Transforming boarding school blues in the dead of winter

I had one of those moments yesterday—clear and perfect.  I was skiing down the fresh powdered snow of the slopes at Sir Sam’s watching students whizz by me, snow blowing in their eyes, big grins on their faces. In fact, the whole school was there with me—roughly 400 of us (students and faculty)—working on carving our turns, or snow board grabs (or even just trying to stay on our feet), stopping to enjoy an outdoor barbecue lunch with hot chocolate and hitting the slopes again—together, as a community.  It was Ted Pope Day.  My mind was refreshed, my body relaxed, I was happy. A fellow Head of School, Adam Pencier (Trafalgar Castle School), recently commented that “January is the toughest time for schools, particularly boarding schools.” He said this in reference to the challenges that come with winter.  As the Head of a small, rural predominantly boarding school located in the heart…

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Cohorting with LCS Ninjas

Creative new PD opportunities for teachers “The original idea of the web was that it should be a collaborative space where you can communicate through sharing information. The idea was that by writing something together, and as people worked on it, they could iron out misunderstanding." ~ Tim Berners-Lee To think that in 2003, when Lee (inventor of the world wide web) made this comment, we were only at the cusp of experiencing some of the most fundamental changes in how we use web resources (changes most of our students now at LCS take for granted as a way of life).  Today, teachers and students are working together in creative new ways with a whole new generation of web tools that allow participants to distribute, share, co-create and rework new ideas. Every new idea has its pioneers, early adopters curious to explore the possibilities.  A perfect example of this are the individuals…

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Lessons from “A Teenager’s View on Social Media”

I recently came across this post A Teenager’s View on Social Media and it made me think about how quickly technology is changing and how far ahead (in what a different space) young people are. The post contains the personal views of an “actual teen” (his words), a 19 year-old student in the U.S. commenting on the apps teenagers use and don't use. The young man admittedly writes (in his follow up post) that his views are based on personal opinion “to provide a different view based on [his] life in this ‘highly coveted’ age bracket.” I found his perspective interesting both as an educator and father for many reasons and have shared my observations below. Meeting our students where they are My first thought to the blog post was a question: How do we meet (communicate with) our students where they are? While I recognize that it is not considered "social media" (the…

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