Tues, Nov. 22: Bring Veggies for Stone Soup Tues, Nov. 22, 3:15-4:15: TRUE Rehearsal Wed., Nov. 23: Stone Soup Tues, Nov. 29, 3:15-4:15: **First ALL-IN TRUE Rehearsal Thurs, Dec. 1, 7:30-8:15am TRUE Performance COSA Law Conference, Eugene Hilton Thurs, Dec. 1, 3:15-4:15pm TRUE Rehearsal Tues, Dec. 6, 3:15-4:15: TRUE Rehearsal Thurs, Dec. 8, 3:15-4:15: TRUE Rehearsal ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dear Middle School Family, Years
ago, when I taught high school, I was responsible for upwards of 200
students every day, and I saw them for an hour a day in classes with 30+
students. Some of my classes changed term by term, so I had to get to
know a whole new batch of students, or, more accurately, attach names to
whole new sea of faces. It was tough to connect with every individual
in that environment. #understatementoftheyear I
mention this simply to emphasize just how special our Middle School
program is. We are at full capacity right now with 50 students in the
combined 7/8 grade program. HUGE, right? To us, anyway. (There are
600 students at Roosevelt Middle School--ALL of Ridgeline is only 230
students.) Class
sizes in Ridgeline's middle school are 25 students for our Core Blocks
and PE and Spanish. There are two adults in the Core Blocks, and we
spend 105 minutes with each group of students. The
students have at least 8 electives to choose from each term, and the
class size between 5 and 15 students. Right now students are doing
everything from Running to Strumming Ukulele to Mythbusting to
Collaborative Storytelling to Creative Writing. And more. We eat lunch with our homeroom students and spend the morning break with them. On
Fridays, we wrap up academics early, and spend the rest of the day
baking cookies, making movies, music and art, programming computers, and
playing roleplaying games. We get to do this with almost every student for 2 years. (At the end of each year, we spend half a week camping together.) Most
Fridays after school, Carrie, Taylor, Maizzy, and I meet to collaborate
and troubleshoot, coordinate and celebrate. Our conversations are full
of joy, and love, and serious, open-minded determination. It hits me
hard every time we sit around the table just how good we all have it:
students and teachers alike. As
positive and successful as our program feels right now, we are
constantly collaborating with our students to make it better, more
humane, more engaging, more inspiring. More real. More honest. More
sincere. The
main difference between human beings and other animals, in terms of
evolution, is our ability to manipulate our environment as well as adapt
to it. It doesn't require generations of natural selection for us to
evolve. We just have to pay attention. Engage. Act. Is
kind of where we're at right now in the Middle School. It's an
exciting time and place to be. Thanks for being here with us. We're in this together, Jon and Maizzy |
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