IMPORTANT Experiential Days Information

Who should you call? Not Julie

Julie will be out of town the week of Experiential Days. Ginny Malm and After School Care will be the Lower School contact during this time. If you need to get messages to your child or if you have any questions please call Ginny Malm at 503-297-1894 ext. 353. Ginny will also check ext. 666.

This includes:
• Messages about changes in after school care plans
• Updated trip arrival times (the front desk at Toad Hall will have this information as well)

What if I’m late picking up my child?

Children who are not picked up from Experiential Days groups within 15 minutes of the publicized end-time will be sent to ASC. The Village under the Barn will help you locate your child.

What if I need to talk to someone in the Lower School office?

Julie will be in Sunriver with Flying on Snow and Vicki will be in North Carolina with her group. Ginny Malm will be the contact for the week. You can reach her at 503-297-1894 ext. 353 or by email at malmg@catlin.edu. Jonathan Weedman, LS counselor will be available for more pressing issues that may occur. You can reach him at 530-297-1894 ext. 336 or by email at weedmanj@catlin.edu. He will be out and about every day but will check his voicemail and email each afternoon.
 

Will After School Care be offered next week? YES

Before and After-School Care will operate on their usual schedules during Experiential Days.  Regular participants who are on campus will be expected unless parents tell us otherwise.  Please leave messages regarding after school care changes at 503-297-1894 ext. 353. Ginny will also check ext. 666.

Are After School Care Enrichment Classes meeting? NO

None of the enrichment classes (Chess, HW club, strings) or Girl Scouts will meet the week of Experiential Days.

Will route buses operate during the week? Only on MONDAY

LS Experiential Days, MS Discovery Days and US Breakaway are all happening the week before Spring Break. Our bus fleet will be used for trips therefore there will be no route buses Tues. Fri.  

Will the Barn be open during Experiential Days? NO

The Barn will not be open Tuesday, March 16-Friday, March 19. Please plan accordingly.

A BIG Thank You!

Thank you parents for all the wonderful and delicious food! I heard more than once that day "I am so happy I do not have to think about what I'm going to do for lunch today." It is greatly appreciated by everyone!

Notes from Vicki - Student-Led Conferences

I hope you enjoyed your student-led conference. I saw many kids grinning ear to ear. Even many of the upper grade students going through the super-cool-don’t-show-your-emotions stage couldn’t wipe the smile from their face. And why should they? After all, they’ve just had the undivided attention of their parents and teachers -- some of the most important adults in their lives -- who have celebrated their strengths and shown support in working on their weaknesses and challenges. The dynamic of unconditional love is downright intoxicating. Even those who felt a bit more somber with the weight of needing to make some immediate improvements knew they were surrounded with support to do their best.
 
I know you’ve heard me say this a million times, but teaching is about relationship building. Once healthy bonds are made between the teacher, the student, and their parents, there is no limit to the learning that can take place. Student-led conferences are an opportunity for the child to be in the position to be an active participant in the reporting of his/her progress. Let’s face it – the adults can talk until they are blue in the face, and set the most meaningful and relevant goals in the world for the child, but they will never be realized until the kid is actually involved. Our goal is for the children to be intrinsic learners; we’ll never get there unless they are empowered to be part of the process.

Effective student-led conferences can only happen when there is quality instruction including meaningful instructional assessments, daily feedback, and ongoing opportunities for students to honestly self-reflect. They take a great deal of front-end loading on the part of the teachers, and then the children actually practice communicating the most important things you as parents need to know. As the students get older you will notice they are more and more involved in the selection of which pieces of work to show you, and their goal setting becomes deeper and richer.

What if my child’s self-assessments are inaccurate? Our experience shows us that if students are given ongoing opportunities to be part of the evaluation process, and are expected to be honest and show integrity that their self-assessments are amazingly “right on.” Their own perspective brings a richness and an authenticity that we would never be able to fully know without their involvement. In fact, we find that more times than not, students are actually harder on themselves than we would be as evaluators – that’s how seriously they take this process! In the occasional case where a child overrates him/herself, the teacher finds time to privately compare the differing perspectives. In the occasional case where a child has perfectionistic characteristics and is being unreasonably hard on him/herself, the teacher works with the child on this issue.
 
What if we didn’t get through all of the work prepared chosen to be shared at the conference? Students share only a sampling of work for the conferences. Many of them were involved in the selection of such work samples that illustrated their strengths as well as areas they need to improve. Please find time at home to have your child finish showing you their work.
 
I’d still like to talk to the teacher privately but there wasn’t time. Most of the teachers scheduled in some time for the teacher and parent to chat privately following the student-led conference, or asked you if you felt you wanted this additional conversation. If you did not get this time, and still have questions or topics you’d like to discuss, please feel free to contact the teacher to set up another conference.

So if student-led conferences are so valuable, why don’t more schools do them? There are many reasons why some teachers and schools hesitate to conduct student-led conferences. They take a great deal of extra time to prepare for, and with the increasing number of students in a classroom, it is difficult to have a meaningful loop of feedback, assessment, self-evaluation and individual goal-setting conferences. It would also be fair to say that some educators may not be familiar with or convinced of the value of student-led conferences. And just because you have student-led conferences does not mean the students attain the depth we are looking for – it could simply involve the students explaining/sharing a few pieces of pre-selected work samples and that’s it.

I remember sitting in the long empty hallway of my elementary school while my mother attended the parent-teacher conference. This may sound funny, but I had no idea what the teacher was saying to my mother. Later that day I’d be shown my report card with letter grades that seemed fairly random. I was always surprised by my grades. It was much later in my life when I actually learned that math was actually strength – for some reason I thought it wasn’t. I was never invited to participate in the process of figuring out where I needed to improve in school.

Gone are the days when the child was kept out of the evaluation loop!
 

Community Meeting Video

Watch the video of today’s community meeting at http://www.catlin.edu/lower
 

Any Changes in the Lower School Next Year?

Hsiao-Yun Shotwell, Lower School Mandarin Chinese teacher, will not be back next year. She and her husband are hoping to pursue graduate work. Hsaio-Yun said, "I am going to miss everyone here at Catlin Gabel, this supportive and loving community. It has been one of the best teaching and learning experiences for me. Thank you all for this wonderful journey." We wish she and her husband the best. Hsaio-Yun has been an excellent Chinese teacher and she will be sorely missed!

Mimi Tang, first grade teacher, will take a leave of absence next fall to be with her baby. Fran Snell will sub for her until January. John, Mimi and Fran will jointly give the First Grade Parent Orientation Meeting (for parents of our current kindergartners) on Apr. 8. Most of you know that Fran is a veteran teacher who taught grades 1-2 in the Lower School for years before retiring a year ago. She is eager to be back!

Michael deForest, Wood Shop teacher, will teach grades 2-3-4-5 next year and Jennifer Marcus will teach gr. 1 wood shop on Fridays. Jennifer had these students in wood shop as kindergartners and is thrilled to be able to teach them again next year.

After School Care News

During the coming week Monday, March 15 – Friday, March 19

• After School Care will be available upstairs in the Barn and downstairs in the Village as usual.  Use the ext. 666 number to make changes, or call Ginny directly at 503.297.1894 ext. 353.
• We will expect children as per their usual ASC schedules, unless we have been notified otherwise.
• Enrichment Activities including Monday and Thursday Chess Clubs, Tuesday Homework Club, Fusion Yoga and the Girl Scouts will not meet.
• Strings players should check with their teachers regarding their after-school strings lessons.
• The CGS Route Buses will run on Monday but not on Tuesday-Friday.

After-Spring Break, most after-school activities will resume.  Mathamazing has ended