Areté
Fallcaptures 2017, our aspirations Classical Greek for excellence, justice, or virtue, the concept of areté nicely for children at Moses Brown. We seek to foster the inner promise in all students, and promote habits of mind, body, and spirit that prepare our graduates to do both well and good in the world.
Welcome to
Small Moments, Big Impacts By Matt Glendinning Learning is a complex and profound process, and often the most transformational lessons spring up serendipitously, unplanned and unexpected. I distinctly remember one day in fifth grade, when I’d been disruptive and sassy to Ms. Studley, my teacher. We were doing some sort of group activity in a circle, and I repeated
Breaking It Down By Susan Pirruccello-McClellan Lower School Math Coordinator For third-grader Maryn Huber, question was about the t-shirts.
the
“The T-Shirt Factory” is a teaching unit developed by City College of New York that contextualizes math through a hypothetical real-world scenario. By contemplating the production and packaging of t-shirts, students learn how to create different ‘units’ containing multiple items. Many students get the hang of place value quickly, but find themselves stymied by bigger numbers—how many ‘tens’ are in 107? (It’s easy to get tricked by the fact
something comical under my breath, intended to be heard only by classmates to either side of me. Showing off in my daring, smugness turned to mortification when I discovered that Ms. Studley could hear every word. I don’t know which was worse, the shame of letting her down or the humiliation of being sent away in front of my classmates. One thing was for sure, I never wanted to feel that sickening feeling again. It was unpleasant, but I learned respect and humility in one stroke.
study English or Journalism. My certainty lasted about a week. Seeking credit for the Latin I’d studied in high school, I attended an open house at the Classics Department. There I struck up a conversation with a trim and unassuming man who turned out to be Professor Jerry Rutter, a well-known classical archaeologist. He’d studied abroad, dug up centuries-old artifacts in the crucible of civilization, and taught the next generation of explorers in his foreign study program in Greece. (Journalism? Forget it.)
When I got to college, I was certain I would
I enrolled in his Prehistoric
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that there’s a zero in the ‘tens’ place.) Some students learn this concept verbally, while others learn best through pictures. Maryn uses both of those approaches, but is especially receptive to tactile learning. Using magnetic base-10 blocks, we explored place value in big numbers: 125 can be 125 ‘ones;’ or 12 ‘tens’ and five ‘ones;’ or one ‘hundred,’ two ‘tens,’ and five ‘ones.’ With each variation, the blocks helped us illustrate the different ways of understanding that big number. Knowing that a roll contains 10 t-shirts, we then set about packaging our production run of 57 shirts: 5 rolls, 7 loose. 4 rolls, 17 loose. 3 rolls, 27 loose. As Maryn played with the magnets, something shifted. She
could see the rolls transforming into loose shirts, tens translating into groups of one and back again. Suddenly, it was easy. Some children were interested in applying this approach to division—Maryn was interested in finding a supplier. 1
Areté, Fall 2017 Archaeology course that fall. Apparently, in addition to being an enchanting raconteur, he was a hard grader. I got a C on the mid-term, and discovered that modern classical scholarship was multi-disciplinary and rigorous. In fact, I’d never felt so challenged intellectually, and that feeling never left me as I pursued Archaeology as a major, in graduate school, and on to my first job. Looking back, there was a clear lesson for me that a chance encounter with a stranger can change the direction of your life.
from front
One day as a teacher of tenth-grade Ancient History at Germantown Friends School, I returned a second consecutive A paper to a student named Tom who previously had earned mostly Bs. Off-handedly, I said something forgettable like, “I don’t know what you’re doing differently, Tom, but it’s working. Can you keep it up?” I never gave this encounter a second thought—until I
COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVE received a thank-you note from Tom after his graduation three years later. He wanted me to know that my off-the-cuff remark had inspired him to strive for A's in all his classes, which he had achieved, thereby opening a range of college options for himself. In doing so, he taught me that sometimes the most powerful learning has nothing to do with the subject matter, and everything to do with instilling confidence. As I look back at these life lessons, I’m struck by how easily I remember the people involved. I admired them, or they me, and the learning we exchanged emerged from that human dimension. Each moment was also brief and utterly unplanned. And yet they’ve stayed with me for years—40 years, in Ms. Studley’s case. As I walk the halls each day at MB, I think of these moments and wonder, ‘What kind of surprising lessons are happening today?’
The Transformative Power of Simplicity By Krista Haskell School Counselor, N-6
Ar ticle after ar ticle documents an increase in anxiety and depression in children from early learners through college-students. What are they so worried about? One factor has risen to the surface: lack of time. Children are more connected than ever through technology, so going home doesn’t mean a break from social interactions and expectations. They are rarely alone with their thoughts or able to quietly process the events of the day. Fur thermore, the pace of daily life has increased. Fully-developed adults often feel overwhelmed at the end of a busy day, and children absorb similar stressors without the skills to manage them. It can be easy to overlook the effect of these stressors. Children are more sensitive than adults to change, unpredictability, powerlessness, lack of sleep, and eating on the run—which can make them moody, argumentative, tired, or anxious.
NOW OPEN!
So what can we do about it?
MOSES BROWN THEATRE SEASON 2017-2018: REVOLUTION. RESISTANCE. REUNION.
Moderate. Conduct a “family audit.” Look closely and honestly at what everyone is trying to pull off in a given week. For example, is your family out several nights in a row, pursuing multiple activities? Music lessons, then soccer practice, then Girl Scouts before rushing home to a late dinner and homework? Is there anything that could fall away? What’s a true passion and what just adds to the to-do list? This isn’t an easy process. You may have to make difficult choices with your kids. They may find they need to give up something they have “always done.” However, the potential reward can be much greater than the short-term cost. Reframe it as a new opportunity that you are helping to make possible by creating space in the day—the opportunity for quiet time, for open-ended creative play, to cook or eat together, or simply rest one’s mind and body.
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And when you have that guilty parent moment, worried that your child won’t be able to keep up with the others if they don’t do X, Y, or Z, remember that children learn what they live. Keep in mind the Quaker tenet of simplicity. Model for them that it is safe (and healthy) to recognize one’s limits. Taking a step back might be the biggest gift we can give.
Fall 2017, Areté
Middle Schooler Has the Floor
later pulled me aside and asked if he could put my writing on his Twitter feed (with my parents’ permission). He said he really liked it and thought it was a powerful piece of writing. Of course we gave him the ok.
By Karina Ruiz '22
Jon’s friend (who is a journalist) saw my writing on Twitter and wrote an article about it. Other journalists saw it and started writing about it, and even the local news channels were covering it that night. The next night, I got a text from Jon telling me that Harry Reid, a senator from Nevada, was reading my writing on the floor of the U.S. Senate. I was in complete shock because I didn’t know that my voice was that powerful. It was beyond my imagination that my writing was in front of a ton of really important people.
I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty bubbly person, and even though I started at MB in the 5th grade, in the past couple years I’ve realized that I’ve been scared about what others think of me. I’ve been wondering about what I say and do instead of being my 100% authentic self, and not always speaking my mind or being open about my ideas and thoughts. Last year the Presidential election was hard for me because, as a daughter of immigrant parents, hearing all the talk of building a wall and deporting immigrants, I was scared. My history teacher Jon Gold knew that everyone in class was going to have a different reaction to the results, and asked us to write about what we were feeling and if we had any questions about our newly-elected President and his ideas. Some people were happy and others were crying like I was, but this gave us an opportunity to settle our thoughts. I wrote about how scared I was of being a first-generation American and a woman of color in a country where my new President’s words about people like me make me feel unsafe. When we were done, we handed in our writing and continued with our class. Jon
The next couple of days I worked really hard on all my writing. I now knew that even a 13-year-old girl from the smallest state in the country can still make a positive difference in the world. I started learning about ways that I could be an activist because I had found my voice. I also looked at myself differently; with a perspective that age doesn’t matter, I can accomplish great things. I found my ‘calling’ in writing about activism and it’s now what I love to do. I’ve never really looked back on my ‘old self’ but I’m really proud that I’m now comfortable enough in my skin to do great things. I thank
Moses Brown a lot for that. Without the resources and independence for me to blossom I wouldn’t have found myself. Without Moses Brown, I wouldn’t have had my writing read to the U.S. Senate by Harry Reid. MB has given me confidence, and I’m thankful for that.
Think Deeply and Carry On By Jack Tripp '19 One of my most transformative experiences in my 11 years at Moses Brown occurred last fall during Modern World History. I am particularly passionate about World War II, and while that was a time of gut-wrenching inhumanity and violence, it laid the foundations for international collaborations like NATO and the United Nations. More importantly, it reminded the world how crucial it is to recognize universal human rights. With this in mind, I wanted to research some aspect of the war for my final project in the class, and settled on the subject of propaganda. Whether during times of war or peace, governments attempt to influence their citizens. Due to the deep ideological divisions within society during the Second World War, propaganda was critical to the war effort. While the Americans disseminated pro-government propaganda largely through advertisements for bonds to fund the war effort, the British government produced a series of posters early in the war designed to psychologically influence the viewer, carefully taking everything into account from the color to the font to the symbols used. A well-known
example is the red and white “Keep Calm and Carry On” print. Ironically, that particular poster was never released due to widespread criticism of two similar designs, and in 1940 the 2.5 million broadsides were pulped in response to a paper shortage, leaving fewer than 20 known surviving prints. Since the poster’s rediscovery in a secondhand bookshop in England in 2000, the phrase has come to represent British national pride and a spirit of resilience in popular culture, just as it was intended to so many years ago. On the opposing side of the war, Nazi propaganda was just as well thought-out. In his autobiography, Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler attributed the German defeat in World War I to inferior propaganda and intelligence. Therefore, in his own extensive propaganda campaign, Hitler borrowed and applied many of the same methods that the Allied forces used in the First World War. He said that “in red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalistic idea.” This history research project revealed to me how little control we have over an effective weapon, whether physical or ideological, once we
unleash it on those we consider enemies. As a history lover, I look at the past and present and imagine how the events I see may affect the future. And I recognize the happenings of my own life, whether large or small, and wonder how they will alter my reality. The project in Modern World History was a study in mistakes and how to learn from them, the past, and its consequences, but most importantly it was a personal exploration into an area that I am passionate about. The chance to study something in depth that I care about is a transformational experience that I, as a student, truly value. 3
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TRANSFORMATIONAL MOMENTS
FALL 2017
A PUBLICATION FROM HEAD OF SCHOOL MATT GLENDINNING