each student annually and a sport or activity such as dance or acting every semester.

Stoneleigh dedicates a part of its mission to public speaking and the concept that every student must develop her voice. Students fulfill speaking requirements and the debate team is renowned. The school hosts a public speaking tournament on campus each October.

Why is Stoneleigh-Burnham a great place to go to school? Each students grows into her voice graduating with confidence to affect her community.

Stoneleigh-Burnham School English teacher, Alex Bogel explains the synthesis that underlies the International Baccalaureate (IB).

The IB and Stoneleigh-Burnham’s IB program work to blur artificial academic constructs, breaking down boundaries between traditional academic subjects- humanities, sciences, the fine and performing arts. The object is to begin seeing connections- how thoughts, ideas, creations, actions and practices are interconnected.

Practices and frameworks that students use include CAS (Creativity, Action, Service), extended essay research, and the Theory of Knowledge seminar.

Stoneleigh-Burnham students (and IB students as a whole) work toward an understanding of what it means to know and give meaning to the world.

Stoneleigh-Burnham School is an all-girls boarding school in Greenfield, MA.

Resources:

www.sbschool.org

International Baccalaureate (IB) Boarding Schools

Recently “Room for Debate” covered ADHD; last week the experts with perspectives examine single gender schools.

We penned a post on the publication of the American Council for Coeducational Schooling and their paper, “The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling.” Last week the NYT convenes a panel expert on the single gender school topic.

The Times provides a nice, quiet platform for all to make their points around the single gender schools question. Richard Fabes, lead author of the American Council for Coeducational Schooling’s paper sticks to his research and I admire that.

Lawyers Galen Sherwin and Verna Williams come off as too shrill and lacking nuance:

“There is little to no data showing that sex separation alone leads to better outcomes. These schools work when class sizes are reasonable, academics are paramount and parents are involved. Gender neutral factors, all….

So, while the law may permit single-sex schooling in some circumstances, it’s not the magic bullet proponents proclaim,” Verna Williams writes.(NYT)

Galen Sherwin writes in her contribution, “Coeducation is not the problem with our schools, and sex segregation is not the cure.”(NYT)

Yes, to both, but each paints with too broad a brush- a common ailment when one focuses on policy rather than what’s happening on the ground.

I’ll gladly concede that single gender education is neither a magic bullet, nor a cure. It is, merely, an option that works for some students and families- an option that should probably be available to families regardless of race, gender, or class.

If the research of Fabes, and colleagues, pans out over time, I’ll gladly rethink my support of single gender education as option. But, I’m not there yet.

Is the single gender elementary, secondary, and/or collegiate experience best for all students?

Heck, no. However, there’s no reason not to offer an honest choice for single gender eduction if it doesn’t break the bank and it’s not touted as a magic bullet that will carry every student to high achievement. Some students may simply be more comfortable and, or, like, or, perform better in a single gender setting.

I’m still with Leonard Sax on the issue:

“Not every child should be in a single-sex classroom. But parents should have the right to choose among single-sex and coed formats, even if they can’t afford to pay private school fees.”(NYT)

It all comes back to “school fit.” Know your child and work to find the school that best fits who he/she is and where he/she stands their educational processes. What’s the best school fit? The school that meets the student where he/she stands and can grow him/her the furthest, and the fastest. If it’s a single gender gender school, then, so be it.

Charlotte Beyer

For the second time in recent memory, we’ve found a boarding school connection in The Wall Street Journal’s “Donor of the Day” column.

Melanie Grayce West chronicles the lasting affects of a Westover School education in the professional and personal life of Charlotte B. Beyer in “Nurturing Young Women to Be Wall Street Leaders.”

Rising through bankings ranks to found the Institute for Private Investors, Beyer credits her time at Westover for some of her professional practices and approaches.

West writes:

“…she wanted to stress the “importance of community and the importance of a collaborative, almost feminine, model of learning” in her company.”(WSJ)

On the importance and lasting power of a girls school education, Beyer told West:

“Girls need a laboratory, like an orchid needs a nursery…If you don’t provide that protection or safety for a girl, they often do not have the courage to try things, run for student government or be the head of a club.”(WSJ)

Ms Beyer believes so strongly in the power of the Westover experience that she donated more than $600,000 to the school over time- “more than half of those contributions going toward scholarships.”(WSJ)

An interesting short article in the Marin Independent Journal last week shows the pan pacific cross cultural and cross educational interest is a two way process.

In “Marin Voice: Marin schools can lead the trend toward Asia,” San Domenco School head David Behrs makes a quick case that American students, families, and schools are shifting their world view toward Asia- away from Europe.

Asia is seen as the future and San Domenico reflects this shift by not only hosting Chinese students but, also, by planing to send its students and faculty to China for an immersion experience.

“…the school has recently partnered with the Jiaxiang School in Chengdu, China, planning to host exchange students, plus trade teachers across the Pacific.

The potential to expose Marin teachers to a year of China-style education, where schools enroll thousands, and classes are 50-plus, while showing their teachers the benefits of small class sizes and outdoor laboratories, is incredible…

Marin’s students have a global sense, thanks largely to our residents — their parents — who are interested in the world around them, and help their children to establish efforts to send soccer cleats to Latin America, or to travel to Bosnia to teach summer school to Muslim and Christian children in the same classroom.”(MIJ)

Photo credit: Toby Simkin via Creative Commons

Miss Porter's School Head Challenges “The Pseudoscience of Single Sex Schooling”

I didn’t think we’d have to have to wait too long for the professional reply to  “The Pseudoscience of Single Sex Schooling” (see our response). We didn’t even have to wait a full weekend.

Miss Porter’s head Katherine Windsor posted her professional response to the paper over the weekend, “Dr. Windsor: The Truth About Single-Sex Schools.”

With research at the ready, Windsor smells the ax that the authors have to grind and challenges them head-on.

Here’s Windsor’s encapsulation of the girls’ school experience:

“Single-sex schools do what co-educational environments often do not: they acknowledge gender. While this can seem a point seemingly so obvious that it is worth overlooking, it is vital. The difference a girls’ school provides a young woman is the open discussion and address of the distinct ways in which gender can affect learning as well as their social, personal, and professional experiences. This frank discussion reduces the likelihood of girls sheepishly succumbing to social expectation rather than reinforcing stereotypes. Girls who attend girls’ schools report more female role models, increased faculty interactions, and a greater focus on academic endeavors. The National Coalition of Girls’ Schools reports higher levels of academic achievement and confidence among girls at single-sex schools as compared to their co-ed peers. And, girls’ schools offer one very important outcome: the ability to evoke, encourage and establish self-agency. In girls’ schools, girls are given authority to make decisions, hold power and choose their own paths. As a result, they become self-reliant as opposed to reliant on others…

If relying solely on quantitative data such as test scores in the study of single-sex vs. co-educational education, the results might be disconcerting. But, these studies do not necessarily incorporate the real value provided by schools such as ours: We teach for the overall outcome – not simply the academic component, but the comprehensive development of young women who are prepared for leadership and life. Our success is measured more fully by our students’ optimization of the opportunities we provide…”(MPS)

My favorite tidbits from Windsor’s note:

“•Single-sex schools are not illegal. Title IX specifically allows single-sex public schools in grades K-12.

•The argument, that there is no more justification for sex segregation than there is for racial segregation has already been explicitly considered and firmly rejected both by the United States Supreme Court and by lower courts. To confuse the relationship and impact of racial segregation with the potential impact of separating boys and girls from each other in school defies metaphor. The former is imposed; the latter chosen. The former is separation on the basis of assigned degradation; the latter on the basis of a preferable option. The former is intended to limit reach; the later to expand reach. The former results in diminution; the latter enrichment. There is no comparison between the destruction of racism as separatism for the sake of removing people of color, and single-sex education whose goal is enlightenment and empowerment.”(MPS)

On Friday we wrote (Understanding Boys’ Friendships) about Niobe Way’s Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection.

Today, we write about the non-profit group American Council for CoEducational Schooling. They may be non-profit but, boy, do they seem to have an ax to grind. The eight authors of “The Pseudoscience of Single Sex Schooling,” published in the journal Science are also the founders of American Council for CoEducational Schooling.

The paper’s authors betray their position and move into the realm of political shrill when drawing parallels between voluntary single gender classrooms and slavery.

New York Times education writer Tamar Lewin, in her article, “Single-Sex Education Is Assailed in Report,” makes her point in using ‘assailed’ to describe the tone and position of “The Pseudoscience of Single Sex Schooling.”

Full disclosure, I’m writing from the the article lede and the references cited on the American Council for CoEducational Schooling web site. I don’t have a subscription, or quick access, to Science for the full article.

“The Pseudoscience of Single Sex Schooling,” is a compilation paper bringing together a series of studies over the past (roughly) 15 years; the paper’s thesis is essentially that single gender schools and the notions that support them are unprovable, or, even negated by the research. In some cases, single gender schools are actually damaging to those who do, and do not attend them. And, in the end, the healthiest way for students to learn, grow, and go to school is in a coeducational environment.

The paper’s lede from Science:

“…We argue that one change in particular—sex-segregated education—is deeply misguided, and often justified by weak, cherry-picked, or misconstrued scientific claims rather than by valid scientific evidence. There is no well-designed research showing that single-sex (SS) education improves students’ academic performance, but there is evidence that sex segregation increases gender stereotyping and legitimizes institutional sexism.”(TPSSS)

The authors write to bring the weight of research behind the rationales and questionable value of using public schools and public funding to provide a single gender option in the school choice movement. They conclude that rather than putting money and effort behind something of no value (single gender schools) educators, students, and parents would be better served putting monies behind educational initiatives, programs, and changes that the data support.

Lewin describes it this way:

“Arguing that no scientific evidence supports the idea that single-sex schooling results in better academic outcomes, the article calls on the Education Department to rescind its 2006 regulations weakening the Title IX prohibition against sex discrimination in education. Under those rules, single-sex classes may be permitted as long as they are voluntary, students have a substantially equal coeducational option and the school reasonably believes separation will produce better academic outcomes.

The authors of the article, though, say that because there is no good scientific research backing such a choice, the government cannot lawfully offer single-sex education in public schools…”(NYT)

“The Pseudoscience of Single Sex Schooling,” also calls out single gender classroom proponent Leonard Sax.

“Dr. Sax criticized the article on many counts, and said it did not fairly reflect his current views. He vehemently rejected the comparison to racial segregation, and the use of the term ‘sex segregation.’ Legally, race is a suspect category, while sex is not.

‘We are not asserting that every child should be in a single-sex classroom, we are simply saying that there should be a choice,’ Dr. Sax said in an interview.” (NYT)

I hear the authors’ argument and they may have point on certain of the issues they raise. But something makes me think that, almost to-a-t, not a one of them has spent much time teaching in high school classroom.

I’ll raise two points from personal experience in the high school classroom.

One, generally, ninth and tenth grade boys are not in the same places- emotionally, developmentally, physically, or maturation-wise- as their female counterparts.  The girls and boys at this point in their developments are in different places.

Two, what about the boys who are more comfortable in a single gender environment and who go on to fine adulthoods?

I’d be fascinated to hear a debate on the issue between the Women’s Rights Project of the ACLU and the National Coalition of Girls Schools.

Photo credit: http://www.ethelwalker.org/

“NO BOYS?!?!?” An exclamation/question/judgement oft uttered by the potential student whose parents are prompting her to consider an all girls school, or perhaps, by a friend of that same girl, a friend who finds the notion appalling.

In truth, there are girls who seek this option themselves in middle and high school. They realize that it may be a positive thing to limit their potential daily stressors to getting to class on time or to working to their full potential. A girls’ school eliminates the need to think, “OMG, I HAVE to make sure my makeup is perfect this morning because that cute boy in my physics class looked at me and he may look at me AGAIN. TODAY.” Instead, the student is free to think “OMG, I am PUMPED to kill it when I present my research in European history.”

Now, as the mother of two “adorbs” boys, I do know that a girl’s life is enhanced by boys’ (and specifically, my boys’) daily presence in their co-ed college and high school classes. Yet, students at girls’ schools have plenty of opportunity to socialize – at dances, on community service projects, on co-ed weekend trips to the theater or the local Chili’s. They’re just not distracted by Brendan’s new haircut when in class, nor do they spend study time that evening discussing its pros and cons vís a vís his blue eyes. Instead they’re supporting one another, teaming with one another on the field or on projects, and most importantly, learning in ways specifically designed for girls; data consistently shows that there are differences in learning styles for different genders. And, they are likely to form a lifelong bond because there is more time to spend with one another, and less time for distraction.

Instead of choosing Brendan to be Class President because he is, indeed, adorbs, they will choose Emily because she is “fierce.” She will fiercely spend her time planning new initiatives for her Class to leave its legacy on the school. She will fiercely understand she is serving as a role model for her classmates. She is fierce in the 21st-century Beyoncé way – not hissy, mean fierce like my cats when they are defending my home against mice. And her classmates – many of them to be her friends forever – will remember her fierceness as she perpetuates it into adulthood – as their fiercely loyal friend. Fierce, at a girls’ school, is good.

Fierceness is encouraged at girls’ schools in all its positive iterations. A fierce belief in women’s education was at the root of the pioneer spirits that founded girls’ schools, especially those focusing on academic achievement. A girls’ school environment nurtures the roots of bonds that do not grow elsewhere. Judging from class note submissions at girls’ schools vs. boys’ and co-ed schools, and taking into consideration generalizations regarding female communications skills, women who attended a girls’ school continue to be fiercely interested in one another’s lives for decades after graduation. Judging from the tears that shared memories bring on, growing from girls into women, together, at these schools is an experience that played a monumental role in their lives.

As parents consider independent schools for their daughters, they will do them justice to consider girls’ schools as viable options. The enduring friendships they will form in this unique sorority will bestow upon them not only the gift of learning which comes with schooling, but the gift of friendships founded on common ground.

And it’s self-confidence and security in her surroundings that led another girl in that same hallway to say, today, “I was going to straighten my hair this morning, but I realized the time would be better spent sleeping.” Now, that’s a girl with the right priorities.

To learn more about the academic benefits of girls’ schools, visit www.ncgs.org.

Her submission will run in two installments.

Photo credit: http://www.ethelwalker.org/

“Do you need help finding something?” The bright young voice outside my office belonged to a sophomore from Simsbury, Connecticut, who I interviewed last year about her community service work for a feature in the school magazine. “Where is Mr. Groff’s room?” asked the “new girl” from New York City, also a sophomore, looking for her English classroom. The “old girl” didn’t just point up the stairs; she escorted her new classmate to the skylit classroom.

In a decade, or two, or five, it is likely these two girls will still be in each other’s lives. Indeed, they may be the best of friends, though many miles may separate them. They may have traveled together, become godmothers to one another’s children, or have founded a business together. This sophomore year, they will be in the same economics class, be lacrosse teammates, and wield hammers side-by-side as they perform community service together by rehabbing old homes. They will bake cookies in a dorm kitchen, and the “old girl” will help the “new girl” design her outlandish ensemble for school spirit events. They will learn together, play together, laugh together and cry together. And without knowing it, they will form a bond that will last a lifetime.

These scenes would never have played out at my high school in Queens, New York. Admittedly, “back then,” nobody was encouraged to be friendly, or to help those who looked confused, and there were no pink-shirted student guides whose official duties included helping others navigate the massive school’s labyrinth hallways.

Oh, I had fun at Hillcrest High – we bonded on the subway rides that “bused” us out of our neighborhood so that “integration” (derisively viewed at that time; today, viewed positively – and correctly – as “diversity”) could be achieved. I loved drama club, where I stomped the floorboards alongside two of today’s biggest television stars. I was an overachiever, though today I don’t remember any of my teachers’ names, and I rose to the creme at the top of the cappuccino class, earning a scholarship to my first choice college.

But, no one I saw in those hallways on a daily basis plays a part in my life today, despite a surge of Facebook reconnections a year or so ago. None of my friends from that time evolved into true friends of today. Aside from drama club, there was little after school immersion or weekend, school sponsored activity to cement relationships. Of course, there were parties….which brings me to:

“NO BOYS?!?!?”

Many of you- students and faculty- will begin school in earnest just after Labor Day. That means new student orientation followed by the arrival of returning students and full school orientation.

Orientation is fun, busy, and a bit of work all rolled into one.

We’ve made suggestions on orientation do’s and don’ts, “Boarding School Orientation: Building Relationships,” and the philosophy behind our advice still stands. Participate in everything and meet as many people possible. Let no orientation activity be optional.

Today, we offer Stoneleigh-Burnham School‘s take on the opening days of school: “Jump Right In and Be Yourself or The Top Ten Things New Students Should Know.”

I like the way SBS has compiled their orientation advice.

In some ways, they’ve used crowd sense to ferret out what’s important at the beginning of school by surveying their alumnae. The alumnae voices have pushed the list beyond orientation with suggestions that resonate for the school year. Interestingly, the personal experiences behind the SBS list emphasize some things while moving others down a tick, or, two.

Of course participation, connecting, working hard, and jumping to try everything that’s new drive much of the list.

But SBS alumnae have added a few angles that made me say, “ah, you’re right,” and they have to do with savoring and remembering. (I don’t think I’ve ever written anything about orientation that involves memories.)

10. Don’t let it pass you by, embrace it all, enjoy school.

5. Keep a journal and take lots of pictures. You will want to remember every moment.

1. Have fun…

Come to think of it, I don’t have a single picture or memory of my boarding school orientation. I am however lucky enough to still have a group of about six or seven friends- to this day- from boarding school orientation 25 years ago this fall. We take pictures of our gatherings now, but I don’t think a one of us has a picture from the first days of school two and a one half decades ago.

Photo credit: friendscentralschool via Creative Commons