Ethics cuts across the culture at school

It doesn't feel like winter, but the Winter Fridays program at Parker keeps us grounded in the season.  In kindergarten through 8, students choose a variety of activities from swimming, dance, skiing, snowboarding, and cross-country skiing.  Mixed age groups head out on six successive Friday afternoons to learn something new, build confidence and have fun.  The dedication of teachers and parent chaperones makes the program work.

Our teachers have had training from the Institute for Global Ethics and we receive their e-newsletters.  This is a list of their recommendations for building an ethical school culture.  I think we are doing pretty well!


7 ways to make ethics a cross-cutting dimension of your school culture:

1. Emphasize play.
2. Recognize and embrace the individuality of learners.
3. Ask “why” as often as possible.
4. Explicitly teach self-reflection.
5. Encourage personalized learning experiences in place of “one size fits all.”
6. Plan carefully for each individual learner.
7. Avoid standardized content—it’s an invitation to cheat.

A gentler picture of human nature

 Eighth grade had a great week in Philadelphia as culmination of their study of American history.

David Brooks wrote in his latest NY Times Op-Ed piece Nice Guys Finish First that:

In pursuing our self-interested goals, we often have an incentive to repay kindness with kindness, so others will do us favors when we’re in need. We have an incentive to establish a reputation for niceness, so people will want to work with us. We have an incentive to work in teams, even against our short-term self-interest because cohesive groups thrive. Cooperation is as central to evolution as mutation and selection... 

He argues that if cooperation permeates our nature, then so does morality, "and there is no escaping ethics, emotion and religion in our quest to understand who we are and how we got this way."  That sounds a lot like our school mission  - and a wonderful foundation for a 21st Century curriculum.

STEM Challenges

On Friday, 6-7's took their cars into the sun!  The Solar Vehicle Challenge had been several weeks in development, and now, with the cars out of the hallways and onto the road, the ultimate test was on.  6-7's learned much about velocity, torque, gear ratios, batteries v.s. solar and lots more - that, really, they will have to explain to you because it is way beyond my knowledge base!

This week their creative juices are turned to a new challenge.  While the 8th graders are in Philadelphia, 6-7's will dedicate their week to STEM (science, technology, engineering, math).  The charge:  Develop a prototype rocket for commercial "space-tourism"  Three-person teams (project manager, ad manager, and admin asst - roles changing daily) must design a rocket to be launched through a suspended hula hoop.  They will design a commercial to market their project to consumers.   Their rocket needs to go through NASA certification.  At the end:  a film or skit presentation and a day of rocket launching!

The week is supplemented with an ethics workshop.  And the kids in Philadelphia think they will be busy learning new things!

Ethical awareness

Reading progress reports (which Carol Oko and I do before each one goes out to parents) gives a window into the rich variety of activities Parker students are involved in. We see the scope of critical thinking skills as they evolve from the youngest to the oldest grades. We also see the careful guidance towards excellence that the teachers give each student.

I missed many school days during the last eight weeks due to family matters, so reading progress reports caught me up on all the wonderful complexity and interconnections of our curriculum, both academic and social.

On Monday teachers and administrators had a wonderful day of professional development. A trainer from The Institute for Global Ethics worked with us for the whole day on ethical decision making. Not the right vs wrong kind of decisions that are essentially easy to make. But the right vs right ones that we agonize over.

We developed a list of five core values that make a code of ethics to help inform decision making. It doesn't make it easier, really, to make the tough decisions, but it does give us a way to simplify and analyze the issues. And to think about how to inspire our students to live up to their own core values.

Here are the core values we developed for Parker School - and they are essentially the same ones that are developed by groups all around the world!

Respect
Compassion
Responsibility
Honesty
Justice

How our students and we live up to them will determine all of our futures.