The Nueva Way: Workbook

The Nueva Way

LEARN BY CARING, LEARN BY DOING

Mission

Our school community inspires passion for lifelong learning, fosters social and emotional acuity, and develops the imaginative mind.

Vision

The Nueva School uses a dynamic educational model to enable gifted learners to make choices that benefit the world.

Values

‣ A dynamic learning community

‣ An environment of trust

‣ Social-emotional acuity

‣ Curiosity and creativity

‣ Passion and excellence

‣ Student agency

2018 graduate Lucy Wallace so eloquently described her time at Nueva in her graduation speech, highlighting the joy and wonder of her experience as a student and member of this community. There is no better way to introduce this Nueva Way workbook than through the perspective of one of our students. Take a few minutes to watch Lucy’s grad speech.

Introduction to the Nueva Way

To maintain our steadfast commitment to our mission, vision and values we must keep our purpose front and present. We must live what we believe and it should be obvious in our actions, interactions and in the dailiness of life at Nueva. We know that Nueva’s faculty and staff are the creators, keepers and developers of the conditions for our school to thrive and meet our lofty goals. As a member of the Nueva community, you will hear the phrase “ The Nueva Way ” and this workbook was developed to explicate and show how the Nueva Way works.

To help you better understand and engage in your own inquiry into Nueva’s ethos, the Nueva Way has been defined through 7 principles:

This workbook contains readings, videos, exercises and reflections to help deepen our understanding of and relationship with each of these principles. It is through our deep understanding and a shared commitment to these values that we will keep the Nueva Way thriving and alive for all of our community.

Take time to review each of the principles, engage in the readings, listen to the voices of the students, faculty and staff through the videos and text and respond to the questions/ reflections. We will come together in August as a community of faculty/staff to collaboratively unpack these principles and develop a shared understanding of this place we love so much.

PLEASE NOTE A FEW THINGS:

‣ The principles were carefully sequenced and build upon each other. The first five principles define the main ideas of the Nueva Way (the ‘what’) and the last two principles help describe the ways we enact the ideas (the ‘how’).

‣ We have attempted to include examples from all across our school and we will continue to add to the workbook to ensure a large cross section of representation.

Our Values:

Principle

A place of belonging for gifted learners

“We create a community of belonging where all gifted students are seen, valued, and nurtured for who they are, so that they thrive in all areas of their development.”

The first principle to explore is A Place of Belonging for Gifted Learners.

“Nueva is a sanctuary for gifed learners. Our gif to them is a chance to explore oneself fully.”

DIANE ROSENBERG 2019

In this section we will deepen our understanding of the students that we serve and see how we can create the sanctuary Diane describes.

REFLECTION: IMAGINING GIFTEDNESS

What is your understanding of gifedness? Draw or describe a gifed child.

What do you imagine a school for gifed learners would look like?

What questions or concerns do you have about working with gifed learners?

Mark which of these students you think may be gifted and give your reason why:

Viet

“Viet is a sixteen-year old student who seems incredibly bored in your History class. He falls asleep a couple of times over the course of the semester. He doesn’t seem to do the readings, or if he does, he never comments in class. When his laptop is up, he seems distracted, probably by games, but you never catch him playing. His homework comes in late sometimes, and there are some interesting ideas buried in his essays, you think, but it’s hard to tell because his writing is very weak grammatically.”

“Willow is a thirteen year old who gets in all her homework on time and in perfect condition, for every class. Her handwriting is extremely neat. She participates at the state level in math competitions and routinely places in the top three. Her writing is more advanced than her age level, and she always edits it without asking. She is also a competitive swimmer, but rarely has trouble keeping her schedule balanced. In her free time, she reads non-fiction books and hikes. She is very emotionally centered and often helps her friends process their feelings.”

Quincy

“Quincy is a ten-year-old who loves soccer and basketball, and would prefer to be out on the field at all times. His interest in class is wildly variable; sometimes, especially with a hands-on activity, he lights up, and his science teacher reports that he built a complicated circuit faster than any other student in the class. He had a very hard time verbally explaining why it worked, however. He likes video games and is extremely dexterous at them, famous among his peers for often achieving a high score. He also loves to draw and doodle, which can distract him in class, and his homework mostly comes in a little sloppy. He is often quite happy and even-keeled.”

“Leigh, a seven year old, is struggling with school, and especially seems to have an issue with authority. They argue vehemently with their teachers in class and out, and when teachers ask that they stop arguing and follow instructions, their reactions can be extreme and involve throwing things or screaming. They seem very fixated on the concept of what is fair and not. This behavior doesn’t seem to happen quite the same way at home, their parents report, where they do a lot of art and have a particular interest in ice-skating.”

“Anjali is a five year old student who has excessive energy at all times. She talks almost constantly, asking questions about everything, from how your morning coffee is made to why animals die to whether dinosaurs could smell well. She frequently interrupts when others are talking in class and at home. When she gets tired, she refuses to go to sleep and cries about injustice in the world, like jaguars losing their habitats and homelessness. She is very sensitive to seams and tags in clothing, and prefers seamless leggings and to have the tags cut out of everything. She doesn’t want to learn how to read, preferring her parents read to her.”

Willow

Leigh

Anjali

REFLECTION: IDENTIFIYING GIFTEDNESS

All of these students are students whom we have taught over the years and who are gifted students. That being said, not all were treated or seen as such at the time. As you answer the following questions, consider the students and children you’ve encountered over the years and whether or not they might have been gifted.

What information might you need to better determine if a student is gifed and/or would thrive in a school for gifed learners?

How might factors like gender, race, and class influence whether or not a child is identified as gifed? Consider the examples; would your perception of each child and their potential gifedness change if they had a different gender identity or if you knew their racial identity or class status?

DEFINITIONS: DEFINING GIFTEDNESS

There are many different ways that giftedness is defined. Here are several definitions to consider:

National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC)

“Gifted individuals are those who demonstrate outstanding levels of aptitude (defined as an exceptional ability to reason and learn) or competence (documented performance or achievement in top 10% or rarer) in one or more domains. Domains include any structured area of activity with its own symbol system (e.g., mathematics, music, language) and/or set of sensorimotor skills (e.g., painting, dance, sports).”

Annemarie Roper

“Giftedness is a greater awareness, a greater sensitivity, and a greater ability to understand and transform perceptions into intellectual and emotional experiences.”

“Giftedness is Asynchronous Development in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm. This asynchrony increases with higher intellectual capacity. The uniqueness of the gifted renders them particularly vulnerable and requires modifications in parenting, teaching, and counseling in order for them to develop optimally.”

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The Columbus Group

REFLECTION: DEFINING GIFTEDNESS

What questions, thoughts, or reactions do you have about these different definitions?

Which definition is most intriguing or resonant for you? Why?

In what ways do these definitions align and in what ways are they different? Why might this be?

Understanding Giftedness

Our Guiding Defnition

At Nueva, we most identify with The Columbus Group’s definition of giftedness.

“Giftedness is Asynchronous Development in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm. This asynchrony increases with higher intellectual capacity. The uniqueness of the gifted renders them particularly vulnerable and requires modifications in parenting, teaching, and counseling in order for them to develop optimally.”

We understand that all definitions come with the potential for misidentification or lack of identification. As such, we strive to make sure that we both identify gifted students who need our environment to thrive and that our environment is truly nurturing to the widest possible range of gifted students we can support.

A High Achiever vs. A Gifed Learner

A HIGH ACHIEVER

‣ Knows the answers

‣ Is interested

‣ Is attentive

‣ Has good ideas

‣ Works hard

‣ Commits time and effort to learning

‣ Answers questions

‣ Absorbs information

‣ Copies and responds accurately

‣ Is a top student

‣ Needs 6 to 9 repetitions for mastery

‣ Understands ideas

‣ Grasps meaning

‣ Completes assignments

‣ Is a technician

‣ Is a good memorizer

‣ Is receptive

‣ Listens with interest

‣ Prefers sequential presentation of information

‣ Is pleased with his or her own learning

A GIFTED LEARNER

‣ Asks the questions

‣ Is highly curious

‣ Is intellectually engaged

‣ Has original ideas

‣ Performs with ease

‣ May need less time to excel

‣ Responds with detail and unique perspective

‣ Manipulates information

‣ Creates new and original products

‣ Is beyond their age peers

‣ Needs 1 to 2 repetitions for mastery

‣ Constructs abstractions

‣ Draws inferences

‣ Initiates projects

‣ Is an innovator

‣ Is insightful; makes connections with ease

‣ Is intense

‣ Shows strong feelings, opinions, perspective

‣ Thrives on complexity

‣ Highly self critical

From “The Gifted and Talented Child” by Janice Szabos, Maryland Council for the Gifted and Talented

Te Five Overexcitabilities

Excerpt from Living with Intensity, by

Michael Marian Piechowski and Susan Daniels

Overexcitability is an innate tendency to respond in an intensified manner to various forms of stimuli, both external and internal (Piechowski, 1979, 1959). Overexcitability is a translation of the Polish word which literally means “super-stimulatability.” (It should have been called superexcitability.) It means that persons may require less stimulation to produce a response, as well as stronger and more lasting reactions to stimuli. Another way of looking at it is of being spirited —“more intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistent, energetic” (Kurcinka, 1991).

There are five forms of overexcitability in Dabrowski's theory: psychomotor, sensual, intellectual, imaginational, and emotional. Each can have a wide range of expressions. The forms of overexcitability appear to be the necessary—but not sufficient— raw material for advanced, multilevel development.

Overexcitability means that life is experienced in a manner that is deeper, more vivid, and more acutely sensed. This does not just mean that one experiences more curiosity, sensory enjoyment, imagination, and emotion, but also that the experience is of a different kind, having a more complex and more richly textured quality.

Overexcitabilities impart an intense aliveness to those who experience them. They may be thought of as distinct modes of experiencing or as channels through which flow the color tones, textures, insights, visions, emotional currents, and energies of experience. An analogy is often made in many streams of information from far and near, in contrast to the old rabbit ears antenna limited to local channels

only. Behaviors and characteristics that frequently typify the five forms of overexcitability (OE) can be described briefly as follows [note: here we use Duke university’s wording, as it also highlights behavioral manifestations]:

PSYCHOMOTER

Refers to a surplus of energy. Manifestations include extreme enthusiasm, rapid speech, love of intense activity, and impulsive actions.

SENSUAL

Seen in those with an enhanced level of sensory experience and is marked by the pursuit of pleasure through the senses. Manifestations may include seeking enhancing stimuli or removing oneself from stimuli.

INTELLECTUAL

Associated with striving for knowledge and truth through questioning, discovering, and analyzing, but it is not the same as intelligence, which is seen as an ability.

IMAGINATIONAL

Characterized by daydreaming, fantasizing, dramatization, and the use of imagery and metaphors.

INTELLECTUAL

Marked by an intensified level of interpersonal relations to people, things, and places, and compassionate feelings for others.

It would be hard to find a person of talent who shows little evidence of any of the five overexcitabilities. They are the underlying dimensions of thinking outside the box, the urge to create beauty, the push for stark realism, the unrelenting striving for truth and justice (Piechowski, 1979, 1999).

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Unfortunately, the stronger these overexcitabilities are, the less peers and teachers welcome them. Developing understanding that this is the child’s or adult’s innate makeup facilitates tolerance and acceptance—and, one hopes, even an appreciation of these fertile qualities.

The picture of superexcitability painted above assumes that these intensities and sensitivities are more or less on the surface, easy to notice. However, as Jackson and Moyle point out (Chapter 7), they are sometimes deeply hidden and therefore hard to notice. In fact, some gifted children protect themselves and try to hide their extreme sensitivity so that they give the mistaken impression of being unemotional, impassive or indifferent, and unresponsive to social cues.

“[Some] gifed children protect themselves and try to hide their extreme sensitivity so that they give the mistaken impression of being unemotional…”

When adults encounter high levels of sensitivity and intensity in children, they may not know how to respond to assist those children. Yet the challenges are even more acute for young gifted children who may not understand their own sensitivity and intensity.

Asynchronous Development

Excerpt from “Many Ages at Once” by Lisa Rivero in Psychology Today

What is normal development for a gifted child? Many people assume that the brightest children in the classroom are the ones who are most able to pay attention, to sit still, to do their work, and to conform to the expectations of authority. They are the children who know how to act their age, at least; or, even better, they display unusual maturity. They fit in and are easy students to teach.

Parents, teachers, and others who live and work daily with these children know differently. Many young highly intelligent children are out of sync with their classmates and their environment, what one definition of giftedness, developed in 1991 by a group of professionals and parents concerned about an overemphasis on achievement, refers to as asynchronous development:

"Giftedness is 'asynchronous development' in which advanced cognitive abilities and heightened intensity combine to create inner experiences and awareness that are qualitatively different from the norm. This asynchrony increases with higher intellectual capacity. The uniqueness of the gifted renders them particularly vulnerable and requires modifications in parenting, teaching, and counseling in order for them to develop optimally.”

Brain imaging research provides evidence for this developmental difference in the maturation of very bright children. In 2006, researchers from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University showed that children with greater than average intellectual ability "demonstrate a particularly plastic

cortex" in which the building up phase of the cortex, when connections are formed that allow for high-level thinking, begins and ends later than average (reaching its peak at roughly age eleven or twelve as opposed to seven or eight), and the subsequent thinning or pruning phase of cortical development is rapid.

One of the study’s authors, neuroscientist Jay Giedd, explains the process as one of sculpting:

"Right around the time of puberty and on into the adult years is a particularly critical time for the brain sculpting to take place. Much like Michelangelo's David, you start out with a huge block of granite at the peak at the puberty years. Then the art is created by removing pieces of the granite, and that is the way the brain also sculpts itself. Bigger isn't necessarily better, or else the peak in brain function would occur at age 11 or 12. ... The advances come from actually taking away and pruning down of certain connections themselves."

The block of granite in this analogy is cortical thickness, which slowly builds up in children until pre-adolescence, at which time redundancies and unused parts are whittled away, leaving behind our adult, sculpted "David" brain. The results of the study suggest that not only does the block of granite stop building up at a later age for gifted children, but that the sculpting phase may end later as well. The sculpting (or thinning or pruning) process is one of greater brain efficiency and eventually allows for mature executive processing skills of planning, organization, and goal setting (one reason why teens for whom this process is not complete do not always

take into account the consequences of risky behavior). Highly intelligent young children also have a thinner cortex to begin with, before the store of granite begins to build. Just as interesting is that brain imaging research suggests that children with ADHD also experience a later than average peak of thickening in specific areas.

"One hallmark of creative gifedness is the ability to remain resilient and child-like, to suspend reason or entertain multiple forms of it."

So, what does this mean, exactly, and why is it important? First, the asynchronous development of gifted children is not a bad thing. As M. L. Kalbfleisch writes in The International Handbook of Giftedness, "One hallmark of creative giftedness is the ability to remain resilient and child-like, to suspend reason or entertain multiple forms of it." Brain development that is delayed or prolonged may allow children more time for intellectual exploration, creativity, and growth.

Adults should know that gifted children will not necessarily fit comfortably within a group of age peers or meet the usual expectations in terms of their development. For young children, this lack of fit may lead to misdiagnoses or premature diagnoses of learning and other disorders. When parents, teachers, and health care providers do not understand the longterm, complex developmental road of giftedness, they may be tempted by the academic precocity of gifted children to place an inordinate…

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Asynchronous Development

…emphasis on early achievement and fulfillment of adult expectations. Also, we might expect older gifted students to have more mature judgment at an earlier age than their classmates, even though the reverse can be true. As Dr. Nadia Webb, a neuropsychologist and co-author of Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults, explains , "Phenomenal intellects can coexist with mediocre executive functioning skills."

How much of the gifted developmental difference is due to nature or nurture (or whether such a dichotomous question is even the right one to ask) will continue to be debated, and more research is needed to understand more fully the developmental process and its implications. For now, parents, teachers, and health care professionals can remember that single snapshots of a child at a specific age can be misleading and that very bright

Characteristics of Gifed Students

AFFECTIVE

‣ Well developed sense of justice

‣ Emotional intensity

‣ Preference for older friends

‣ Different concepts of friendships

‣ High levels of empathy

‣ Asynchrony

‣ Mature sense of humor

‣ Can be perfectionistic

‣ “Overexcitabilities”

COGNITIVE

‣ Unusually well developed memory

‣ Curiosity

‣ Dislike of slow-paced instruction

‣ Reasons at a higher level than chronological peers

‣ Rapid learning

‣ Preference for independent work

‣ Have multiple interests

‣ Ability to generate original ideas

‣ “System thinkers” rather than linear thinkers

‣ Immersion learners

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children may experience neurodiversity that affects their behavior in complex ways. The international non-profit organization SENG (Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted), of which I am a director, is spearheading a public awareness effort to educate pediatricians and others who work and live with young gifted children of the potential for misdiagnosis of ADHD and other disorders, the symptoms of which overlap with traits of giftedness.

Other areas of note to keep learning about:

Principle 1 A Place of Belonging for Gifted Learners - Understanding Giftedness

As you think about all you’ve begun to learn about gifedness, how does it change what you think a supportive and challenging learning environment for the gifed student might look like?

How about a supportive social environment?

How might learning differences mask or amplify certain aspects of gifedness?

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Gifted Ed in Theory & at Nueva

Rights of the Gifed Child

Written by Del Siegle, NAGC President, 2007-2009

You have the right to:

‣ Know about your giftedness

‣ Learn something new everyday

‣ Be passionate about your talent area without apologies

‣ Have an identity beyond your talent area

‣ Feel good about your accomplishments

‣ Make mistakes

‣ Seek guidance in the development of your talent

‣ Have multiple peer groups and a variety of friends

‣ Choose which talent areas your wish to pursue

‣ Not be gifted at everything

Is It a Cheetah?

Excerpt from article by Stephanie

S. Tolan

It's a tough time to raise, teach or be a highly gifted child. As the term "gifted" and the unusual intellectual capacity to which that term refers become more and more politically incorrect, the educational establishment changes terminology and focus.

Giftedness, a global, integrative mental capacity, may be dismissed, replaced by fragmented "talents" which seem less threatening and theoretically easier for schools to deal with. Instead of an internal developmental reality that affects every aspect of a child's life, "intellectual talent" is more and more perceived as synonymous with (and limited to) academic achievement.

The child who does well in school, gets good grades, wins awards,

and "performs" beyond the norms for his or her age, is considered talented. The child who does not, no matter what his innate intellectual capacities or developmental level, is less and less likely to be identified, less and less likely to be served.

A cheetah metaphor can help us see the problem with achievementoriented thinking. The cheetah is the fastest animal on earth. When we think of cheetahs we are likely to think first of their speed. It's flashy. It is impressive. It's unique. And it makes identification incredibly easy. Since cheetahs are the only animals that can run 70 mph, if you clock an animal running 70 mph, IT'S

A CHEETAH!

But cheetahs are not always running. In fact, they are able to maintain top speed only for a limited time, after which they need a considerable period of rest.

It's not difficult to identify a cheetah when it isn't running, provided we know its other characteristics. It is gold with black spots, like a leopard, but it

also has unique black "tear marks" beneath its eyes. Its head is small, its body lean, its legs unusually long—all bodily characteristics critical to a runner. And the cheetah is the only member of the cat family that has nonretractable claws. Other cats retract their claws to keep them sharp, like carving knives kept in a sheath the cheetah's claws are designed not for cutting but for traction. This is an animal biologically designed to run.

Its chief food is the antelope, itself a prodigious runner. The antelope is not large or heavy, so the cheetah does not need strength and bulk to overpower it. Only speed. On the open plains of its natural habitat the cheetah is capable of catching an antelope simply by running it down.

While body design in nature is utilitarian, it also creates a powerful internal drive. The cheetah needs to run!

Principle 1 A Place of Belonging for Gifted Learners - Ways We Think of Giftedness at Nueva

If Frankenstein Went To Nueva

Transcript of graduation speech by Lucy W., Nueva ‘18

One night at dinner about five years ago, my father told me about an NPR segment he had recently heard. The show featured a scholar of alternative histories, a woman who investigated questions like, “What if Napoleon had had a machine gun?” or “How would World War II have gone if Eleanor Roosevelt could fly?” I was eight at the time, and still not entirely clear on the difference between Napoleon and Neapolitan ice cream, so I didn’t give the idea much thought. Now, I have one such question of my own to pose today: What if Victor Frankenstein had gone to Nueva?

Now, just to be clear, this speech is not going to devolve into accusations of witchcraft or theories about a terrifying creature hidden in the back of the gym. And I realize that Frankenstein might not have even made it past the admissions office – after all, “We support the creation of history’s most notorious monsters” wouldn’t sound so great on a brochure. Instead, I want to direct your attention to another feature: the novel’s beginning, and the factors that led Frankenstein to create his namesake monster in the first place.

Victor Frankenstein is a Nueva kid. Over the course of my time here, “Nueva” has been incorporated into my vocabulary not just as a proper noun, but also as an adjective. It refers to both a community and a worldview – unbridled intellectual energy, an ardent desire for knowledge, and endless efforts to achieve it.

Frankenstein has all of these qualities. He mentions his “thirst for knowledge” at every moment possible, describing the universe as “a secret which I desired to divine,” experiencing “gladness akin to rapture” upon

studying science. It’s like an admissions packet come to life. I see these same traits reflected throughout my Nueva experience. One of the things I most love about our class is the unique way in which each one of us finds beauty and fascination in the most unlikely places. Whether it’s underwater hockey or economic policy, Nueva students share Frankenstein’s sense of rapture in the areas they care about, and it is this infectious joy that makes Nueva such a special place. Plus, I have a feeling Frankenstein would have no problem finding extracurricular activities. After all, reanimating a corpse is just a slight variation of a robotics competition.

For all these reasons, I imagine that Frankenstein might be a perfect fit for the school. However, it is also worth remembering that he faced some personal challenges throughout his life. While Frankenstein adores science and the pursuit of knowledge, this level of passion can be overwhelming and exhausting. His temper is “sometimes violent,” his passions “vehement.” When he has no access to educational resources, he is left to “struggle with a child’s blindness,” and he describes himself as “occupied by exploded systems, mingling a thousand contradictory theories.” Though Frankenstein and I don’t have too much in common, I think I know what he means here. The desire to learn is a wonderful thing, and also a challenge. At times, I feel like my mind moves so fast I can barely breathe, spinning through iterations and schemes and crazy ideas, at least thirty percent of which are almost certainly illegal. And before I came to Nueva, these difficulties were almost unmanageable. The purpose of school seemed to be not learning, but following the rules. I

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remember one time in second grade when I dutifully worked my way through several packets of simple math problems. I brought the packets to my teacher, eager to move on and learn more. But when she handed me a new packet, I was dismayed to find that the problems in this one were of the exact same kind as the last batch. I started to see school as a chore I had to drag myself through, and not only did this make weekdays miserable, it also left me on my own to deal with the wildness and constant motion of my own mind.

Thankfully, I found Nueva. Nueva is ready and eager to handle the intensity of its students, to take this kind of ardent, nineteenth-century, conquerthe-universe desire for knowledge and use it as a tool for the good. I have countless joyful memories of my first year, and the following ones brought many more of these magnificent adventures. By the time high school rolled around, the feats of our grade were truly spectacular. A sensational production of Heathers, countless fire alarms during block six in ninth grade, succulents blooming all over campus, and the buzz of sound that emerges from debaters’ mouths while they are “spreading” – these are just a few of the countless marvels of the last four years. Through these exploits, we built a community of excitement, exploration, and enthusiasm, one that made me feel valued and connected, proud of who I was and grateful for the people surrounding me. Nueva has played a huge role in helping me deal with the challenges that Frankenstein also faced, and today, I can proudly say that I have…

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If Frankestein Went to Nueva

…made it through seventeen years of life without creating a single deadly science experiment.

So, to go back to the question with which I began, what would have happened if Frankenstein had gone to Nueva? I think he would have thrived. He would have worked towards the understanding of the universe he so desired, at the same breakneck speed, but with friends and teachers to guide him and a design-thinking template to make sure he’s brainstorming properly and some strictly enforced guidelines around flammable materials. He would have explored other things, too, taking

a painting class or joining cross-country or reading an oddly familiar nineteenth-century novel in ninthgrade English. He wouldn’t have been alone in his discoveries, and he would have had the chance to balance tireless study with human contact. And at the end of his senior year, he would be a part of what I see here today: a group of caring, committed people who are fearlessly dedicated to exploration. We will all face hard times in our lives, and intense curiosity is not always easy to manage. But the last four years have given me confidence that we will all rise to the challenge. Frankenstein begins not with Victor Frankenstein’s

narration, but with the letters of the sailor who meets him in the Arctic. I find these passages the most beautiful pieces of the book, and the best to encapsulate my love for Nueva. Thus, I want to end with this sailor’s words.

“There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand...there is a love for the marvelous, a belief in the marvelous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore.” May all of us retain this belief in the marvelous and carry it with us wherever we go.

How We Got Here

Statement by Diane Rosenberg, Head of The Nueva School 2001-2020

The reason the Board and community so easily affirmed our mission, vision, and motto has a rich, complicated history. It’s only easy now because it was so hard for so long. Throughout our history, our school has struggled to maintain its identity as a school that serves a particular population, a population that some would describe as a special-needs population.

California, unlike some other states, dismantled gifted and talented programs decades ago. Other states, like Maryland, have long safeguarded funding for gifted and talented programs by identifying this population as a population with different learning needs, not dissimilar in that regard from students at the other end of the learning spectrum. Educators

everywhere recognize that meeting this range of needs requires more than a talented teacher who is able to differentiate instruction within the classroom. The pace at which students learn, the breadth of knowledge they bring, and the depth of questions they ask are simply different. They are not better, not worse. They are just different, and these gifted learners are as deserving of our societal attention as all other learners are.

While the 1960s were a time of great hope and a time of social progress, the egalitarian spirit, while well-intended, dismantled critically important educational programs. The intention was not unlike Leave No Child Behind — well intended and inadvertently leaving many behind.

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This egalitarianism took on a spirit of anti-intellectualism as populism swept the nation. Intellectuals were ridiculed and there were clear political shifts from prizing intellectuals as leaders to prizing a man-of-the-people as a leader — charisma more than content. Scientists and academicians lost their midcentury status, and so did students at the top. “All students are gifted” became a phrase preferred to “all students have gifts.” As educators, we were quick to identify students as gifted artists, musicians, athletes, or actors, but we were reluctant to identify students as gifted learners. In a reaction to scholastic achievement as the measure of a young person, identifying

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How We Got Here

…gifted learners and creating special programs for them seemed to diminish the potential of all others. This antiintellectual shift had dramatic effects on programs throughout the nation. In the effort to be more egalitarian, the shift diminished what is simply natural and normal for this population of student learners. It was for this very reason that Nueva was founded and continues to thrive today. Ours is the gift of being normal. That is Nueva’s single greatest gift to our students.

Because American society has struggled with identifying the population our programs were designed to serve, Nueva has struggled with the weight of an unfortunate label. While we are devoted to our mission and the population we serve, we have long struggled with the label “gifted.”

“Because American society has struggled with identifying the population our programs were designed to serve, Nueva has struggled with the weight of an unfortunate label.”

It’s ironic that while elite sports are championed and well-funded, academic programs for an equally talented population are not. Instead, the students themselves, not just the programs, are labeled as elitists. We know that Nueva provides a safe haven, emotionally and intellectually, for gifted learners. In the early years, the school used “gifted,” “high potential,” and “high achieving” interchangeably. We have many, including in our own community, who would like us to use “high potential” or “high achieving.” It’s simply more socially acceptable, although “high achieving,” in particular, is often quite different from gifted. Some parents who happily choose Nueva for programs and peer group often wish that, once

their own children are enrolled, would abandon our stated public mission.

This has caused soul-searching and mission drift over the years. In 1994, the school had lost its way. The Harvard School of Education was brought in by the Board to determine what the school needed to do. What the researchers found was that Nueva had joined the pack and defined gifted along with others: “all children are gifted.” If a child was a gifted musician but not a gifted student in the classroom, that was fine and the child was admitted. If a child was a gifted artist but did not do well academically, that child was admitted. The advisers deemed the IQ range unsustainable — 100 to 175 — and the school was serving no one well.

The recommendation was to reclaim the school’s distinctive mission and redefine the academic range to encompass gifted to profoundly gifted. The Board affirmed this recommendation.

Just as the school was rediscovering itself, it imploded. In 1997, the school went from a stable school of nearly 300 students to a school in crisis when the Middle School head was fired by the Board, the Head of School resigned in protest, and the founder stepped off the Board. The school nearly closed that summer. Six members of the Board and an equal number of committed faculty kept the school afloat and the vision of what could be alive. That winter, the Board hired Andrew Buyer to begin as the new Head of School in July 1998. Andrew arrived with a sense of optimism and possibilities, eager to help heal and shape this community.

But Andrew did not believe in the school’s mission. He believed in progressive education, and for the first time in the school’s history, the school labeled itself as a progressive school, but not as a school serving gifted learners. The school joined the progressive network but stopped presenting at the California Association

country. Qualifications for admission were widened yet again; IQ was once more becoming a soft measure.

Because so many seasoned faculty had left the school in the debacle, Andrew hired many new, inexperienced teachers, who were drawn to the sense of possibilities and the start-up nature of the school. There was tension between seasoned Nueva faculty, who wanted to hold on to the values of the old Nueva, and the younger faculty, who felt this was a time to create a new mission. Within two years, there were serious tensions between the Head of School and Board about the school’s mission. The school entered a strategic planning phase, engaging the full community to envision its future. The Board, many faculty members, and nearly all parents affirmed the school’s original mission to serve gifted learners. It was also during this strategic planning phase that the vision and mission were rewritten and our motto created. The head realized this was not a mission he could support and decided to leave. A new head was hired. Diane Rosenberg began in 2001.

The first three years were a struggle for this new head with the newly hired Nueva faculty — a battle over the school’s mission and direction. The head asked the Board to vote to affirm the mission and to issue a public statement about the school’s direction. The head was given the directive to make the necessary changes, which resulted in the departure of 27 (of 70) faculty, staff, and aides. This permitted the silenced, seasoned faculty to begin to lead again, shaping distinctive curricula, reasserting the school’s mission. The school entered the 2004 strategic planning process with enthusiasm. All were brimming with new ideas. Admissions were strong and the school was growing. It was clear the school would reach the cap of 400, and it was obvious that lack of facilities was constraining programs and ideas.

© The Nueva School 2020

How We Got Here

(part 3 of 3)

It was clear the school would reach the cap of 400, and it was obvious that lack of facilities was constraining programs and ideas. The school considered adding the exploration of a new high school to the strategic plan but then took it out.

To educate all faculty about the qualities and characteristics of gifted students, the school decided to host a Gifted Learning Conference. Planning began in 2005 for the first 2007 conference.”

Planning began in 2005 for the first 2007 conference. The focus was on the needs of gifted students. We couldn’t afford to send all teachers to Confratute or NAGC, but we could bring an invigorating conference to our own campus, and our teachers were eager to create a distinctive experience of our own. They are both learners and learned.

We were also eager to educate the broader educational community about this special-needs population. We invoked Mission II, which was the first time it had been mentioned in several years.

There was a sense of Nueva as a phoenix rising, and it galvanized the community.

The 2012 and 2017 strategic plans reaffirmed with ease our core mission to serve a particular population. There was discussion and resolve. Our mission was clear. In our most recent plan, we decided we needed to stop being embarrassed or defensive about the label. We needed to redouble our outreach efforts. We all know there are gifted learners in every classroom in this country. We need to help their teachers identify those students and make sure these students don’t languish. We know they are at risk.

That will be our school’s next stage of growth — Mission II in action at a national level. We are in the process of creating not only a Giftedness Institute but a center. The pendulum is swinging and the time is right for Nueva to serve. We still have struggles with families who love what they see and want this population of learners for their children, but they certainly wish we would just “get rid of this label.”

“Te pendulum is swinging and the time is right for Nueva to serve.”

We still have teachers who choose Nueva for our constructivist approaches, the beauty of our campuses, the generosity of our community, and the pedagogical freedom, but are nevertheless uneasy with the mission. For those of us who have ever experienced mission mismatch, we know that rancor becomes more acute with time, not less. Dissatisfaction grows and there is a desire to change the school rather than find the courage in one’s self to seek a better match elsewhere. The Board knows this, too.

In the last six years of rapid expansion, we have experienced mission mismatch with some families, with some faculty, and with some administrators. We have also been privileged to have a cohesive Board with chairs who have led wisely. Because each member of the Board is deeply and personally committed to the students we serve, our mission anchors all decision-making. There is no wavering at the Board level, which allows teachers, staff, and administrators to focus on the execution of our collective vision.

This is our community’s great good fortune and our greatest strength. We have kept our eyes on the prize and

will weather the challenges in this period of great change and growth. We have been here before and we are stronger for the soul-searching we were forced to undertake. As we know all too well, schools are fragile places, and our history reminds us to be vigilant, aware, and humble.

© The Nueva School 2020

REFLECTION: UNDERSTANDING GIFTEDNESS

Reflecting on these snapshots of how Nueva community members feel about what Nueva is, answer for yourself: why is gifed education important?

What do you see as core to the Nueva gifed education that you want to learn more about, or that you are most drawn to helping with?

What further questions do you have? What else do you think you need to know or learn to best serve the needs of our students? Write them down and remember to ask them at New Faculty Orientation!

REFLECTION: REMOTE GIFTED ED

What would you imagine are the particular vulnerabilities of gifed learners during remote learning? What considerations do we have to take into account? How might we design a remote experience that supports gifed students?

One Last Statement

We want to make sure it’s clear that you don’t need to be gifted to be a great teacher or supporter of gifted learners! The most important part of being a teacher or supporter of gifted students is honoring their lived experience and nurturing their growth intellectually, emotionally, socially, morally, etc., as you would for all students.

A lifelong love of learning

“We nurture and encourage a lifelong love of learning through joyous, authentic and rich learning experiences. We foster an environment where students pursue their intellectual curiosity and create learning that feels boundless.”

Our next principle asks us to foster in our students and ourselves, a love of learning. We seek to nurture in our students the lifelong pursuit of knowledge and experiences, both to help them understand themselves as gifted learners, and for the sheer joy that it brings. As Lucy stated,

“Tankfully I found Nueva. Nueva is ready and eager to handle the intensity of its students, to take this kind of ardent, nineteenthcentury, conquer-the-universe desire for knowledge and use it as a tool for the good.”

LUCY W, NUEVA ALUM, 2018 GRADUATION SPEECH

REFLECTION: YOUR LIFE OF LEARNING

Reflect on a time you felt truly engaged in learning. What were the conditions?

Reflect on your own educational experience with teachers. Has anyone in particular supported your own love of learning, and if so, how?

What needs to be true for joy to live in your classroom or in our school?

Resources on a Love of Learning

What’s the Research on Motivation?

Excerpted from How Learning Works by Susan

A. Ambrose

When students successfully achieve a goal and attribute their success to internal causes (for example, their own talents or abilities) or to controllable causes (for example, their own efforts or persistence), they are more likely to expect future success. If however, they attribute success to external causes (for example, easy assignments) or uncontrollable causes (for example, luck), they are less likely to expect success in the future.

For instance, if a student attributes the good grade she received on a design project to her own creativity (ability) or to the many long hours she spent on its planning and execution (effort), she is likely to expect success on future design assignments. This is because she has attributed her success to relatively stable and controllable features about herself. These same features form These same features form the basis for her positive expectations for similar situations in the future.

REFLECTION: READING RESPONSE

Afer reading, what are some of the ideas you are drawn to from the above resources? What would you like to explore?

What can you do and/or have you done as a teacher or supporter of students to set up an environment that nurtures intrinsic motivation? What about one that nurtures joy?

One of the prevalent myths about joyful classrooms is that for students to enjoy learning, it has to be easy, over- or under-structured, gimmicky, or unchallenging. We at Nueva find that the opposite is very ofen true for our learners. How might you build truly challenging, difficult, open-ended learning opportunities for your students that catalyze a love of learning?

Curating Joy at Nueva

As you look at these examples, consider the multiple ways teachers curate joy and a love of learning in their classes and beyond; how do they blend challenge, learning by doing, open-endedness, and learning as a social activity? How do they allow ownership of their learning and their classroom by the students?

KEY VIDEOS

GingerBread Man

KEY POSTERS

How to Make a Stone Axe

Students in the

To Be Nueva

Excerpt from 2016 speech by faculty & alum

Aron Walker

"Nueva, I tell people, is like a buffet, with more options and courses than can be sampled. And the learning is like a buffet: if you are used to a sit-down restaurant where waiters come and serve you dishes, and you therefore do not rise to fill your own plate, you still starve…

© The Nueva School 2020

Bringing the Silk Road to Nueva WATCH

Claire Yeo’s Museum in a Classroom

I-Lab

Drug Design With Francine Learn by Digging

REFLECTION: CURATING JOY AT NUEVA

What did you see in the examples that stood out to you? Are there any themes that arose in your mind when watching?

What catalyzed a love of learning in these various instances?

REFLECTION: REVIEW

What are you wondering afer finishing this unit?

Using your radical imagination, how can you create, for all students, the conditions for a loving environment and a love of learning to flourish?

What is the gap between what you feel you must teach (and how you think you need to teach) and allowing for joy and love of learning to guide your teaching? What have you not felt permission to do? How can you unleash that?

What brings you joy? (For we believe a joyous teacher creates joyous classrooms and joyous staff create a joyous school!)

ACTIVITY: INTENTION-SETTING

We want to give you explicit permission to prioritize a love of learning in your class or in your role and to embrace conditions that lead to joy. We are an institution that believes in iteration and failing forward. We want you to feel excited to try out new practices, embrace uncertainty, and challenge yourself to grow and explore as an educator. To that end, we encourage you to set some intentions for yourself to pursue in the next 3-6 months. Please use the following prompts to help you do so:

What would you like to create in the coming year, as part of your role, that brings joy and affirms a love of learning? What practice, pedagogy, vision, or exploration have you always wanted to embody and/or try? What would you like to see manifest this year?

What limits you? What do you feel is holding you back? What would you be doing if you felt like you were given permission and opportunity to do so?

What do you need to help you manifest the practices and pedagogy that you explored in the first prompt? What will help you feel joy and possibility this year?

Joy in the Remote Classroom at Nueva

Recreación de Arte

Spanish language students recreated iconic Hispanic works of art using 3 objects they had in their homes

Costume Parties

I-Lab Engineer John Feland surprised his students with a different costume every zoom class.

A studentcentered school

“We place students at the center of our decision-making and pedagogical design in order to catalyze intellectual, social, and emotional learning and ensure more meaningful, rich, culturally responsive, relevant and effective experiences.”

GETTING STARTED

As lifelong learners ourselves, Nuevans strive to ensure learning is meaningful, engaging and joyful. One way to foster and deepen a love of learning is to keep students at the core of what we do.

REFLECTION: TO BE STUDENT-CENTERED…

What does student-centered pedagogy actually mean? Draw/graph/mind-map a student-centered classroom or a student-centered school.

What was a time you felt you were at the center of your learning?

Describe a practice or approach in schools that is not student-centered.

Resources on Student-Centered Education

KEY READINGS

The Understanding by Design Framework

The Image of the Child

A Learning Culture with No Ceilings WATCH

Distinctions of Equity

By Zaretta Hammond, as featured in “How to Develop Culturally Responsive

Teaching for Distance Learning”

by Amielle Major

It is important to distinguish between three key areas when engaged in equity work. We often confuse their particular purposes. As a result, we use them interchangeably when they are not. Below is a simple chart to help you understand the distinctions between them. Remember, it is not a continuum. You cannot begin with multicultural education and believe it will lead to culturally responsive instruction. Why? CRT is focused on the cognitive development of under-served students. Multicultural and social justice education have more of a social supporting role.

Multicultural Education

Focuses on celebrating diversity

Centers around creating positive social interactions across differences.

Diversity and inclusion efforts live here.

Concerns itself with exposing privileged students to multiple perspectives, and other cultures. For students of color, the focus is on seeing themselves refected in the curriculum.

Social Justice Education

Focuses on exposing the social political context that students experience.

Centers around raising students’ consciousness about inequity in everyday social, environmental, economic, and political situations.

Anti-racist efforts live here.

Concerns itself with creating a lens to recognize and interrupt inequitable patterns and practices in society.

Social Harmony Critical Consciousness

Culturally Responsive Education

Focuses on improving the learning capacity of diverse students who have been marginalized educationally.

Centers around the affective & cognitive aspects of teaching and learning.

Efforts to accelerate learning live here.

Concerns itself with building cognitive capacity and academic mindset by pushing back on dominant narratives about people of color.

Independent Learning for Agency

Curriculum begins with parts of the whole. Emphasizes basic skills.

Curriculum emphasizes big concepts, beginning with the whole and expanding to include the parts

Strict adherence to fxed curriculum is highly valued. Pursuit of student questions and interests is valued

Materials are primarily textbooks and workbooks.

Learning is based on repetition.

Teachers disseminate information to students. Students are recipients of knowledge.

Teacher’s role is directive, rooted in authority.

Materials include primary sources of material and manipulative materials

Learning is interactive, building on what the student already knows.

Teachers have a dialogue with students, helping them to construct their own knowledge.

Teacher’s role is interactive, rooted in negotiation.

Assessment is through testing and correct answers. Assessment includes student works, observations and points of view, as well as tests. Process is as important as product.

Knowledge is seen as inert.

Students work primarily alone.

Introduction to Constructivism

Knowledge is seen as dynamic, ever changing with our experiences.

Students work primarily in groups.

By the Center for Educational Innovation at the University at Buffalo

What is constructivism?

Constructivism is the theory that says learners construct knowledge rather than just passively take in information. As people experience the world and reflect upon those experiences, they build their own representations and incorporate new information into their pre-existing knowledge (schemas). Related to this are the processes of assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation refers to the process of taking new information and fitting it into an existing schema.

Accommodation refers to using newly acquired information to revise and redevelop an existing schema.

For example, if I believe that friends are always nice, and meet a new person who is always nice to me, I may call this person a friend, assimilating them into my schema. Perhaps, however, I meet a different person who sometimes pushes me to try harder and is not always nice. I may decide to change my schema to accommodate this person by deciding a friend doesn’t always need to be nice if they have my best interests in mind. Further, this may make me reconsider whether the first person still fits into my friend schema.

Consequences of constructivist theory are that:

‣ Students learn best when engaged in learning experiences rather passively receiving information.

‣ Learning is inherently a social process because it is embedded within a social context as students and teachers work together to build knowledge. Because knowledge cannot be directly imparted to students, the goal of teaching is to provide experiences that facilitate the construction of knowledge.

This last point is worth repeating. A…

More on next page

Introduction to Constructivism

(part 2 of 2)

traditional approach to teaching focuses on delivering information to students, yet constructivism argues that you cannot directly impart this information. Only an experience can facilitate students to construct their own knowledge. Therefore, the goal of teaching is to design these experiences.

Consequences for the classroom

There are many consequences for teaching and the classroom if you adhere to constructivist principles. The following chart from the Teaching and Learning Resources wiki compares traditional and constructivist classrooms across several components,

Essential components to constructivist teaching

There are several main components to include if you plan on adhering to constructivist principles in your classroom or when designing your lessons. The following are from Baviskar, Hartle & Whitney (2009):

‣ Elicit prior knowledge

New knowledge is created in relation to learner’s pre-existing knowledge. Lessons, therefore, require eliciting relevant prior knowledge. Activities include: pretests, informal interviews and small group warm-up activities that require recall of prior knowledge.

‣ Create cognitive dissonance

Assign problems and activities that will challenge students. Knowledge is built as learners encounter novel problems and revise existing schemas as they work through the challenging problem.

‣ Apply knowledge with feedback

Encourage students to evaluate new information and modify existing knowledge. Activities should allow for students to compare pre-existing schema to the

novel situation. Activities might include presentations, small group or class discussions, and quizzes.

‣ Reflect on learning

Provide students with an opportunity to show you (and themselves) what they have learned. Activities might include: presentations, reflexive papers or creating a step-by-step tutorial for another student.

Examples of constructivist classroom activities

‣ Reciprocal teaching/learning

Allow pairs of students to teach each other.

‣ Inquiry-based learning (IBL)

Learners pose their own questions and seek answers to their questions via research and direct observation. They present their supporting evidence to answer the questions. They draw connections between their pre-existing knowledge and the knowledge they’ve acquired through the activity. Finally, they draw conclusions, highlight remaining gaps in knowledge and develop plans for future investigations.

‣ Problem-based learning (PBL)

The main idea of PBL is similar to IBL: learners acquire knowledge by devising a solution to a problem. PBL differs from IBL in that PBL activities provide students with real-world problems that require students to work together to devise a solution. As the group works through the challenging real-world problem, learners acquire communication and collaboration skills in addition to knowledge.

‣ Cooperative learning

Students work together in small groups to maximize their own and each other's learning. Cooperative learning differs from typical group work in that it requires interdependence among group members to solve a problem or complete an assignment.

© The Nueva School 2020

Differentiated Instruction: a Primer

By Sarah D. Sparks

How can a teacher keep a reading class of 25 on the same page when four students have dyslexia, three students are learning English as a second language, two others read three grade levels ahead, and the rest have widely disparate interests and degrees of enthusiasm about reading?

What is Differentiated Instruction?

“Differentiated instruction”—the process of identifying students’ individual learning strengths, needs, and interests and adapting lessons to match them—has become a popular approach to helping diverse students learn together. But the field of education is filled with varied and often conflicting definitions of what the practice looks like, and critics argue it requires too much training and additional work for teachers to be implemented consistently and effectively.

Differentiation has much in common with many other instructional models: It has been compared to response-to-intervention models, as teachers vary their approach to the same material with different students in the same classroom; data-driven instruction, as individual students are frequently assessed or otherwise monitored, with instruction tweaked in response; and scaffolding, as assignments are intended to be structured to help students of different ability and interest levels meet the same goals.

Federal education laws and regulations do not generally set out requirements for how schools and teachers should “differentiate” instruction. However, in its 2010 National Education Technology Plan,

the U.S. Department of Education lays out a framework that places differentiated teaching under the larger umbrella of “personalized learning,” instruction tailored to students’ individual learning needs, preferences, and interests. This framework assumes that all students in a heterogeneous classroom will have the same learning goals, but:

‣ “Individualization” tailors instruction by time. A teacher may break the material into smaller steps and allow students to master these steps at different paces; skipping topics they can prove they have mastered, while getting more help on those that prove difficult. This model has been used in iterations as far back as the late Robert Glaser’s Individually Prescribed Instruction in the 1970s, an approach which pairs diagnostic tests with objectives for mastery that is intended to help students progress through material at their own pace.

‣ “Differentiation” tailors instruction by presentation. A teacher may vary the method and assignments covering the material to adjust to students’ strengths, needs, and interests. For example, a teacher may allow an introverted student to write an essay on a historical topic while a more outgoing student gives an oral presentation on the same subject.

That distinction is accepted by some, though far from all, in the field.

The ambiguity has led to widespread confusion and debate over what differentiated instruction looks like in

practice, and how its effectiveness can be evaluated.

For example, a 2005 study for the National Research Center on Gifted and Talented, which tracked implementation of “differentiation” over three years, found that the “vast majority” of teachers never moved beyond traditional direct lectures and seat work for students.

“Results suggest that differentiation of instruction and assessment are complex endeavors requiring extended time and concentrated effort to master,” the authors conclude. “Add to this complexity current realities of school such as large class sizes, limited resource materials, lack of planning time, lack of structures in place to allow collaboration with colleagues, and ever-increasing numbers of teacher responsibilities, and the tasks become even more daunting.”

Evolution of the Concept

Differentiated instruction as a concept evolved in part from instructional methods advocated for gifted students and in part as an alternative to academic “tracking,” or separating students of different ability levels into groups or classes. In the 1983 book, Individual Differences and the Common Curriculum, Thomas S. Popkewitz discusses differentiation in the context of “Individually Guided Education, … a management plan for pacing children through a standardized, objective-based curriculum” that would include smallgroup work, team teaching, objectivebased testing, and monitoring of student progress. …

Differentiated Instruction: A Primer

(part 2 of 3)

…Carol Ann Tomlinson, a co-director of the Institutes on Academic Diversity at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, and the author of The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners, 2nd Edition (ASCD, 2014) and Assessment and Student Success in a Differentiated Classroom (ASCD, 2013) argues that differentiation is, at its base, not an approach but a basic tenet of good instruction, in which a teacher develops relationships with his or her students and presents materials and assignments in ways that respond to the student’s interests and needs.

Differentiated Instruction Strategies

In theory—though critics allege not in practice—differentiation does not involve creating separate lesson plans for individual students for a given unit.

Ms. Tomlinson argues that differentiation requires more than creating options for assignments or presenting content both graphically and with hands-on projects, for example. Rather, to differentiate a unit on Rome, a teacher might consider both specific terms and overarching themes and concepts she wants students to learn, and offer a series of individual and group assignments of various levels of complexity to build those concepts and allow students to demonstrate their understanding in multiple ways, such as journal entries, oral presentations, creating costumes, and so on. In different parts of a unit students may be working with students who share their interests or have different ones, and with students who are at the same or different ability levels.

During the 1990s, teachers were also encouraged to present material differently according to a student’s “learning style”—for example, visual, auditory, or kinesthetic. But while there

have been studies that show students remember more when the same material is presented and reinforced in multiple ways, recent research reviews have found no evidence that individual students can be categorized as learning best through a single type of presentation.

Rick Wormeli, an education consultant and the author of Fair Isn’t Always Equal: Assessment and Grading in the Differentiated Classroom, instead suggests in a 2011 essay in the journal Middle Ground that teachers differentiate based on “learner profiles”:

“A learner profile is a set of observations about a student that includes any factor that affects his or her learning, including family dynamics, transiency rate, physical health, emotional health, comfort with technology, leadership qualities, personal interests, and so much more.”

Impacts of Technology

Differentiated and personalized instructional models have also evolved with technological advances, which make it easier to develop and monitor education plans for dozens of students at the same time. The influence of differentiation on school-level programs can be seen in “early warning systems” and student “dashboards” that aim to track individual student performance in real time, as well as initiatives in some schools to develop and monitor individualized learning plans with the student, his or her teachers, and parents.

Advocates of hybrid education models, such as the “flipped classroom”—in which students watch lectures and read material at home and perform practice that would normally be homework during class time—have suggested this could help teachers

differentiate by recording and archiving different lectures that students could watch and rewatch as needed, and providing more one-on-one time during class.

Professional Development

By any account, differentiation is considered a complex approach to implement, requiring extensive and ongoing professional development for teachers and administrators.

In the 2005 longitudinal study that found no consistent implementation of differentiation, researchers noted that “many aspects of differentiation of instruction and assessment (e.g., assigning different work to different students, promoting greater student independence in the classroom) challenged teachers’ beliefs about fairness, about equity, and about how classrooms should be organized to allow students to learn most effectively. As a result, for most teachers, learning to differentiate entailed more than simply learning new practices. It required teachers to confront and dismantle their existing, persistent beliefs about teaching and learning, beliefs that were in large part shared and reinforced by other teachers, principals, parents, the community, and even students.”

In the 2009 book, Professional Development for Differentiating Instruction, Cindy A. Strickland notes that most schools do not provide sufficient training for new and experienced teachers in differentiating instruction.

Ms. Tomlinson said that teachers can begin to differentiate instruction simply by learning more about their students and trying to tailor their teaching as much as they find feasible. “Every…

More on next page

Differentiated Instruction: A Primer

(part 3 of 3)

…significant endeavor seems too hard if we look only at the expert’s product. The success of all these ‘seasoned’ people stemmed largely from three factors: They started down a path. They wanted to do better. They kept working toward their goal.”

Including students of disparate abilities and interests also requires the teacher to rethink expectations for all students: “If a teacher uses flexible grouping lesson by lesson and does not assume a student has prior knowledge because he is a 'higher' student but really assesses and groups, based on need sometimes and other times by interest, the students will get what they need,” Melinda L. Fattig, a nationally recognized educator and a co-author of the 2008 book Co-Teaching in the Differentiated Classroom, told Teacher magazine that year.

Critiques

In practice, differentiation is such a broad and multifaceted approach that it has proven difficult to implement properly or study empirically, critics say.

In a 2010 report by the research group McREL, author Bryan Goodwin notes that “to date, no empirical evidence exists to confirm that the total package (e.g., conducting ongoing assessments of student abilities, identifying appropriate content based on those abilities, using flexible grouping arrangements for students, and varying how students can demonstrate proficiency in their learning) has a positive impact on student achievement.” He adds: “One reason for this lack of evidence may simply be that no large-scale, scientific study of differentiated instruction has been conducted.” However, Mr. Goodwin pointed to the 2009 book Visible Learning, which synthesized studies of more than 600 models of personalizing learning based on student interests and prior performance, and

found them not much better than general classroom instruction for improving students’ academic performance.

Both in planning time and instructional time, differentiation takes longer than using a single lesson plan for a given topic, and many teachers attempting to differentiate have reported feeling overwhelmed and unable to reach each student equally.

In a 2010 Education Week Commentary essay, Michael J. Schmoker, the author of the 2006 book, Results NOW: How We Can Achieve Unprecedented Improvements in Teaching and Learning, says attempts to differentiate instruction frustrated teachers and “seemed to complicate teachers’ work, requiring them to procure and assemble multiple sets of materials” leading to “dumbed-down” teaching.

Likewise, some advocates of gifted education, such as James R. Delisle, have argued that advanced students still are not challenged enough in a differentiated environment, which may vary in the presentation of material but not necessarily in the pace of instruction. He argues that “differentiation in practice is harder to implement in a heterogeneous classroom than it is to juggle with one arm tied behind your back.”

“There is no one book, video, presenter, or website that will show everyone how to differentiate instruction. Let’s stop looking for it. One size rarely fits all. Our classrooms are too diverse and our communities too important for such simplistic notions,” Mr. Wormeli said in an interview with Education Week blogger Larry Ferlazzo.

“Instead, let’s realize what differentiation really is: highly effective teaching, which is complex and interwoven; no one element defining it.”

How To Develop Culturally Responsive Teaching for Distance Learning

By Amielle Major

Te coronavirus pandemic and school closures across the nation have exposed deep inequities within education: technology access, challenges with communication, lack of support for special education students, to name just a few. During this crisis, there are still opportunities to provide students with tools to help them be independent learners, according to Zaretta

Hammond, author of "Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain."

The classroom is where so much of the focus on learning has been placed, but there are opportunities to develop learning routines at home. This won’t mean sending home the same materials a student would have in class, but thinking about what a student needs in order to have agency over their learning in any situation.

Hammond shared three design principles of culturally responsive instruction that can be used to support students’ cognitive development from afar in her webinar, “Moving Beyond the Packet: Creating More Culturally Responsive Distance Learning Experiences.” She said it’s important to stay focused on the student and offer small but high-leverage practices that maintain student progress and increase intellectual capacity during this time. She said these tips and activities also work for students without reliable access to technology and the internet.

First, what is culturally responsive instruction?

Shared language matters and there’s a lot of confusion about culturally responsive teaching. At its core,

culturally responsive instruction is about helping students become independent learners.

“At its core, culturally responsive instruction is about helping students become independent learners.”

Culturally responsive instruction should:

‣ Focus on improving the learning capacity of students who have been marginalized educationally because of historical inequities in our school systems.

‣ Center around both the affective and cognitive aspects of teaching and learning.

‣ Build cognitive capacity and academic mindset by pushing back on dominant narratives about people of color.

“Culturally responsive instruction doesn't mean you're only mentioning issues of race and implicit bias," she said. "It means that you’re also focused on building brainpower by helping students leverage and grow their existing funds of knowledge.”

Hammond distinguishes the differences between culturally responsive education, multicultural education and social justice education. Each is important, but without a focus on building students’ brain power, they will experience learning loss.

When it comes to distance learning, applying culturally responsive teaching requires “remixing” education by

borrowing from the best practices in how kids learn (Montessori, projectbased learning, etc.) in a way that repositions the student as the leader of his own learning. By giving students more agency, the idea is to disrupt old routines around teaching and learning that make the student dependent on the teacher for receiving knowledge.

“It’s going to stretch us a little out of our own comfort zones, but it’s worth it in the long run if we can get students to continue to do that thinking,” said Hammond.

She advises three strategies to help students gain that independence:

STRATEGY 1: Deepen Background Knowledge

Many educators are understandably wondering whether they should teach new content or review familiar material. Hammond encourages educators to do the latter because cognitively dependent learners often have gaps in their background knowledge. “A lot of our students are compliant learners,” she said. “They’re having a hard time shifting right now [because] they’re used to the worksheet, but that doesn’t mean they’re always processing information.”

She advises teachers to help students connect new things they're learning to their brain’s existing schema—also known as background knowledge— that comes from home, their community, their interests. Teachers …

How to Develop Culturally Responsive Teaching for Distance Learning

… can then give them authentic tasks that help them make meaning and connections. This helps turn new inert information into usable knowledge. “You cannot give another person background knowledge,” she explained. “They have to acquire it, but as teachers we can help guide the process.” This can be done by building upon student interest.

“Survey your students if you don’t know what they like,” said Hammond. Ask them what books they enjoy reading or what topics get them super excited. She said “it doesn’t matter if their interests are broad or narrow;” it’s important to learn what interests them so that you can use that information to:

‣ Assign non-fiction books that build on student interests.

‣ Create a “Netflix” playlist of documentaries, nature shows, historical events, etc.

‣ Encourage kids and parents to do a walk-about, if that's possible in their community, following social distancing guidelines. Encourage parents and students to seek out community curiosities (landmarks or interesting sights) relevant to students’ interest.

With each of these activities, it’s important to give the students direction so they know what to look out for. “You have to tell the brain what to pay attention to,” Hammond explains. She suggested questions like, “What was your biggest surprise from this book/ show?” or thinking routine sentences like “I Used to Think ___. But, now I think ____.”

She said to always make sure that students do something with the knowledge as well. She suggested having them share interesting facts they

learned either during video conferences or via an audio/video clip.

For those students with limited internet access, encourage them to share what they learned with their parents.

STRATEGY 2: Cultivate Cognitive Routines

Growing students’ brain power during distance learning starts with building cognitive routines. These routines are essential to processing and hardwiring information in the brain.

“Be the personal trainer of their cognitive development,” Hammond said. To do this, she suggested having a routine set of prompts in each packet that become a regular part of the way students think. That way, students begin to think that way even when you’re not in the classroom to reinforce that way of thinking.

Growing students’ brain power during distance learning starts with building cognitive routines.

One example is to ask students to connect the “unknown to the known” or across concepts by asking questions like, "What’s the relationship or connection between these things?” or “How does this part fit into the whole? What are the parts of this whole?” These may seem simple, but these questions are critical when it comes to processing information so that students internalize these prompts until they become almost instinctual.

She said students should also be encouraged to sketchnote or doodle to actively process what they’re learning as an alternative to note-taking. Sketchnoting can encourage people to make deeper connections to what they’re hearing.

STRATEGY 3: Building Word Wealth

Building a student’s vocabulary is a key tool in equity strategies for schools. “Kids have different interests in words so find out where their energy is. You can have a differentiated assignment around word collecting, but the idea is to get them actively involved in word consciousness,” said Hammond.

She said there are many small but high-leverage ways to do this, such as introducing robust word study. A teacher can help students engage in wordplay, word consciousness and word knowledge. This should not happen through a worksheet assignment, but rather begin with building word consciousness of words in their community, home and home language.

Word games like Scrabble, Heads

Up, Taboo or even word searches are small familiar but high-leverage activities because they’re fun but also require a high cognitive load. You can create your own versions of these games and have students do this in any language. Students can also do word collecting activities like scavenger hunts, or make poetry using magnetic poetry. Students can also do a contrastive analysis, by comparing words they might find in Urban Dictionary to those they might find in a standard dictionary.

She said it’s important to make sure that culturally responsive distance learning doesn’t turn into one-off strategies, like a single activity. She said practices must become routine by practicing over and over. She also said that by encouraging students to lean into their own productive struggle, they’ll know more about themselves as learners. “They've got to muck around a little bit and they've got to feel like it's OK,” said Hammond.

© The Nueva School 2020

T ree Lessons for Teaching From Grant Wiggins

by Jay McTighe

Te start of the new school year offers the perfect opportunity to reflect on the life and work of Grant Wiggins, an extraordinary educator who died unexpectedly at the end of the last school year (on May 26, 2015).

Although I am an only child, I considered Grant my brother as well as an intellectual partner and best friend. I think of Grant every day and miss him terribly. While Grant is no longer with us, his spirit and ideas live on. Indeed, we can honor and celebrate his life’s work by acting on the sage advice that he offered to teachers over the years. As we prepare to meet our new students, let us consider three of

Grant’s sensible and salient lessons for teachers.

LESSON 1: Always Keep the End in Mind

Grant always reminded teachers of the value of designing curriculum, assessment, and learning experiences “backwards,” with the end in mind. While the idea of using “backward design” to plan curriculum units and courses is certainly not new, the Understanding by Design® framework underscores the value of this process for yielding more clearly defined goals, more appropriate assessments, more tightly aligned lessons, and more purposeful teaching.

Grant pointed out that “backward design” of curriculum means more than simply looking at all of the content and standards you plan to “cover” and mapping out your dayto-day lessons. The idea is to plan backward from worthy goals—the transferable concepts, principles, processes, and questions that enable students to apply their learning in meaningful and

authentic ways. Grant knew that in order to transfer their learning, students need to understand “big ideas.” Rote learning of discrete facts and skills will simply not equip students to apply their learning to novel situations. Thus, he advised teachers to plan backward from desired transfer performances and “uncover” the necessary content needed for those performances.

“Rote learning of discrete facts and skills will simply not equip students to apply their learning to novel situations.

Here are several curriculumplanning tips that Grant offered:

‣ Consider long-term transfer goals when planning curriculum. What do you want students to be able to do with their learning when they confront new challenges, both within and outside of school?

‣ With transfer goals in mind, ask yourself these questions: What will students need to understand in order to apply their learning? What specific knowledge and skills will enable effective performance?

‣ Frame your teaching around essential questions. Think of the content you teach as the “answers.” What are the questions that led to those answers?

Grant noted that teaching for understanding and transfer will develop the very capabilities identified in the Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards, which are necessary to prepare learners for success in college and careers.

LESSON 2: Feedback is Key to Successful Performance & Learning

For years, Grant reminded teachers that providing learners with feedback was a key to effective learning and improvement. His insights have been confirmed by research (from educators like Dylan Wiliam, John Hattie, and Robert Marzano) that demonstrates conclusively that classroom feedback is one of the highest-yielding strategies to enhance achievement.

However, Grant cautioned against thinking that grades (B+) and exhortations (“try harder”) are feedback. To be effective, Grant pointed out that feedback must meet several criteria:

‣ Feedback must be timely. Making students wait two weeks or more to find out how they did on a test will not help their learning.

‣ Feedback must be specific and descriptive. Effective feedback highlights explicit strengths and weaknesses (e.g., “Your speech was well-organized and interesting to the audience. However, you were speaking too fast in the beginning and did not make eye contact with the audience.”)

‣ Feedback must be understandable to the receiver. Sometimes a teacher’s comment or the language in a rubric is lost on a student. Using student-friendly language can make feedback clearer and more comprehensible. For instance…

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T ree Lessons for Teaching from Grant Wiggins

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instead of saying “Document your reasoning process,” a teacher could say, “Show your work in a step-bystep manner so others can follow your thinking.”

‣ Feedback must allow for selfadjustment on the student’s part. Merely providing timely and specific feedback is insufficient; teachers must also give students the opportunity to use it to revise their thinking or performance.

Here’s a straightforward test for classroom feedback: Can learners tell specifically from the given feedback what they have done well and what they could do next time to improve? If not, then the feedback is not yet specific enough or understandable for the learner. Grant also reminded us that classroom feedback should work reciprocally—that is, teachers should not only provide feedback for learners but also seek and use feedback to improve their own practice.

Here are four ways that teachers can obtain helpful feedback:

(1) Ask your students. Periodically, teachers can elicit student feedback using “exit cards” or questionnaires. Here are a few sample prompts: What do you really understand about ____? What questions do you have? When were you most engaged? When were you least engaged? What is working for you? What could I do to help you learn better? Response patterns from such questions can provide specific ideas to help teachers refine their teaching.

(2) Ask your colleagues. It is easy for busy teachers to get too close to their work. Having another set of eyes can be invaluable. You can ask fellow teachers to review your unit plans, inspect the alignment of your

assessments to your goals, and check your essential questions and lesson plans to see if they are likely to engage students.

(3) Use formative assessments and act on their results. Grant often used analogies to make a point. He likened formative assessment to tasting a meal while cooking it. Waiting until a unit test or final exam to discover that some students haven’t “got it” is too late. Effective teachers, like successful cooks, sample learning along the way through formative assessments and adjust the “ingredients” of their teaching based on results.

(4) Regularly analyze student work. By closely examining the work that students produce on major assignments and assessments, teachers gain valuable insight into student strengths as well as skill deficiencies and misunderstandings Grant encouraged teachers to analyze student work in teams, whenever possible. Just as football coaches review game film together and then plan next week’s practices, teachers gain insight into needed curriculum and instructional adjustments based on results.

LESSON 3:

Have Empathy for the Learner

In our writings on Understanding by Design, Grant and I described six facets of understanding: a person shows evidence of understanding when they can explain, interpret, apply, shift perspective, empathize, and self-assess. These facets serve as indicators of understanding and guide the development of assessments and learning experiences. Grant pointed out that the facets have value beyond their use as a frame for curriculum and assessment design. They can be applied to teachers and teaching as well. As one example, he described the

phenomenon that he labeled the Expert Blind Spot: “Expressed in the language of the six facets, experts frequently find it difficult to have empathy for the novice, even when they try. That’s why teaching is hard, especially for the expert in the field who is a novice teacher. Expressed positively, we must strive unendingly to be empathetic to the learner’s conceptual struggles if we are to succeed.”

Grant reminded us of the value of being sensitive to learners who do not have our expertise (and sometimes not even an interest) in the subject matter that we know so well. He pointed out that “what is obvious to us is rarely obvious to a novice—and was once not obvious to us either, but we have forgotten our former views and struggles.” He cautioned us against confusing teaching for understanding with simply telling. He encouraged teachers to remember that understandings are constructed in the mind of the learner, that understanding must be “earned” by the learner, and that the teacher’s job is to facilitate “meaning making,” not simply present information. Grant encouraged teachers to develop empathy for students by “shadowing” a student for a day and reflecting on the experience.

Recently, a high school teacher took his suggestion and described what it was like to walk in the shoes of a student. Her account, summarized in a blog post with over a million hits, should be required reading for all teachers, especially at the start of a new year. Maybe you will be inspired to engage in this action research in your school. These are but a few of the many lessons that Grant offered us. Although he is no longer with us, his brilliance lives on in his thoughtprovoking blog posts, articles, and books. His advice elevates our profession, and our students deserve the benefits of his wisdom.

REFLECTION: STUDENT-CENTERED EDUCATION

Which of these ideas are new to you, if any? If you are fairly familiar with them all, which one do you feel least confident about implementing? Which do you feel most confident implementing?

What implications do these have for the design of a course? Of assignments? Of assessments? Of a school itself?

Student-Centered Education at Nueva

Have a look at the following examples of how Nueva creates student-centered learning opportunities. Each of these case studies illustrates how teachers and staff place students at the center of classroom and school-wide activities.

Kindergarten Deep Dive

At the end of the spring semester in Kindergarten, students and teachers collaboratively decide on a Spring Study topic to investigate in depth. Here’s the culminating project—created remotely—from one class’s study of animals this year.

View Prezi

Create-a-Culture

In 3rd grade social studies, students focus on the concept of culture. Check out this carefully scaffolded, multifaceted project in which they envision a new culture, complete with communication and transportation systems, foodways, and political structures.

View project outline

5

“Dear Data…”

In 6th grade math, students are invited to gather data about their own lives and then consider the ways in which they can interpret and present this data in meaningful ways.

View presentation View assignment

Upper School Quest

Each year in the Upper School, students undertake a year-long Quest project, in which they study an area of interest—either longstanding or previously unexplored—in depth.

Watch video

Globalization Research

The 7th grade’s fall semester study of globalization provides extensive choice for students alongside robust training in academic research and writing. Check out the commodities—from coffee & chocolate to oil and copper—that they studied this year.

View assignment View commodities

Rage & Resilience

Students in this upper school elective on the history and culture of the HIV/AIDS crisis make their way through three different learning modules, each of which presents art and literature inspired by a different emotional response. Student choice exists in the modules they choose and the texts they explore.

View modules View presentation

Compassion & Agency at Nueva

At Nueva, we also believe that the institution itself needs to be student-centered and be ready to nimbly meet student needs. For example, we are institutionally committed to student choice in our curriculum. Our Lower School students use Choice periods each week to explore their interests, our Middle School students begin to have electives in 5th grade, and our Upper School students take no fewer than two elective choices every semester, ranging from classes like “Electric Bicycle Building” to “Capitalism in the 20th Century” to “Translation Studies.” We also strive to create opportunities that acknowledge the asynchronous development of gifted learners.

We adopt a “stage not age” model for class placement, wherein students can take classes in other divisions if they have accelerated beyond what their division offers. At the Upper School, we offer an independent study program for students who wish to put together their own program of study. Finally, students do not receive grades until 10th grade, and all students receive narrative evaluations which directly address their learning and its particularities. These practices, in addition to the use of standardsbased grading in the Upper School, ensure that our students know that learning is not competitive.

Way

REFLECTION: TO BE STUDENT-CENTERED…

In what ways do these examples balance rigorous learning goals with student-centered experience?

Using these examples and what you’ve read, take some time to ideate and perhaps redesign a learning engagement in your class. Alternatively, how might your role help support a student-centered learning environment?

Fostering social emotional acuity & kindness

“Kindness and social-emotional learning are fundamental to who we are and how we operate. We show kindness through empathy, dignity, respect, holding space for others, being inclusive, listening to understand and supporting restorative practices.”

To be student centered is to be “the guide on the side.” To allow students to develop their voices and partner with us in their learning and growth. But this growth and the community necessary for it cannot happen without an explicit and deep focus on Social-Emotional Acuity and Kindness. SEL is the bedrock for all the work we do.

REFLECTION: SOCIAL & EMOTIONAL LEARNING

How familiar are you with the term SEL?

What is the role of social and emotional learning in your subject, classroom, or department?

OECD Model of Social Emotional Skills

Task Performance

CRITICAL THINKING

Compound Skills

META-COGNITION

SELF-EFFICACY

Emotional Regulation

The ‘Big Five’ Domains

Engaging with Others

What is SEL?

As part of Nueva's commitment to nurture the whole child, our nationally recognized Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) program plays an integral role in the curriculum at every grade level. We help students examine their own thoughts, feelings, and actions and be sensitive to the feelings and needs of others. Within the context of guided activities and peer feedback, SEL gives children the tools to be successful within the interpersonal domain, as well as to develop personal resiliency and awareness in the intrapersonal domain. Using an interdisciplinary approach, students focus on emotional literacy skills with SEL specialists, other teachers, and advisors.

In the Lower School, children are introduced to the basic vocabulary of emotions. They learn cooperation and problem-solving skills and develop an understanding of what it means to be a member of a group.

Students build on these introductory concepts to develop respect for themselves and others, management of strong feelings and impulses, development of effective communication skills, and the ability to set goals. During the middle school years, the curriculum broadens to encompass the physical and emotional changes of adolescence and the impact of technology on communication and

CURIOSITY TOLERANCE

CREATIVITY

EMPATHY

behavior, providing guidance to analyze and stressful social situations, make ethical decisions, and develop peer leadership skills.

In the Upper School, the SEL curriculum continues in “Science of Mind”, which seeks to give students further background and grounding in the sciences of psychology and neurology, as well as lead them to reflect on larger themes of identity, wellness, and collaboration. The core competencies developed through the SEL curriculum lead to increased resiliency, empathy and a positive school climate.

Making SEL the DNA of a School

By Vicki Zackrzewski for “Greater Good Magazine”

Integrating SEL into all areas of school life

To be truly effective, SEL needs to be a part of every aspect of school culture, not just the classroom. From the playground to the hallways to the cafeteria to the buses, SEL should form the foundation of adult and student interactions and relationships. According to Jan Davis, SEL Specialist for the Anchorage School District, SEL is how the district does business—not just in the classroom, but also on the bus and in the cafeteria.

We let people know district-wide that we all need to work together to build these relationships. The bus drivers know their job is important because parents are giving them their babies to get them to school safely and to bring them home safely. Knowing the kids by name, giving them a high-five or a handshake, and smiling at them starts students’ days off for learning on a positive note.

And then Mario, who oversees the making of school breakfasts and lunches, knows his job is hugely important because he views the students as his own children and that it’s his job to feed them. He believes that the best job—and the most stress-free one—is working in the cafeteria in Anchorage.

SEL practices can also help shape discipline policies by teaching students to resolve conflicts peacefully, either on

… their own or with some help from peers or adults. Ruth Cross implemented the SEL program I Can Problem Solve as a principal and now works as a district consultant with CASEL. She described a time when

she overheard two boys talking, who had been sent to her office for fighting.

One of them was new to the school and the other had been there since kindergarten. The boy who was new asked the other boy, “What is she like?” The young man responded, “Oh well, she’s not so bad." I thought on a scale of 1 to 10, I’ll take that.

Then the new student asked, “What’s she going to do to us?” The other boy answered, "I don’t know, but I will tell you this: She is going to ask you what you did, and I will tell you right away just be upfront. Tell her the truth because she knows when you lie.”

I thought, "My gosh, that’s a good thing for people to believe about me—that I know when they’re lying.”

I waited a minute longer and then the same boy added, “She’s going to say to you, ‘Tell me what you can do differently to solve this problem.’ And if you can’t, you will never get out of her office.”

This conversation told her that students were learning the process of identifying the problem—and that they’d come to understand that “it was up to them to figure out different and appropriate ways to solve the problem.”

Making SEL a part of classroom curriculum and instruction

Unfortunately, SEL is sometimes viewed as a “fix-it” solution for students who struggle in school, especially those who face harsh circumstances on a daily basis, such as racism and other forms of trauma.

Instead, when embedded into classroom routines, curriculum, and instruction, SEL can be used as a way for teachers and students to build caring, trusting relationships with each other, in which teachers focus on students’ strengths rather than their deficits.

SEL can be used as a way for teachers and students to build caring, trusting relationships with each other, in which teachers focus on students’ strengths rather than their deficits.

Kyla Krengel, a former teacher who is now the director of SEL for the Metro Nashville Public Schools, told us a powerful story of how a simple SEL practice transformed her relationships with her students. As a new fifth grade teacher in a Title I school, she found herself struggling with classroom management. A mentor suggested a morning meeting, “a time for students to come together and share how they’re doing or to discuss a problem they’re facing.” Krengel initially resisted the suggestion, feeling like she didn’t have the time. But she continued to struggle and her mentor persisted— until finally she decided to give it a try.

“So he taught me how to structure a morning meeting and he led a few with my students, with me sitting in as an observer. Eventually, I co-taught them with him. And then one day, I had to do it on my own for the first time—without my mentor being there. I remember…

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Making SEL the DNA of a School

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…sitting in a circle with 35 fifth graders and one little boy raised his hand to share.

He told us that the reason he gets so stressed out during the week is because when he was five and his little sister was three, his mom took them to Wal-Mart and left them there. It wasn’t until midnight that the police found them and took them to their dad’s house.

Now, after not seeing his mother since he was five, she had just returned and he was required to spend every other weekend with her.

I understood in that moment that this was why this child came to school totally different every other Monday and that he needed a space to just chill and relax.”

At one point in the morning meeting, Krengel noticed that “the entire class was sitting, listening, and quiet.” Every child had a story to share.

“I remember trying to listen without crying because they didn’t need that. They needed to share and I needed to hear them, because how could I teach them without knowing their lives? After that, my students asked for morning meeting.

Morning meeting completely changed how I go about teaching. I learned that if I don’t have that safe space, where every single one of my students feels connected, valued, and heard, then they’re not going to be open to academic content.

I also realized that personalized teaching doesn’t always mean academics. For example, the child who first raised his hand had two seats in the classroom. Every other Monday morning, he sat in the back of the classroom where he could

write and get his anger out—he could share what he wrote with me, he could ball it up and throw it away, he could save it in a notebook. And when he was ready to transition, he could join us.

A few years later, I taught some of those students again in 8th grade and I thought that they wouldn’t want to do morning meeting. But they wanted it even more and they needed it even more. And now, in my work with both adults and students, I make sure that we have space for a morning meeting to get to know each other—and not just on a surface level.”

Getting parents on board

Getting parents on board with SEL is a huge part of the success story, because what good is it if kids practice their SEL skills only in school? But connecting with busy parents is challenging for many schools.

However, as CASEL district consultant Judy Nuss’s story suggests, perhaps schools should rely more on the students to reach their parents.

“I was talking to a father with two adopted children who had learning challenges and who had dealt with a lot of trauma in their lives, and he was telling me how well they were doing in school. I asked him if he knew about the SEL work happening in the district, including the PATHS curriculum.

And he said, “Let me tell you a story. This past Saturday, my wife and I were driving with the two boys in the backseat, and she and I started a little tiff. I wanted to go to Place A and she wanted to go to Place B and we started arguing about where to go first.

“All of a sudden, one of the boys in the backseat said, ‘Mom and Dad, here’s

what you need to do. Calm down. Dad, calm down. Take a breath and say the problem. Dad, what is the problem?’ I played along with him and stated the problem. He went through the whole problem-solving process with me.

“Then he said, ‘Mom, I see that you’re calmed down now. Now, what’s the problem?’ And he processed her through the entire problem-solving protocol.

The father then turned to me and said, “I think the SEL program is working really well.”

I was surprised because the boy was just five years old and had only been through our preschool and kindergarten SEL program. So in that short time, he had learned how to coach his parents through problem-solving.

“All of a sudden, one of the boys in the backseat said, ‘Mom and Dad, here’s what you need to do. Calm down.’”

As the stories illustrate, SEL isn’t just about academics. It’s about human connection—that beautiful and complicated necessity of life and school. Here’s how Austin, Texas, administrator Caroline Chase puts it:

Sometimes it’s hard for the adults to connect to the fact that students are human beings. So SEL is the humanity that’s created when we do things like check-ins with each other, which allows us to have real relationships—where you’re really interested in somebody’s story and you want to know what that person’s about and why they are the way they are.

© The Nueva School 2020

Why Gifed Students Need SEL

Excerpt from “Social and emotional needs of gifted students”

by Carrie Lynn Bailey

Regardless of which type of gifted student you encounter, a number of issues and concerns will be common to most at some point in their development. As with all students, gifted students face concerns surrounding peer pressure and social acceptance. Unique to gifted students’ development are the challenges related to the asynchronous nature of this development, in which one’s intellectual development may outpace his or her social and emotional development. A theorist within the field of gifted education, Dabrowski (Dabrowski, 1972; Mendaglio, 1998), offers a unique perspective into the needs and challenges of gifted students in his descriptions of overexcitabilities that are prevalent among gifted students […]

Other common issues and concerns critical to be aware of when working with gifted students include their acute self-awareness and need to be understood as different from their peers, a need for mental stimulation and the impact of perfectionism on their academic and personal lives. Gifted individuals often have a strong sense of humor, as well as a unique sensitivity to the needs of others.

This can lead to an “existential depression” when such students are confronted with the harsh realities of life coupled with an intense desire to better the world, yet lacking the capacity to change the realities to their perceived ideal.

Yet, gifted students also possess a strong perseverance that can be accessed as a positive coping strategy

with proper guidance and support. Underachievement is an issue of growing concern facing counselors working with gifted students, and much work is currently being done within the field of gifted education to better understand the complexity of this issue.

[…]

It is important to note that [the characteristics of gifted students] can sometimes lead to conflicts within the classroom. The gifted child may get bored with routine tasks, resist changing away from interesting topics or activities, or disagree vocally with others. They may be overly critical of themselves or others, impatient with failure, and perfectionistic. On occasion, the gifted student’s unique sense of humor may be manifest through inappropriate jokes or puns. Gifted students may tend to ignore details, turning in messy work or reject authority, be non-conforming, and stubborn. Gifted students who are more emotionally sensitive and empathic may be misunderstood as overreacting, when they are overwhelmed with a situation.

In addition, gifted students often have a tendency to be highly sensitive to environmental stimuli such as lights and noises, which they have difficulty tuning out.

Nordby (2004) highlights that many of these more challenging tendencies of gifted students resemble those used in identifying attention deficit and related disorders, thus educators need to be aware and observant of slight differences to truly understand the student’s needs.

Principle 4

Social Emotional Acuity & Kindness - Resources

Te Toolbox: the Foundations for SEL at Nueva

Kindergarten Through 4th Grade

5th Grade Through 8th Grade

Check in Empathy

Active Listening

Refective Listening Open Mindset

I-Statements Assertive Voice

Win-Win Solutions Group Problem-Solving

Cool Off & Calm Down

Personal Space/Boundary Bubble

Put-ups & Filling Buckets

Appreciations

Relaxation & Mindfulness

Cool Off

Personal Boundaries

Encouragement

Acknowledgement & Gratitude

Stress Management

SEL is integral to our culture of kindness which promotes inclusion, communication, peace, self-advocacy, integrity, respect, empathy, responsibility, cooperation, compassion, resilience, and leadership and focuses on both intra-personal and inter-personal skills.

VALUES

Clear Is Kind

By Brené Brown, adapted from her 2018 book

Dare to Lead

We started our interviews with senior leaders with one question: What, if anything, about the way people are leading today needs to change in order for leaders to be successful in a complex, rapidly changing environment where we’re faced with seemingly intractable challenges and an insatiable demand for innovation?

There was one answer across the interviews: We need braver leaders and more courageous cultures.

To better understand, we followed up by asking, Why courage? and What’s getting in the way of building more daring cultures? Of the ten behaviors and cultural issues that leaders identified as barriers to courage, there was one issue that leaders ranked as the greatest concern: Avoiding tough conversations, including giving honest, productive feedback.

Some leaders attributed this to a lack of courage, others to a lack of skills, and, shockingly, more than half talked about a cultural norm of “nice and polite” that’s leveraged as an excuse to avoid tough conversations.

Whatever the reason, there was saturation across the data that the consequences of avoiding tough conversations or tapping out of a difficult rumble as soon as it gets uncomfortable include:

(1) Diminishing trust and engagement

(2) Increased in problematic behavior, including passive-aggressive behavior, talking behind people’s backs, pervasive backchannel communication (or “the

meeting after the meeting”), gossip, and the “dirty yes” (when I say yes to your face and then go behind your back)

(3) Decreasing performance due to a lack of clarity and shared purpose

Over the past several years, my team and I have learned something about clarity and the importance of hard conversations that has changed everything from the way we talk to each other to the way we negotiate with external partners. It’s simple but transformative: Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.

I first heard this saying two decades ago in a 12-step meeting, but I was on slogan overload at the time and didn’t even think about it again until I saw the data about how most of us avoid clarity because we tell ourselves that we’re being kind, when what we’re actually doing is being unkind and unfair.

Feeding people half-truths or bullshit to make them feel better (which is almost always about making ourselves feel more comfortable) is unkind. Not getting clear with a colleague about your expectations because it feels too hard, yet holding them accountable or blaming them for not delivering is unkind.

“Feeding people half-truths or bullshit to make them feel better (which is almost always about making ourselves feel more comfortable) is unkind.’”

Talking about people rather than to them is unkind. This lesson has so wildly transformed my life that we live by it at home.

If Ellen is trying to figure out how to handle a college roommate issue or Charlie needs to talk to a friend about something . . . clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.

When we have to show up for a hard conversation we call it “a rumble.” For us, this is more than just a weird West Side Story way to say, “Let’s have a real conversation, even if it’s tough.” It’s become a serious intention and a behavioral cue or reminder.

A rumble is a discussion, conversation, or meeting defined by a commitment to lean into vulnerability, to stay curious and generous, to stick with the messy middle of problem identification and solving, to take a break and circle back when necessary, to be fearless in owning our parts, and, as psychologist Harriet Lerner teaches, to listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard.

More than anything else, when someone says, “Let’s rumble,” it cues me to show up with an open heart and mind so we can serve the work and each other, not our egos. Armoring up and protecting our egos rarely leads to productive, kind, and respectful conversations.

Restorative Discipline: Getting Even or Getting Well

Excerpt from “Restorative Discipline: From Getting Even to Getting Well”

By Judy Hostetler Mullet

Someone once said that we have one distinctive right in America—the right to take action. In some cases this entitlement to act trumps the ethical nature or even the outcome of the action. To act is to be right. Perhaps that is why punishment is unfortunately synonymous with discipline; it is a concrete, quick, and easy action, and we often see an immediate, albeit short-term, cessation of the harmful behavior. Simple action fits our instant messaging mind-set and Twitter world. A principal recently confessed to me: “I know that punishment doesn’t really change the student, but at least everyone involved knows that I did something.” Since when is “something” best practice? We know that pain-forpain action can actually increase anger and resentment that can trigger future harm, yet we act to get even, in the name of “correction” (Bandura, 1977). That is real justice today. Do the crime —do the time. We are even. Are we settling for a cycle of harm that ultimately discourages rather than encourages healthy relationships? Restorative discipline offers a way to escape that cycle.

THE CYCLE OF HARM IN SCHOOL DISCIPLINE

Our pain-for-pain judicial paradigm typically involves taking away time or opportunity when rules are broken. Adults decide the sentence: what kind of pain to give, how much, and for how long. Even within positive support approaches aimed at problem solving and system change, the accompanying consequences are chosen for the child rather than with the child, and thus may limit long-term effectiveness (Glasser, 1969; Wachtel, 2000). Research consistently reveals three side effects of pain-based strategies.

A Self Protective Posture

The negative emotional response to punishment, anger or resentment, distracts the wrongdoer from the effects of his or her wrongdoing, the harm done to others, and thus no possible empathetic connection exists to prompt moral reasoning and deter future harm (Damon, 2002; Redekop, 2008; Roberts & Strayer, 1996). Most rules are created to protect relationships (with others, self, and the environment), but a focus on consequences and pain causes the wrongdoer to turn inward and protect himself or herself, rather than outward to understand the harm done by one’s own actions.

A Sense of Powerlessness

For the person who harmed, a sense of powerlessness after punishment can lead to scapegoating‚ acting violently to regain power from someone less powerful (Morrison, 2007). Those who were harmed lose a sense of wellbeing, which can lead to acting out. Over time, hurt people tend to hurt other people. Children who were bullied or harmed by peers may in turn choose to get even by taking out their frustration on others (Bullara, 1993). In the long run, when one person becomes less healthy, the whole community suffers.

A Negative Attitude

Events prime attitudes and thereafter attitudes drive behavior. Separation from the community as punishment (an event) fosters a negative evaluation of school and thus reduced commitment to learning. Ultimately, achievement suffers and dropout rates increase (Morrison, 2007). Notice the cycle of harm triggered by getting even. Someone breaks the rule designed to

keep children safe. An educator functionally gets even by punishing the rule breaker. The rule breaker takes out his or her frustration with the punishment by harming someone else. And both the initial person who was harmed and the new victim get even by harming others with less power, and soon there is a crowd of new harmers with negative attitudes!

GETTING WELL

An advocate for restorative justice approach to juvenile corrections, Kay Pranis (2003) says we need to move from justice as “getting even” to justice as “getting well.”

Restorative discipline is a differentiated approach that fills the wellness gap in current discipline systems (Stutzman Amstutz & Mullet, 2005). Misbehavior is defined as injury to others, a crime against physical, social, or emotional health. In other words, our individual and community well-being at risk. Diane Baumrind (2012) reported that children develop well-being through confrontive, not coercive discipline. Thus, those affected by the har, need to come together decide how to repair the harm. Through a facilitated restorative discipline process, those who harm others are invited to develop selfdiscipline, make amends, and restore injured relationships. In sum, the harmer, the harmed, and observers who vicariously absorb harm need….

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“Over time, hurt people tend to hurt other people.”

Restorative Discipline: Getting Even or Getting Well

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… healing for well being. And please do not confuse healing here with the old medical model of teaching that ascribes healing power to the teacher. In a restorative model, getting better to live better begins with voluntary acts of goodness that give back to the community. The child who misbehaves is invited to make things right.

Doing good by giving back has natural consequences (Wilson, 2011). If you do something nice for someone, he or she likes you better and you like the recipient better (Jecker & Landy, 1969). Relationships based on liking inspire learning and more peaceful resolution of conflict. The motivation to do better in the future is aroused by doing good in the present (Damon, 2010). In fact, the “do good to be good” social psychology principle works even if the doer does not believe the action is worthy; children live into their good acts (Wilson, 2011). So, what would getting well by doing good look like? Restorative justice theory encourages a framework for discipline as healing,

A RESTORATIVE JUSTICE APPROACH

Many positive discipline approaches seek healthy outcomes: stop the misbehavior, teach a more life-giving response, and motivate positive choices in the future (Charles, 2010). A restorative justice approach proposes a new foci for wellness in the learning community (Stutzman Amstutz & Mullet, 2005):

‣ Give voice and power to those harmed by misbehavior. Focused attention on those harmed by wrongdoing empowers them to heal. We know that, over time, being bullied or harmed seems to encourage similar actions and patterns in some children. By hearing the pain of victims, we increase the chances that they will make healthy choices in the future.

‣ Heal or repair relationships that have been harmed—“put things right.” If the thoughts and needs of all affected persons are attended to, critical human relationships can grow and sustain a true community of learners.

‣ Encourage accountability through personal reflection and a collaborative decision-making process with the harmer and the harmed. “No problem is too difficult once it is recognized as a common task” (Dreikurs in Nelson, Lott, and Glenn, 2000, p. 45). Restorative justice is noncoercive; students who harmed are not required to make suggested amends, but are invited to see their role in the harm and to collaboratively create a plan of action to make things right. Making things right leaves the one doing the harm with a better sense of self and reputation.

‣ Reintegrate the student who harmed into the community as a valuable, contributing member. When harmer is done, trust is broken in the community. A plan to restore that trust and affirm healthy choices encourages better decision making in the future and protects the growing identity of that child or adolescent.

‣ Create caring climates that prevent harm through individual, group, and structural changes. “Where do we ever get the crazy idea that to make people do better, we first have to make them feel worse? People do better when they feel better” (Nelson et al. 2000, p. 120). They also feel better when they do better. When the structures engulfing students are analyzed to assess how they support, prime, or perpetuate poor or wise decision making, then long-term change is possible.

“Where do we ever get the crazy idea that to make people do better, we first have to make them feel worse?

No matter what the rationalizations we create for punishment, the truth is that it looks and feels like getting even, and doesn’t model an ethic of care. Can restorative discipline fill the relational, values-driven gap in discipline today?

SEL: Evolving Towards Equity

As a longtime innovator in Social Emotional Learning, Nueva believes strongly in the power of these tools and their importance for all students. In recent years, the field of SEL has begun to address issues of equity and difference in schools more explicitly. Leaders in SEL are recognizing the limitations of previous approaches and becoming more intentional about leveraging SEL to create inclusive schools for all community members (students, faculty, staff, and parents), particularly those who are often marginalized due to race, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, and other differences.

According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), SEL can be a critical component of inclusiveness efforts provided it is “implemented with an explicit goal of promoting educational equity.”

This evolution of SEL aligns powerfully with Nueva’s commitment to building the Beloved Community (principle 5 in this workbook) and to cultivating a growth mindset (covered in principle 6).

We are dedicated to continuing to learn how SEL can support and enrich the lives of all students; we are also dedicated to employing SEL as we engage in difficult conversations around issues in our community, state, nation, and world.

Below, we have provided a few excellent resources for further reading. Each of these pieces explores the dynamic interplay between SEL, equity, and inclusion, and we hope you’ll take time to dig into one or more.

KEY READINGS

REFLECTION: SEL & YOU

That was a lot of reading! Phew! In true SEL fashion, let’s reflect on what we’ve learned.

Take a second to check in with yourself emotionally. How did you feel about these readings? Were there moments that you felt excited? Anticipatory? Overwhelmed? Curious? Frustrated? Name these feelings for yourself and consider how you want to engage with these.

Tink about your most-ofen-assumed roles in communities. What strengths and growth edges do you bring to our SEL-committed community? What would you like to bring? What would you like to learn?

Social Emotional Learning at Nueva

Here we have four examples of Lower School SEL classes and one from the Middle School, which we think demonstrate some of the key themes and concepts that carry forward all the way until 12th grade:

Gratitude WATCH

Trust Walk

REFLECTION: SEL AT NUEVA

What did you notice as you watched these videos? 1

How can these kinds of interactions be leveraged in other classes and in the school community? 2

Is there an aspect of what you saw that you would like to integrate into your teaching practice or your role?

Peer Editing with Arta

Please watch this video in which Arta Khakpour, US History teacher, reflects on teaching history to gifted students, and consider how the core ideas of SEL you’ve learned about are reflected in this “academic” environment.

Do you see habits or modes of interaction between the students or between the teacher and students that seem like they build from our commitment to SEL? (Consider the Lower School SEL class videos as well the theory readings you’ve digested.)

Did you hear anything in Arta’s reflection on his pedagogy about how the population of gifted students is best served, socially and emotionally?

REFLECTION: REMOTE SEL

How might we continue to integrate SEL into our remote classes and practices, recognizing that the social-emotional needs of our students might be even more acute at a distance?

What are some concrete strategies you would like to try out? (We can collect a list of these and report to each other how they go!)

Building a Beloved Community

“We build the Beloved Community together, intentionally and continually, through our relationships, our dedication to making equity and inclusion manifest, and our commitment to ensuring that everyone in our community has the opportunity to thrive.”

Strong social emotional acuity is necessary in developing a Beloved Community, the next principle to explore. As Zubin, a teacher and Nueva alum explains about Nueva:

“It is not just a community in name, it reflects on the relationships across three divisions and decades.”

As a new member of the Nueva community, join us in continuing to grow and develop this into a beloved community.

Understanding the Beloved Community

“Te goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. Martin Luther King believed that the Beloved Community:

‣ is realistic, achievable, and attainable by a critical mass of people

‣ is all-inclusive

‣ embraces a global vision

‣ is founded in non-violent philosophy and methods

‣ is just

‣ is rooted in love and trust

At Nueva, we embrace his vision and are continuously and intentionally striving to build this beloved community in our school. We recognize that the journey to get there is as important as the destination and that this work requires a steadfast commitment, an abundance of joy, and a critical understanding of where we’ve come from and how we will get to where we want to be. We acknowledge that we have so much growth to do in this arena and believe that it will take all of us to build a beloved community from the foundations that we have laid.

To learn more about Dr. King’s vision of the Beloved Community, please read and overview of his philosophy and approach included in the next few pages.

Te Beloved Community

This description of the Beloved Community is taken from The King Center, an organization created in 1968 by Coretta Scott King to commemorate her husband’s life work and provide a portal to access his writings and other resources.

“The Beloved Community” is a term that was first coined in the early days of the 20th Century by the philosopher-theologian Josiah Royce, who founded the Fellowship of Reconciliation. However, it was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., also a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, who popularized the term and invested it with a deeper meaning which has captured the imagination of people of goodwill all over the world.

For Dr. King, The Beloved Community was not a lofty utopian goal to be confused with the rapturous image of the Peaceable Kingdom, in which lions and lambs coexist in idyllic harmony. Rather, The Beloved Community was for him a realistic, achievable goal that could be attained by a critical mass of people committed to and trained in the philosophy and methods of nonviolence.

Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an allinclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood.

In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.

Dr. King’s Beloved Community was not devoid of interpersonal, group or international conflict. Instead he recognized that conflict was an inevitable part of human experience. But he believed that conflicts could be resolved peacefully and adversaries could be reconciled through a mutual, determined commitment to nonviolence.

No conflict, he believed, need erupt in violence. And all conflicts in The Beloved Community should end with reconciliation of adversaries cooperating together in a spirit of friendship and goodwill.

Dr. King’s Beloved Community was not devoid of interpersonal, group or international conflict. Instead he recognized that conflict was an inevitable part of human experience.

As early as 1956, Dr. King spoke of The Beloved Community as the end goal of nonviolent boycotts. As he said in a speech at a victory rally following the announcement of a favorable U.S. Supreme Court Decision desegregating the seats on Montgomery’s busses, “the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opponents into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men.”

An ardent student of the teachings of Mohandas K. Gandhi, Dr. King was much impressed with the Mahatma’s befriending of his adversaries, most of whom professed profound admiration for Gandhi’s courage and intellect. Dr. King believed that the age-old tradition of hating one’s opponents was not only immoral, but bad strategy which perpetuated the cycle of revenge and retaliation. Only nonviolence, he believed, had the power to break the cycle of retributive violence and create lasting peace through reconciliation.

In a 1957 speech, Birth of A New Nation, Dr. King said, “The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community. The aftermath of nonviolence is redemption. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation. The aftermath of violence is emptiness and bitterness.” A year later, in his first book Stride Toward Freedom, Dr. King reiterated the importance of nonviolence in attaining The Beloved Community. In other words, our ultimate goal is integration, which is genuine inter-group and interpersonal living. Only through nonviolence can this goal be attained, for the aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation and the creation of the Beloved Community.

In his 1959 Sermon on Gandhi, Dr. King elaborated on the after-effects of choosing nonviolence over violence: “The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, so that when the battle’s over, a new…

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Te Beloved Community

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…relationship comes into being between the oppressed and the oppressor.” In the same sermon, he contrasted violent versus nonviolent resistance to oppression. “The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But, the way of non-violence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.”

The core value of the quest for Dr. King’s Beloved Community was agape love. Dr. King distinguished between three kinds of love: eros, “a sort of aesthetic or romantic love;” philia, “affection between friends” and agape, which he described as “understanding, redeeming goodwill for all,” an “overflowing love which is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless and creative”…”the love of God operating in the human heart.” He said that “agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people…It begins by loving others for their sakes” and “makes no distinction between a friend and enemy; it is directed toward both…Agape is love seeking to preserve and create community.”

In his 1963 sermon, Loving Your Enemies, published in his book, Strength to Love, Dr. King addressed the role of unconditional love in struggling for the beloved Community. ‘With every ounce of our energy we must continue to rid this nation of the incubus of segregation. But we shall not in the process relinquish our privilege and our obligation to love. While abhorring segregation, we shall love the segregationist. This is the only way to create the beloved community.”

One expression of agape love in Dr. King’s Beloved Community is justice, not for any one oppressed group, but for all people.

As Dr. King often said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” He felt that justice could not be parceled out to individuals or groups, but was the birthright of every human being in the Beloved Community. “I have fought too long hard against segregated public accommodations to end up segregating my moral concerns,” he said. “Justice is indivisible.”

In a July 13, 1966 article in Christian Century Magazine, Dr. King affirmed the ultimate goal inherent in the quest for the Beloved Community: “I do not think of political power as an end. Neither do I think of economic power as an end. They are ingredients in the objective that we seek in life. And I think that end of that objective is a truly brotherly society, the creation of the beloved community”

I do not think of political power as an end. Neither do I think of economic power as an end. They are ingredients in the objective that we seek in life.

In keeping with Dr. King’s teachings, The King Center embraces the conviction that the Beloved Community can be achieved through an unshakable commitment to nonviolence. We urge you to study Dr. King’s six principles and six steps of nonviolence, and make them a way life in your personal relationships, as well as a method for resolving social, economic and political conflicts, reconciling adversaries and advancing social change in your community, nation and world.

REFLECTION: THE BELOVED COMMUNITY

In what way can a school be a beloved community? What are the obstacles for schools to be this? What would we have to unlearn? What we would have to create?

Resources on the Beloved Community

From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces

Excerpted from Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces: a New Way to Frame Dialogue Around Diversity and Social Justice by

Brian Arao and Kristi Clemens

The practice of establishing ground rules or guidelines for conversations and behavior is foundational to diversity and social justice learning activities.

As student affairs educators, we expect this process will help create a learning environment that allows students to engage with one another over controversial issues with honesty, sensitivity, and respect. We often describe such environments as safe spaces, terminology we hope will be reassuring to participants who feel anxious about sharing their thoughts and feelings regarding these sensitive and controversial issues.

But to what extent can we promise the kind of safety our students might expect from us? We have found with increasing regularity that participants invoke in protest the common ground rules associated with the idea of safe space when the dialogue moves from polite to provocative. When we queried students about their rationales, their responses varied, yet shared a common theme: a conflation of safety with comfort. We began to wonder what accounts for this conflation. It may arise in part from the defensive tendency to discount, deflect, or retreat from a challenge.

An Introduction to Restorative Justice in Education

25 Traits of the Beloved Community

The following description comes from the United Methodist Church’s General Commission on Religion and Race; accordingly, the reading mentions religious practices compatible with building the Beloved Community. Nueva is of course unaffiliated with any religious denomination or tradition, and yet, acknowledging that Dr. King’s activism was rooted in the church, we believe that this resource has much to offer our school community.

“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King’s beloved community exhibits agape love, which, as the love of God operating in the human heart, seeks to “preserve and create community.” Christ’s mature followers love each other as well as those who persecute or do evil against them. Christians confront hate with love because agape love derives its essence from the cross of Christ, which brings redemptive power. This love does not accept injustice or evil as acceptable. Rather, it loves by way of justice, which ensures equity in access, participation, and flourishing for everyone.

Some Christians might view the beloved community as a euphemism for the Kingdom of God. In this way, people interpret the beloved community as something that is achieved in the future, but Dr. King’s words were for the present age, both national and global. For him, the human community meeting the basic needs of every person becomes beloved. Comprehensive healthcare, safe streets, affordable housing, nutritious food, strong schools, access to jobs, and meaningful employment are necessary for the beloved community.

God prompts us to remake our hostility-filled communities into those where justice and love reign true. This also applies to the Church. What would The United Methodist Church look like, feel like, and be like if the beloved community became real for us? What would your local church be like?

The beloved community manifests and protects agape love as its guiding principle and is expressed in the following ways:

(1) Offers radial hospitality to everyone; an inclusive family rather than exclusive club;

(2) Recognizes and honors the image of God in every human being;

(3) Exhibits personal authenticity, true respect, and validation of others;

(4) Recognition and affirmation, not eradication, of differences;

(5) Listens emotionally (i.e., with the heart)—fosters empathy and compassion for others;

(6) Tolerates ambiguity – realizes that sometimes a clear-cut answer is not readily available;

(7) Builds increasing levels of trust and works to avoid fear of difference and others;

(9) Acknowledges conflict or pain in order to work on difficult issues;

(10) Speaks truth in love, always considering ways to be compassionate with one another;

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25 Traits of the Beloved Community

(11) Avoids physical aggression and verbal abuse;

(12) Resolves conflicts peacefully, without violence, recognizing that peacefully doesn’t always mean comfortably for everybody;

(13) Resolves conflicts peacefully, without violence, recognizing that peacefully doesn’t always mean comfortably for everybody;

(14) Focuses energy on removing evil forces (unjust systems), not destroying persons;

(15) Unyielding persistence and unwavering commitment to justice;

(16) Achieves friendship and understanding through negotiation, compromise, or consensus – considering each circumstance to discern which will be most helpful;

(17) Righteously opposes and takes direct action against poverty, hunger, and homelessness;

(18) Advocates thoroughgoing, extensive neighborhood revitalization without displacement (this also applies to the Church – working toward responsible and equitable growth, discipleship, and worship);

(19) Blends faith and action to generate a commitment to defeating injustice (not forgetting that injustice can also be found within the Church);

(20) Encourages and embraces artistic expressions of faith from diverse perspectives;

(21) Fosters dynamic and active spirituality – recognizes that we serve a dynamic God who is not left behind by a changing world or people, and that a passive approach will not work;

(22) Gathers together regularly for table fellowship, and meets the needs of everyone in the community;

(23) Relies on scripture reading, prayer, and corporate worship for inner strength;

(24) Promotes human rights and works to create a non-racist society;

(25) Shares power and acknowledges the inescapable network of mutuality among the human family.

Ecstasy: Teaching and Loving Within Limits

Excerpted from Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks

On a gorgeous Maine summer day, I fell down a hill and broke my wrist severely. As I was sitting in the dirt, experiencing the most excruciating pain, more intense than any I had ever felt in my life, an image flashed across the screen of my mind. It was one of me as a young girl falling down another hill. In both cases, my falling was related to challenging myself to move beyond limits. As a child it was the limits of fear. As a grown woman, it was the limits of being tired—what I call “bone weary.” I had come to Skowhegan to give a lecture at a summer art program. A number of nonwhite students had shared with me that they rarely have any critique of their work from scholars and artists of color. Even though I felt tired and very sick, I wanted to affirm their work and their needs, so I awakened early in the morning to climb the hill to do studio visits.

Skowhegan was once a working farm. Old barns had been converted into studios. The studio I was leaving, after having had an intense discussion with several young black artists, female and male, led into a cow pasture. Sitting in pain at the bottom of the hill, staring in the face of the black female artist whose studio door I had been trying to reach, I saw such disappointment. When she came to help me, she expressed concern, yet what I heard was another feeling entirely. She really needed to talk about her work with someone she could trust, who would not approach it with a racist, sexist, or classist prejudice, someone whose intellect and vision she could respect. That someone did not need to be me. It could have been any teacher.

When I think about my life as a student, I can remember vividly the

faces, gestures, habits of being of all the individual teachers who nurtured and guided me, who offered me an opportunity to experience joy in learning, who made the class-room a space of critical thinking, who made the exchange of information and ideas a kind of ecstasy.

Recently, I worked on a program at CBS on American feminism. I and other black women present were asked to name what we felt helps enable feminist thinking and feminist movement. I answered that to me “critical thinking” was the primarily element allowing the possibility of change. Passionately insisting that no matter what one’s class, race, gender, or social standing, I shared my beliefs that would without the capacity to think critically about our selves and our lives, none of us would be able to move forward, to change, to grow.

“ In our society, which is so fundamentally anti-intellectual, critical thinking is not encouraged.”

In our society, which is so fundamentally anti-intellectual, critical thinking is not encouraged. Engaged pedagogy has been essential to my development as an intellectual, as a teacher/professor because the heart of this approach to learning is critical thinking. Conditions of radical openness exist in any learning situation where students and teachers celebrate their abilities to think critically, to engage in pedagogical praxis. Profound commitment to engaged pedagogy is taxing to the spirit. After twenty years of teaching, I have begun to need time away from the classroom.

Somehow, moving around to teach at different institutions has always prevented me from having that marvelous paid sabbatical that is one of the material rewards of academic life.

This factor, coupled with commitment to teaching, has meant that even when I take a job that places me on a parttime schedule, instead of taking time away from teaching, I lecture elsewhere. I do this because I sense such desperate need in students—their fear that no one really cares whether they learn or develop intellectually.

My commitment to engaged pedagogy is an expression of political activism. Given that our education institutions are so deeply invested in a banking system, teachers are more rewarded when we do not teach against the grain. The choice to work against the grain, to challenge the status quo, often has negative consequences. And that is part of what makes the choice one that is not politically neutral. In colleges and universities, teaching is often the least valued of our many professional tasks. It saddens me that the colleagues are often suspicious of teachers whom students long to study with.

And there is a tendency to undermine the professorial commitment of engaged pedagogues by suggesting that what we do is not as rigorously academic as it should be. Ideally, education should be a place where the need for diverse teaching methods and styles would be valued, encouraged, seen as essential to learning. Occasionally students feel concerned when a class departs from the banking system. …

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…I remind them that they can have a lifetime of classes that reflect conventional norms.

Of course, I hope that more professors will seek to be engaged. Although it is a reward of engaged pedagogy that students seek courses with those of us who have made a wholehearted commitment to education as the practice of freedom, it is also true that we are often overworked, our classes often overcrowded.

For years, I envied those professors who taught more conventionally, because they frequently had small classes. Throughout my teaching career my classes have been too large to be effective as they could be. Over time, I’ve begun to see that departmental pressure on “popular” professors to accept larger classes was also a way to undermine engaged pedagogy.

“For years, I envied those professors who taught more conventionally, because they frequently had small classes.”

If classes because so full that it is impossible to know student’s names, to spend quality time with each of them, then the effort to build a learning community fails. Throughout my teaching career, I have found it helpful to meet with each student in my classes, if only briefly. Rather than sitting in my office for hours waiting for individual students to choose to meet or for problems to arise, I have preferred to schedule lunches with students. Sometimes, the whole class might bring lunch and have discussion in a place other than our usual classroom.

At Oberlin, for instance, we might go as a class to the African Heritage House and have lunch, both to learn about different places on campus and gather in a setting other than our classroom.

Many professors remain unwilling to be involved in any pedagogical practices that emphasize mutual participation between teacher and student because more time and effort are required to do this work. Yet some version of engaged pedagogy is really the only type of teaching that truly generates excitement in the classroom, that enables students and professors to feel the joy of of learning.

I was reminded of this during my trip to the emergency room after falling down that hill. I talked so intensely about ideas with two students who were rushing me to the hospital that I forgot my pain. It is this passion for ideas, for critical thinking and dialogical exchange that I wanted to celebrate in the classroom, to share with students.

Talking about pedagogy, thinking about it critically, it is not the intellectual work that most folks think is hip and cool. Cultural criticism and feminist theory are the areas of my work that are most often deemed interested by students and colleagues alike. Most of us are not inclined to see discussion of pedagogy as central to our academic work and intellectual growth, or the practice of teaching as work that enhances and enriches scholarship. Yet it has been the mutual interplay of thinking, writing, and sharing ideas as an intellectual teacher that creates whatever insights are in my work. My devotion to that interplay keeps me teaching in academic settings, despite their difficulties.

When I first read Strangers in Paradise: Academics from the Working Class, I was stunned by the intense bitterness expressed in the individual narratives. This bitterness was not unfamiliar to me. I understood what Jane Ellen Wilson meant when she declared, “The whole process of becoming highly educated was for me a process of losing faith.”

I have felt that bitterness most keenly in relation to academic colleagues. It emerged from my sense that so many of them willingly betrayed the promise of intellectual fellowship and radical openness that I believe is the heart and soul of learning. When I moved beyond those feelings to focus my attention on the classroom, the one place in the academy where I could have the most impact, they became less intense. I became more passionate in my commitment to the art of teaching.

Engaged pedagogy not only compels me to be constantly creative in the classroom, it also sanctions involvement with students beyond that setting. I journey with students as they progress in their lives beyond our classroom experience. In many ways, I continue to teach them, even as they become more capable of teaching me. The important lesson that we learn together, the lesson that allows us to move together within and beyond the classroom, is one of mutual engagement.

I could never say that I have no idea of the way students respond to my pedagogy; they give me constant feedback. When I teach, I encourage them to critique, evaluate, make suggestions and interventions as we go along. Evaluations at the end of a course rarely help us improve the learning experience we share together. When students see themselves as mutually responsible for the development of a learning community, they offer constructive input.

Students do not always enjoy studying with me. Often they find my courses challenge them in ways that are deeply unsettling. This was particularly disturbing to me at the beginning of my teaching career because I wanted to be liked and admired. It took time and …

More on next page

Ecstasy: Teaching and Loving Within Limits

(part 3 of 3)

… experience for me to understand that the rewards of engaged pedagogy might not emerge during a course.

Luckily, I have taught many students who take time to reconnect and share the impact of our working together on their lives. Then the work I do as a teacher is affirmed again and again, not only by the accolades extended to me but by the career choices students make, their habits of being. When a student tells me that she struggled with the decision to do corporate law, joined such and such firm, and then at the last minute began to reconsider whether this was what she felt called to do, sharing that her decision was influenced by the courses she took with me, I am reminded of the power we have as teachers as well as the awesome responsibility.

Commitment to engaged pedagogy carries with it the willingness to be responsible, not to pretend that professors do not have the power to change the direction of our students’ lives.

I began this collection of essays confessing that I did not want to be a teacher. After twenty years of teaching, I can confess that I am most often joyous in the classroom, brought closer here to the ecstatic than by most of life’s experiences.

My models were the people who stepped outside of my conventional mind and who could actually stop my mind and completely open it up and free it, even for a moment, from a conventional, habitual way of looking at things ... If you really are preparing for groundlessness, preparing for the reality of human existence, your are living on the razor’s edge, and you must become used to the fact that things shift and change. Things are not certain and they do not last and you do not know what is going to happen. My teachers have always pushed me over the cliff…

“My teachers have always pushed me over the cliff…”

Reading this passage, I felt deep kinship, for I have sought teachers in all areas of my life who would challenge me beyond what I might select for myself, and in and through that challenge allow me a space of radical openness where I am truly free to choose—able to learn and grow without limits.

The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility.

In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom.

In a recent issue of Tricycle, a journal of Buddhist thought, Pema Chodron talks about the ways teachers function as role models, describing those teachers that most touched her spirit:

“After twenty years of teaching, I can confess that I am most often joyous in the classroom, brought closer here to the ecstatic than by most of life’s experiences."

REFLECTION: RESOURCES ON THE BELOVED COMMUNITY

Afer reading these texts, how do you envision the Beloved Community manifesting in your classroom? In your relationships? In our school?

If there were no barriers in the way, what would the fullest version of the Beloved Community look like in a school setting? What barriers do stand in the way in your mind? How could we overcome these barriers?

Who do you feel like you are currently in community with in your larger life? Are there people you’ve avoided entering into community with? What would be required for you to enter into relationships you wouldn't normally gravitate towards? Similarly, what could you do to enable our students to more readily be in community with each other?

The Beloved Community at Nueva

Afrofuturism US Elective Classroom Agreements

Teachers Read Kind Tweets

In a twist on Jimmy Kimmel’s ‘Celebrities Read Mean Tweets’ series, Nueva teachers read Kind Tweets written by students. See their reactions in here.

VIEW

These agreements were created collectively by the class after a discussion on how we can talk authentically, courageously, and thoughtfully about race and racial injustice.

‣ Disagree with conclusions, not experiences

‣ Leave room for uncertainty within your own ideas

‣ Make sure everyone feels heard

‣ Language is a powerful tool, be careful with it

‣ Only one person should talk at a time

‣ Tink critically about how people are interrupted

‣ Pay attention to patterns of participation

‣ Have a degree of good faith in people’s intentions

‣ Be raggedy

‣ Have fun!

These examples are glimpses of practices we embrace as a way to build a community that is thoughtfully appreciative of others, open-minded and inclusive, cognizant of power and privilege, and rooted in love. One School, One Community

Choosing Love

Nueva Notes Column by Alegria Barclay, Director of Social Justice & Equity at the Nueva School

Welcome to a new addition to the Nueva Notes—Nuevolution—a column devoted to the exploration of social justice, equity and diversity within the Nueva community. Why call it Nuevolution? It’s an appellation meant to convey two related concepts, that of revolution and evolution. When I consider social justice specifically in the context of Nueva, the notion of revolution may seem a bit radical, and yet Nueva’s reputation is founded on its revolutionary approach to pedagogy. Indeed, two of the hallmarks of Nueva’s program, SEL and Design Thinking, lend themselves remarkably well to making social justice manifest in our community.

Consider the possibilities if we harness the innovative problem-solving of Design Thinking and couple it with the mindful compassion encouraged in SEL, all with the explicit goal to create social change. Could our students create inexpensive, readily assembled refugee housing or, closer to home, tackle the affordable housing crisis in the Bay Area? Perhaps they could engineer a solution to our oil dependency or create toys that not only exist outside of gender constructs but also challenge them? Who knows?

The beauty of Nueva’s educational approach is that it allows students to think far and wide beyond the box, asking revolutionary questions and dreaming revolutionary solutions that we adults would not conceive of. What the adults can do is provide them with the impetus to create change by broadening the scope of their experiences, their lived lives—that which wounds them and moves them, makes them witness and wonder the

world around them in all its cruel complexity and transcendent beauty.

That said, revolutions are never enough to sustain social change. If we learned anything from Ferguson and Baltimore, it’s that although the Civil Rights movement sparked tremendous legislative and social change, it did not succeed in transforming the deep discrimination and bias that lives in the heart of America. For that transformation to occur, an evolution of consciousness, of ideas and belief systems must transpire. I see this evolution as being at the center of what we hope to achieve at Nueva. What makes fertile ground for such radical growth? The same ingredient that allows all children to flourish, to reach, to challenge, and to achieve: love.

Much has been written about the role of love in social movements. James Baldwin famously said, “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word ‘love' here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”

A sentiment echoed by bell hooks when she stated, “The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.”

Both statements see love as a force to be reckoned with and a choice we make over and over again.

It’s this act of choosing to love that I’m most interested in cultivating both in myself and in our students. The daily onslaught of turmoil and terror, injustice and ignorance can so readily lead to despair, to guilt, and even to apathy…how then do you choose to love against the tide of so much that bears down upon you? How do you choose to love that which scares you or challenges your sense of self? I have no easy answer. Yet, in my brief time at Nueva, I’ve seen that we are a community that loves deeply. We love to learn, we love the passion reflected in each other, and we love the physical world we reside in. Our challenge will be to expand that love, to externalize it and give it breadth and heft.

Ultimately, my goal is to help students to recognize our common humanity on a visceral level. I hope that when they are on the subway or on the plane or in the car, they see themselves reflected in the stranger sitting across for them, the homeless woman on the street, the waiter taking their order, the bus driver far from his homeland…I hope they see us all as fundamentally human and thus fundamentally deserving of an equal opportunity to be their best selves, to live their lives unfettered by injustice. Sam Bloom in his book The Baby and The Well: The Case Against Empathy, states this desire most clearly when he writes, “Our best hope for the future is not to get people to think of all humanity as family —that’s impossible. It lies, instead, in an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don’t empathize with distant strangers, their lives have the same value as the lives of those we love.”

This is the r/evolution I hope we can all embark upon together.

© The Nueva School 2020

A Socratic Oath

To be signed by all students in 10th Grade Interdisciplinary Studies of Science , adapted from Critical Understandings by Wayne C. Booth

I will offer no written or spoken opinions, favorable or unfavorable, about any text I have not read through at least once. When I am asked to read an excerpt of a text, I will not assume that it represents the author’s full intention.

I will try to write nothing about any text or part of a text until I have understood it, which is to say, until I believe I can give an account of it that the author himself or herself would recognize as just. Any attempt at critique will be founded on this initial measure of respect. Paraphrasing Coleridge: Before I damn anyone else’ errors, I will try to reconstruct the enterprise as if it were my own.

Respectful Skepticism

As a mathematical peer, students respond to others’ math ideas and proofs with curiosity and teamwork for the sake of communal growth. Some sample sentence starters are below.

‣ I agree with your (or say person’s name) idea because….

‣ I disagree with your (or say person’s name) idea because….

‣ I am not sure I understand. Can you explain it in a different way? (Specify if pictures, algorithms, or another method might help you understand).

‣ What would happen if you consider __________ case or scenario? (Describe scenario).

‣ Why does that work?

I will give the same respect to other discussants, asking clarifying questions before I object to their points. I will try to seek Truth more than winning an argument. I will try to think of discussions as discourses for Truth, building truth together, more than battles for intellectual supremacy.

I will not judge my inevitable violations of the first three ordinances more leniently than those I find in others.

‣ How do you know that is true (or false)?

‣ Will this method always work?

‣ I see what you’re saying and I also think/wonder….

‣ I’m feeling uncertain about this part of your explanation.

‣ I don’t yet agree with this part because...

Kindness March

2018 Release by Louise Schultze, Interim Director of Communications at the Nueva School

In these uncertain times, Nueva students are the tides of change, leading the next generation to be kinder than the one before. On Monday, February 5, dozens of lower school students raised their colorful, handmade signs in a Kindness March to spread love and compassion around Nueva.

Led in a rally cry by first grader Kaci G., who was inspired by her recent participation in the Women’s March in San Francisco, students marched to their own beat around the Hillsborough campus chanting, “Hey Hey! Ho Ho! Kindness is the way to go!” With signs reading “Be Kind!” “Choose Kindness over Hate!” and “Fill Someone’s Bucket!” students in the Lower School followed Kaci on a route they mapped out the week before, spending their recess time spreading kindness and smiles. Kaci’s mother, Lisa Garosi, said, “Kaci liked being a part of the crowd [in the San Francisco Women’s March], knowing they were doing something bigger than themselves.”

Being in an environment at Nueva where students are empowered to speak their minds and to share and implement their ideas, Kaci felt passionate about sharing the energy she felt at the Women’s March with her classmates, and “it grew beyond what she originally envisioned in her head.”

Kaci is a member of Nueva’s Community Committee, which meets on Mondays in the Lower School with the goal to “Make Nueva Better.” “There was a big focus this year on community and taking care of each other,” said lower school SEL teacher Lisa Hinshelwood. Whoever wanted to join the Kindness March was welcome at the Community Committee meeting the week before the March to help make eye-catching signs.

Messages to “treat people the way you want to be treated” permeated the room, with kind words like “I love your poster!” being spoken from student to student.

Social-emotional learning, Nueva's internationally recognized program, has been fundamental to the school’s commitment to nurture the whole child since its inception in 1967.

The skills of SEL are formally taught at every grade level beginning in prekindergarten, with curriculum spiraling through topics and presented in age-appropriate forms as students progress from year to year. Nueva students learn in a safe environment where their passions are supported, their questions encouraged, their ideas welcomed.

When Kaci attended the Women’s March, she said she “thought lots of people would like it and would be nicer to each other and the community.” Thanks to her teachers and community, only two weeks passed from her original idea to the actual march.

© The Nueva School 2020

Valentines Day Appreciation Wall

Every year, the Kindness Club hosts a Kindness Week coinciding with Valentine’s Day. For the past few years, the club has created a wall of appreciations with envelopes for every student, faculty, and staff at the Upper School. All are encouraged to write thoughtful appreciations on the slips of paper provided and add them to individual’s envelopes. At the end of the week, folks are able to take their envelopes home with them.

How to write a good appreciation:

‣ Appreciations should be kind, specifc, concise, and meaningful

‣ A good format is:

name of person specifc characteristic, habit, passion, action, or memory you love about that person

‣ If you feel uncomfortable using the word “love” you can use "I appreciate” or "I am grateful for” instead

‣ Here are some examples of good appreciations:

Mike, I love how animated you get and the way your face lights up when talking about being in nature.

Hermione, I love how passionate you are about justice, especially how hard you fight for the house elves.

Princess Leia, I love your sarcasm and your boundless determination to make the world a better place.

© The Nueva School 2020

Democratic Class Meeting Agenda: 2nd Grade Lesson Plan

Building from our work last week creating our own Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, we had our first Class Meeting this week. Class Meetings are weekly democratically run meetings in which we both recognize upstanders within our classroom community and collectively solve problems and make decisions within our classroom community.

Every Class Meeting begins with sharing appreciations for anyone who has stood up for their own or someone else’s rights this week. Then, we go to our Agenda Book, which lives in our classroom and is a place where anyone at any time can add an agenda item for our next class meeting. Using this book, we identify if an issue is still an issue now, we identify which rights aren’t being upheld, we share our thoughts

and feelings about the issue, we brainstorm potential solutions, and ultimately we vote on which solutions to implement. These meetings are all about empowering our students with the skills and structures they need in order to exercise control and responsibility over their learning environment and community. See below to read the minutes of our first meeting!

RIGHTS TO PROTECT

AGENDA ITEM

Caden & Illiya: When one person gets silly, it spreads throughout the classroom.

Anaya: The right to have a quiet, focused classroom is not being protected. (Aofe, Caden echo)

OUR THOUGHTS & FEELINGS

POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS OUR THOUGHTS & FEELINGS (must have 11 votes to pass)

Maddie: Laughter can be contagious.

Illiya: If people can’t focus, I feel frustrated because then we can’t get to recess on time.

Caden: I’m not very happy when people go around being silly because we can’t get to anything, and the day feels shorter.

Sam: I feel frustrated when I notice that people are being silly and it’s spreading because I want to have fun and have a good day, and it makes me have to change the tone of my voice in order to get people’s attention... I like when we all can go to spaces where we can be silly, like recess, and then be able to be serious students when we’re in class.

Maddie: We should be honest about whether we really need to sit in a chair to help us focus or if we’re being silly and doing it on purpose just to get to sit in a chair.

Audrey:

Illiya: If it’s spreading to you, then you can just not pass it on so that it will stop. Everyone else can follow and help to not spread it.

If you see someone being silly, tell them to stop so that it doesn't spread.

15 votes

7 votes

Caden:

If you stop, it can go around you.

Sam:

I appreciate that people are thinking about things students can do. As teachers, we could say we’re being too silly right now. We could remind you of that, and ask you to take a break from the carpet and sit at a table until you’re ready and able to refocus.

13 votes

ACTIVITY: COMMITMENTS

Now that you are a part of our Beloved Community and have read and watched some of the ways we are building and reinforcing it, we want to take another look at Dr. King’s quote that started this module:

“Te goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

If the Beloved Community requires qualitative and quantitative changes, in other words, a transformation of both the structure and the self, what do you imagine this means for you as an educator? What commitments will this require of you? What changes do you envision on both a structural and personal level that will make the building of the Beloved Community possible?

Consider 2-3 commitments in each column you can make in this coming year and write them in the table below.

How will you transform yourself?

What structural/institutional changes do you wish to see?

What will you need help to follow through on?

REFLECTION: THE REMOTE BELOVED COMMUNITY

How do we keep the beloved community alive over Zoom?

A nimble & innovative spirit

“We adopt a growth rather than a fixed mindset, for our students, for our teachers as designers of learning experiences, and for our staff as co-creators of the school. We respond to challenges with flexibility and a willingness to rethink our assumptions. We know that sometimes plans need to change in order to respond to the needs of students and our community, and we meet these changes with grace and good humor.”

The first five principles have focused on understanding “the what” of the Nueva Way and now we need to consider “the how.” The last two principles, A Nimble & Innovative Spirit and Our Values: Embodied & Visible speak to both a mindset and way of enacting the Nueva Way.

Explore the 6th principle to understand how being student centered, supporting the intensity and asynchrony of our learners while fostering a love of learning and developing a beloved community requires the ability to be nimble/ innovative.

Read through these (true!) stories about some events at Nueva.

It’s a May Monday morning, and your division head holds a ten-minute stand-up meeting before school to let you know that they’ve just received confirmation that Jane Goodall will be coming to speak on Wednesday. You had planned to have a rather major assessment that day and this will throw off your plans for the short rest of the semester —but of course you’re also quite a fan of Jane Goodall.

B

You have a unit planned to study airplanes and flight, and your kindergarten students become fascinated, but less by airplanes and more by the flight of animals, mainly bats. They begin checking out books about bats at the library and sharing extra factoids about bats as they come in during the morning.

C

It’s your second month of teaching at Nueva, and a group of four of your students writes you a politely phrased but quite long and passionate letter about all the ways in which your pedagogy is ‘not Nueva’ and ‘doesn’t support their learning.’ They would like to discuss it with you.

You’ve planned a rather large project for your students, which they should be doing individually, and which should take a couple of weeks. Three of your sections dive right in, and seem to be having a great time. One of your sections, though, gets constantly distracted; they’re far more social, and while they are interacting about the project, at least at first, they are far behind the other sections by one week in. You can rally them to stay quiet and get their independent work done slowly, though you’ve noticed the class environment seems a little dejected when you do.

A few of your first grade students express anxiety about their parents speaking Mandarin with them during drop-off, telling them they only want them to speak in English at school. Your associate teacher asks to incorporate an introduction to Mandarin in the upcoming lessons, connecting the class with a MS Mandarin class. This takes over your thematic lessons for the remainder of the week but your full class becomes interested in and excited about the language.

During your study of the Mali Empire and its leader Mansa Musa’s hajj, one of your students lets you know privately that he is Muslim and that he’s never told this to anyone at school before. He expresses, shyly, a desire to share his religious identity with the class later in the week. You have much of the week’s lessons planned out already but recognize that this could be a really important opportunity to support this student. You wonder how best to balance these priorities.

As a member of Nueva’s staff, you are tasked with planning, during the week before Upper School graduation, a special dinner for Lifers (students who have been at Nueva from pre-Kindergarten, Kindergarten, or first grade all the way to twelfth grade). This is always a special event, during which the Lifers and their families can be together and share memories. However, the coronavirus pandemic has created a wrinkle. How do you provide a meaningful experience for the Lifers while adhering to safety and health guidelines? How can you liaise with your colleagues in operations, admissions, and communications in order to do this dinner remotely?

REFLECTION: STORIES OF NIMBLENESS

What do these stories suggest about teaching and learning at Nueva?

Tink about a time you had to be nimble or pivot. What are your areas of strength in this regard? What are your areas of growth? What support do you need in this area?

What values do you hold that are non-negotiable even while you’re stretching your comfort zone? How do these values inform how you are nimble and help you stay centered in pivoting from a thoughtful place?

What are your questions? What are your trepidations, and what are your excitements?

Now that you’ve answered these questions for yourself, find out what happened in each of these scenarios:

A

What happened: “Jane Goodall’s appearance was one of the highlights of the Spring semester! While we had to rush a couple of last items in our agenda, we felt able to let go of some of our content-delivery or lesson plans, knowing the opportunity was worthwhile.”

B

What happened: “The teaching team pivoted to embrace this area of passion as the focus of the study– while making sure the learning goals, such as research, science concepts, and writing, would still be addressed. Pretty soon, a corner of their room had been transformed into a bat cave!”

What happened: “Believe it or not, this has actually happened several times at Nueva; we have stories of this same kind of event twenty years apart! We see this as a natural result of a school where we believe student voices matter; after all, young people are practicing their self-advocacy, assertiveness, and dialoguing respectfully with others. As a middle school teacher who had this happen in her second month of teaching reflects: ‘my immediate instinct was to bristle. But after talking to some other teachers, I made time to sit down with the students and try to understand their perspective. This was so transformative! I not only got a much better understanding of Nueva pedagogy from the student perspective, which helped me design classes that were much more learn by doing, learn by caring, but also gained an amazing relationship with [those students] by showing I could check my ego and enter a real discussion with them. I think [those students] changed my teaching more deeply than most of my graduate school classes!’”

What happened: “I had designed a semester-long project about the history of science for the once-a-week Interdisciplinary Studies of Science course that all 10th graders take in the Upper School. I taught four sections of that course, and three of them dove right in. One of the sections, however, one with a rather remarkable collection of personalities and some students whose intensity lived very close to the surface, kept devolving into other discussions, and keeping them on track was hard. By the second week, when our work period had started sliding into a passionate discussion about what constituted real power (whether force, coercion, persuasion, ability…), I could see that for this section, this project was going to be like pulling teeth.

Over the next week, I wildly redesigned the project to instead be a series of readings and discussions which would create ‘discussion artifacts’ that showed our engagement with the underlying understandings. My social section loved this pivot and were fully on board—and one of the other sections voted to move to that model too, while the other two sections chose to stay with the more individual project model. While I had to put it in some serious time redesigning in real time, the redesign actually gave me great perspective and made me better prepared to teach the project sections as well as the discussion sections—and left me with the option, for future years, to have more choice in the program. Plus, it was kind of fun to be kept on my toes by the students.”

What happened: The Mandarin speaking students started to embrace the language in their play with classmates and communication with their families. This also led to an ongoing buddy connection between the Lower School and Middle School classes. At the end of the year, the MS students wrote books for their kindergarten friends as a culminating project.

What happened: While studying the Mali Empire, we did a deep dive on one of the great rulers, Mansa Musa. Mansa Musa is Muslim and a huge part of his (and the Empire of Mali’s) story is due to his hajj. As we were planning, we were not aware any of our students were Muslim, and we continuously checked-in with each other saying, “Now, will this feel supportive/good/appropriate if a kid in our class is Muslim?”

Using this best practice paid off more than we could have guessed, because the evening of our first lesson introducing Islam I got an email from a parent, sharing their family is Muslim, and that their son couldn’t stop talking about how excited he was and how seen he felt—to this point, he had never wanted any teacher/child care provider or classmate to know he was Muslim. The next day this student came in and shared with me privately that he was Muslim, he really liked the lesson, and he had things he might want to share (but wasn’t sure). I let him know the plan for the week, and said we would make time on Friday if he would like to give any kind of share, and I had a plan so if he didn’t want to, that was fine. Come Friday he was SO excited, he had a full power point presentation to give to the class, and did so with such pride for this portion of his identity.

This unit required flexibility on all fronts, as we were originally only expecting to spend 2 lessons on Islam. But, the students were so interested and curious, we scrapped our previous plans (we were going to look at architecture in the Mali Empire I think), and curated age-appropriate resources for the students to find answers to their questions.

What happened: First, our staff members emailed families and offered them a choice of two menus; each family was delivered a special meal for them to share during the event. The Head of School, Upper School Division Head, and Dean of Students hand-delivered gifts to the twelve lifers the afternoon of the dinner for a personal touch. During the dinner itself, speeches were made via Zoom. It took a lot of coordination from our staff team, but it worked, and each Lifer felt celebrated and seen. It takes a Nueva village!

On Nimbleness

Te first five modules in this workbook illustrate core Nueva values and approaches to teaching. But like any set of principles, these must be expressed in the everyday: in our curricula and lesson plans, in our interactions with colleagues and families, and in our school-wide decision making. We put these ideals into practice through nimbleness, which we understand as both a requirement for responding to the needs of our students and a valuable reminder of our own commitment to lifelong learning.

Being nimble does not mean a lack of planning or a disregard for structure. As the previous modules have demonstrated, Nueva is a deeply intentional school with thoughtful practices aligned with our mission. And we recognize and honor the gifts that new faculty bring to us each year—the result of years of teaching in schools and, for many of us, expertise in fields outside the education profession. We certainly do not take such experiences, and the wisdom they impart, lightly.

However, as seen in the scenarios above, sometimes we are confronted by impromptu student feedback, an irresistible last-minute idea by a colleague, or a momentous event outside of our community. Nimbleness means being open to changing our plans in order to meet these unforeseen challenges and opportunities in ways that enrich our students’ learning.

As a student-centered community that serves gifted learners, nimbleness is an especially important means for living our mission. Our commitment to nimbleness operates along two distinct axes. The first of these might be visualized as a continuum from individual to institution.

As individual teachers with a high degree of autonomy in our classrooms, we are empowered to make changes to our lesson plans and curricula if we feel that something isn’t working, or if a new approach strikes us as more effective.

As individual teachers and as a school, we value being able to pivot quickly and then return to plans, but we also are open to letting ourselves be changed profoundly by new ideas and approaches to our work.

Such academic changes can of course extend to teaching teams; think of a group of first grade teachers deciding to swap one book for another, or a middle school math team adopting a new end-of-unit assessment.

We can also be nimble as an entire institution, scrapping our usual schedule for a day in order to hold space for the community to process a traumatic event, or piloting new systems of communicating student progress to parents.

Both individual and institutional nimbleness are made possible by the use of broad, transferable learning goals (which we often refer to as “competencies”) in framing our curriculum design. These transferable competencies commit us to a set of outcomes but give us the freedom to respond to student and societal needs and make on-the-spot adjustments to course- or unit-level designs.

When understood in the context of overarching goals, we see that changes emerge not out of spontaneity, but out of our deeply held values and our desire to iterate solutions.

The second axis, implied in some of these examples, runs from being nimble in the short-term to implementing changes that lead to lasting transformation.

While both are important, framing nimbleness as a lifelong habit helps us understand it not just as an action, but as a mindset. Indeed, our commitment to being nimble at Nueva is closely connected to our embrace of a growth mindset for all members of the community. As teachers, we say “Yes, and…” to opportunities that might alter a single lesson or reshape the way we teach for years to come.

Wherever we observe nimbleness on these two axes, it is always attended by two related qualities. One of these is humility. In order to do right by our students, we must be willing to open ourselves to alternate possibilities and approaches that we didn’t see before.

This is tough work sometimes! The second is kindness, which of course is so cherished at Nueva that it has its own module elsewhere in this workbook. To be nimble is to depart from the known and risk frustration and failure; accordingly, we have to be kind to ourselves, and to our colleagues and students, so that we can keep at it and meet the next opportunity with optimism.

With humility and kindness, we equip ourselves for change, which in turn empowers us to educate the changemakers we teach.

“Being nimble does not mean a lack of planning or a disregard for structure.”

How Praise Became a Consolation Prize

As a young researcher, Carol Dweck was fascinated by how some children faced challenges and failures with aplomb while others shrunk back. Dweck, now a psychologist at Stanford University, eventually identified two core mindsets, or beliefs, about one’s own traits that shape how people approach challenges: fixed mindset, the belief that one’s abilities were carved in stone and predetermined at birth, and growth mindset, the belief that one’s skills and qualities could be cultivated through effort and perseverance. Her findings brought the concepts of “fixed” and “growth” mindset to the fore for educators and parents, inspiring the implementation of her ideas among teachers—and even companies— across the country.

But Dweck recently noticed a trend: a widespread embrace of what she refers to as “false growth mindset”—a misunderstanding of the idea’s core message. Growth mindset’s popularity was leading some educators to believe that it was simpler than it was, that it was only about putting forth effort or that a teacher could foster growth mindset merely by telling kids to try hard.

A teacher might applaud a child for making an effort on a science test even if he’d failed it, for instance, believing that doing so would promote growth mindset in that student regardless of the outcome. But such empty praise can exacerbate some of the very problems that growth mindset is intended to counter.

A new edition of Dweck’s book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, updated to address false growth mindset, comes out at the end of this month.

I recently spoke with Dweck about how she wants her ideas to be applied. The interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Christine Gross-Loh ————————— Could you tell me about the development of the idea of growth mindset? What was it intended to correct? What were you seeing that you felt growth mindset would help improve?

Carol Dweck —————————————

I’ve always been interested, since graduate school, in why some children wilt and shrink back from challenges and give up in the face of obstacles, while others avidly seek challenges and become even more invested in the face of obstacles. So this has been my primary question for over 40 years. At some point, my graduate students and I realized that a student’s mindset was at the foundation of whether [he or she] loved challenges and persisted in the face of failure.

When students had more of a fixed mindset—the idea that abilities are carved in stone, that you have a certain amount and that’s that—they saw challenges as risky. They could fail, and their basic abilities would be called into question. When they hit obstacles, setbacks, or criticism, this was just more proof that they didn’t have the abilities that they cherished. In contrast, when students had more of a growth mindset, they held the view that talents and abilities could be developed and that challenges were the way to do it. Learning something new, something hard, sticking to things—that’s how you get smarter. Setbacks and feedback weren’t about your abilities, they were information you could use to help yourself learn.

With a growth mindset, kids don’t necessarily think that there’s no such thing as talent or that everyone is the same, but they believe everyone can develop their abilities through hard work, strategies, and lots of help and mentoring from others.

Gross-Loh ———————————————

When I first interviewed you about growth mindset a few years ago, I remember that it was a relatively unknown idea. But growth mindset is now so popular that I’ll hear people who aren’t steeped in educational theory say, “Praise the effort, not the child (or the outcome).” Why do you think this idea struck such a chord, and how did you find out there were people misunderstanding it?

Dweck ———————————————

Many educators were dissatisfied with drilling for high-stakes tests. They understood that student motivation had been a neglected area, especially of late. So many educators, as well as many parents, were excited to implement something that might reenergize kids to focus on learning again, not just memorization and test taking, but on deeper, more joyful learning.

But a colleague of mine, Susan Mackie, was doing workshops with educators in Australia and observed that many of them were saying they got growth mindset and were running with it, but did not understand it deeply. She told me, “I’m seeing a lot of false growth mindset.” I just did not get it initially—growth mindset is a very straightforward concept, and besides…

More on next page

An Atlantic interview by Christine Gross-Loh with Carol Dweck, originator of the ‘Growth Mindset.’

How Praise Became a Consolation Prize

(part 2 of 3)

… why would people settle for a false growth mindset if they could have a real one?

But I started keeping a list of all the ways people were misunderstanding growth mindset. When the list got long enough, I started speaking and writing about it.

Gross-Loh ———————————————

Could you elaborate on false growth mindset?

Dweck —————————————————

False growth mindset is saying you have growth mindset when you don't really have it or you don’t really understand [what it is]. It’s also false in the sense that nobody has a growth mindset in everything all the time. Everyone is a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets.

either they know it’s the right mindset to have or they understood it in a way that made it seem easy.

Gross-Loh ———————————————

Why do you think these misunderstandings occurred?

Dweck —————————————————

Many people understood growth mindset deeply and implemented it in a very sophisticated and effective way. However, there were many others who understood it in a way that wasn’t quite accurate, or distilled it down to something that wasn’t quite effective, or assimilated it into something they already knew.

Often when we see kids who aren’t learning well, we might feel frustrated or defensive, thinking it reflects on us as educators. It’s often tempting to not feel it is our fault. So we might say the child has a fixed mindset, without understanding instead that, as educators, it is our responsibility to create a context in which a growth mindset can flourish.

effective, saying “Wow, you tried really hard!” But students know that if they didn’t make progress and you’re praising them, it’s a consolation prize. They also know you think they can’t do any better.

So this kind of growth-mindset idea was misappropriated to try to make kids feel good when they were not achieving.

The mindset ideas were developed as a counter to the self-esteem movement of blanketing everyone with praise, whether deserved or not. To find out that teachers were using it in the same way was of great concern to me. The whole idea of growth-mindset praise is to focus on the learning process. When you focus on effort, [you have to] show how effort created learning progress or success.

Gross-Loh ———————————————

What should people do to avoid falling into this trap?

Dweck—————————————————

You could have a predominant growth mindset in an area but there can still be things that trigger you into a fixed mindset trait. Something really challenging and outside your comfort zone can trigger it, or, if you encounter someone who is much better than you at something you pride yourself on, you can think “Oh, that person has ability, not me.” So I think we all, students and adults, have to look for our fixedmindset triggers and understand when we are falling into that mindset.

I think a lot of what happened [with false growth mindset among educators] is that instead of taking this long and difficult journey, where you work on understanding your triggers, working with them, and over time being able to stay in a growth mindset more and more, many educators just said, “Oh yeah, I have a growth mindset” because

Gross-Loh ———————————————

So it seems that the danger is that some teachers think they have growth mindset and believe it will transfer to their students, even though they themselves don’t really understand it. How about this: Are there educators who do understand the idea that abilities can be developed, but don’t understand how to pass it on to students? Are there certain children who are more vulnerable to this sort of misunderstanding of growth mindset?

Dweck —————————————————

Yes, another misunderstanding [of growth mindset] that might apply to lower-achieving children is the oversimplification of growth mindset into just [being about] effort. Teachers were just praising effort that was not

A lot of parents or teachers say praise the effort, not the outcome. I say [that’s] wrong: Praise the effort that led to the outcome or learning progress; tie the praise to it. It’s not just effort, but strategy … so support the student in finding another strategy. Effective teachers who actually have classrooms full of children with a growth mindset are always supporting children’s learning strategies and showing how strategies created that success. Students need to know that if they’re stuck, they don’t need just effort. You don’t want them redoubling their efforts with the same ineffective strategies. You want them to know when to ask for help and when to use resources that are available. All of this is part of the process that needs to be taught and tied to learning.

More on next page

“… why would people settle for a false growth mindset if they could have a real one?"

© The Nueva School 2020

How Praise Became a Consolation Prize

Gross-Loh

Is there a right way to praise kids and encourage them to do well?

Dweck

Many parents and teachers who themselves have growth mindset aren’t passing it on because they are trying to protect the child’s confidence, focus on the child’s ability, and kind of boost the child’s view or protect the child from a failure. They’re conveying anxiety about ability.

You can see evidence of fixed mindset as young as 3.5 or 4 years old; that’s when mindsets can start becoming evident, where some kids are very upset when they make a mistake or get criticized and fall into a helpless place. That’s when children become able to evaluate themselves.

We collaborated … with researchers from the University of Chicago who had a longitudinal project with videotape of mother-child interactions. What we found was the more praise was processoriented—not a ton, just where the greater proportion of the praise was process praise [versus outcome praise] —the more those children had a growth mindset and a high desire for challenge five years later, when they were in second grade.

You can’t tell adolescents, “We’re adults, we have the answer, and we’re going to tell you what it is.” So we said, “We’re scientists from Stanford University and the University of Texas, and we need your help. We’re experts on the brain and how students learn, but you’re the experts on being a freshman in high school and we’d like your input for a program we’re developing for future freshmen.”

But we have a new line of research (with my former graduate student, Kyla Haimovitz) showing that the way a parent reacts to a child’s failure conveys a mindset to a child regardless of the parent’s mindset. If parents react to their child’s failures as though there is something negative, if they rush in, are anxious, reassure the child, “Oh not everyone can be good at math, don’t worry, you’re good at other things,” the child gets it that no, this is important, and it’s fixed. That child is developing a fixed mindset, even if the parent has a growth mindset.

But if the parent reacts to a child’s failure as though it’s something that enhances learning, asking, “Okay, what is this teaching us? Where should we go next? Should we talk to the teacher about how we can learn this better?” that child comes to understand that abilities can be developed. So, with praise, focus on “process praise”—focus on the learning process and show how hard work, good strategies, and good use of resources lead to better learning. Be matter-of-fact, with not too strong or too passive a reaction.

Gross-Loh ———————————————

That’s very helpful to know for parents of young children. But what about older kids who might feel discouraged and worn-down after years of feeling that they weren’t smart enough or a fear that they would never be able to be successful? Is it ever too late to foster a growth mindset in students?

Dweck —————————————————

No—we’ve developed a number of online workshops addressed at adolescents and shown that when we teach [those] students a growth mindset, many of them regain their motivation to learn and achieve higher grades, especially students who have been struggling or students who have been laboring under a negative stereotype about [their own] abilities.

Research conducted last year by my former graduate student, David Yeager [now a professor at the University of Texas], on 18,000 students entering ninth grade, shows us that students who took growth-mindset workshops are seeking more challenges.

We then taught them about how the teenage brain is especially open to learning. We talked about how it’s a time of great plasticity, a time they need to take advantage of, and that they can grow their brains through taking on hard tasks in school and sticking to them. We had the students write a letter to a struggling freshman, counseling that person in terms of the growth-mindset principle, which is often very persuasive. We had testimonials from some public figures, talking about how a growth mindset got them to where they were. Finally we talked about why someone would want a growth mindset.

We realized that some kids would be overjoyed to hear you can develop your intellectual abilities, but others might not think it was the most exciting thing. So we then had a whole section on why you might want to develop your mind. Teenagers are really excited about the idea that they can do something to make the world a better place. So we asked them what they want to make their contribution to in the future—family, community, or societal problems—and then talked about how having a strong mind could help them make their future contribution.

We’re excited about this because we know the world of the future is going to be about taking on ill-defined, hard jobs that keep changing. It’s going to favor people who relish those challenges and know how to fix them. We are committed to creating a nation of learners.

“Many parents and teachers who themselves have growth mindset aren’t passing it on because they are trying to protect the child’s confidence…”

Design Tinking At Nueva

The art of asking “What Next?” & “Why?”

A process for creative problem-solving, Design Thinking is a pillar of Nueva's learning approach. It draws on the humanities for empathy and cultural observation; the arts and engineering for idea generation and invention; and the sciences for hypothesis creation, prototyping, testing, and reflection. Students develop the mindset to identify situations where they can better the world, and Design Thinking gives them the tools and resolve to take action. We also like to think of the Design Thinking process as a metaphor for our nimbleness: as in Design Thinking, we try to listen closely, empathize, keep an open mind, learn from failure and prototyping, allow for creative solutions, and iterate in order to better serve our goals and values.

The chart on the following page illuminates each step of the Design Thinking process.

Developing a Growth Mindset

A talk by Professor Carol Dweck

Remote Innovation at Nueva

Our transition to remote learning during the Spring of 2020 gave us all a chance to practice some serious agility. Here are some examples of ways we pivoted to make the most of the change:

Work (Out) From Home

Lower School P.E. teacher and Nueva alum Zubin kept students moving and learning through his musical, energetic, and etymology-infused live-streamed workouts. Check out his sweat-sesh below!

California Streamin’

As our originally planned beneft auction, California Dreamin’ was nearing, we got the sense that gathering together would become more challenging and that we needed to reschedule the date of our event to buy time. Quickly we realized that we would most likely need to host a virtual event and reached out to other schools that did not reschedule and quickly transitioned from an in person event to a virtual event – this provided the gift of time. After consulting with other schools, we presented to the Development Committee, Finance Committee and Board of Trustees for approval. Once approved, we reengaged the Beneft Auction Committee, decided to rename the event to California Streamin’ as we would livestream the event. With excitement, we made needed adjustments, rallied our community and optimistically hosted a virtual event.

Shelter & Tell

“When our History of Technology class went remote, we were halfway through our unit on “Shelter”--very apt! So we took a week to deep-dive into a mini research project on the history of technologies that made sheltering-in-place possible. Students were able to choose their own technologies, and made videos describing the history of the technology as well as its wide-ranging effects on society! These ended up being one of our favorite projects of the semester.”

Zoom Canyon

“When our 5th grade trip to Crow Canyon was cancelled, the 5th grade team created a week-long experience called ‘Zoom Canyon’, where we tried to recreate the activities and amazing learning about the Ancestral Pueblo People that we would get from our time in Colorado. The team of guides at Crow Canyon helped a lot, as did the fact that we’ve been sending 5th graders to Crow Canyon for almost twenty years now!””

© The Nueva School 2020

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REFLECTION: REMOTE INNOVATION AT NUEVA

Do these examples of staying nimble in order to continue to provide authentic, meaningful, deep learning experiences inspire you? Do they stir up any ideas for ways to use remote learning to help empower and energize your students?

Our Values: Embodied & Visible

“Nueva is a vibrantly lived experience. We are intentional about living our values and strive to make them tangible in our hallways, classrooms, experiences and interactions.”

Our final principle, Our Values are Embodied and Visible, asks us to live the first 6 principles in our actions, interactions and the learning that we facilitate. We do this not for the visitor or for external accolades, we do this because we live the Nueva Way.

Returning to Lucy’s eloquent 2018 graduation speech,

“Nueva has been incorporated into my vocabulary not just as a proper noun, but also as an adjective. It refers to both a worldview– unbridled intellectual energy, an ardent desire for knowledge and endless efforts to achieve it.”

When Our Values are Embodied and Visible, we live what we believe and help ensure Nueva remains a student centered place of belonging for gifted learners where their love of learning is fostered, their social emotional acuity is developed and where they feel a sense of both helping to develop and being a part of a beloved community. Through nimble and innovative approaches, we naturally live our values and they are visible to everyone.

REFLECTION: VISIBLE LEARNING

What does it mean to make learning visible? Audible, tactile, lived? Why is it important?

Why do you think making learning visible has a particular place at a gifed school?

Embodied & Visible

As you walk through Nueva, it’s evident what we mean by making our values embodied and visible. You may be struck first by how loudly and how often you hear student voices and laughter, not just on the playground but in the classrooms, science labs, libraries, hallways, the I-Lab, and other learning spaces. We believe in student empowerment and agency at Nueva, and we want students to feel like they’re steering the ship of their education, and not just standing by as passive absorbers.

You’ll see students and teachers talking animatedly, solving math problems in the hallways, sharing the latest books they’re reading on the playground, and discussing current events and their science projects over lunch in the café. We believe that when learning is joyful, it spills out of the classroom. In the classroom itself, you will often see students in motion, or intensely focused on something they’re creating together.

The student-centered classroom has hundreds of configurations, whether students are in small working groups, spread out on the floor tackling writing projects quietly, having large wholeclass roundtables, or outside clearing trails. Most importantly, it features students actively engaged in the process of learning.

On our walls, you’ll see a lot of student work: this includes art and formal academic projects, but also ideas, doodles, notes, and problems left informally on whiteboards—the residue of rough drafts of stories and poems and sketches of half-finished solar house models. While we also love the formal presentation of student work, we don’t just put it up for appearance’s sake, but to prompt further learning and pride in the student’s engagement.

We believe that learning is an active process, and that school should feel vibrantly alive with it.

© The Nueva School 2020

ACTIVITY: DIVERSE ARTIFACTS

Please review the following artifacts from across our school, each of which makes visible one or more of our core values. In the right-hand column, consider which of our values are revealed through each example.

Key Artifact

WATCH

We hosted a conference on identifying gifted students of color because…

What value(s) are revealed in each example?

EXAMPLE:

…we believe all children deserve to be provided with a learning environment that will nurture them.

WATCH

Middle school teachers encourage you to try everything because…

WATCH

We offer extensive professional development opportunities because…

© The Nueva School 2020

ACTIVITY: DIVERSE ARTIFACTS

Key Artifact

We try to make our support for all our students visible through this rainbow fag installation because…

What value(s) are revealed in each example?

We set up a ‘silent discussion’ between students in a 12th grade poetry class because…

READ

We’ve taken our kids on the 11th grade American studies trip to the US/ Mexico border because…

ACTIVITY: DIVERSE ARTIFACTS

Key Artifact

What value(s) are revealed in each example?

We had our 4th grade class refect on the purpose of education because…

WATCH

We have a Middle School Community Service Learning Day because…

We create community-based installation pieces like the 'Beloved Bookish Community’ because...

ACTIVITY: DIVERSE ARTIFACTS

Key Artifact

What value(s) are revealed in each example?

© The Nueva School 2020

REFLECTION: DIVERSE ARTIFACTS

In what ways are these artifacts attempting to engage our community and provoke thought?

How would you make one of the preceding 6 values visible in your class or through your role in our school? (Make a value visible! Draw, doodle, write, or collage here!)

REFLECTION: REMOTE VISIBILITY AT NUEVA

How do we continue to make our values visible during remote learning?

Final Thoughts

Hopefully the curated resources, exercises and reflections in this workbook have helped you better understand Nueva and all that is has to offer our students, our faculty, staff, parents and our community. Together we can continue to center what we do on the Nueva Way to ensure we remain mission driven, values focused and a place where all members of our community thrive!

Alegria Barclay

Allen Frost

Elizabeth Rossini

Lee Holtzman

DESIGNED & ILLUSTRATED BY

Om Gokhale ’18

Birds adapted from the work of Owen Davey & Charley Harper

THANK YOU

A special thanks to Diane Rosenberg for 19 years of generous service as Nueva’s Head of School. Your vision helped us see possibility. Your dedication helped us advocate for our students. And your compassion helped create such a caring community. The Nueva Way is a direct result of your leadership.

Thank you to all of the faculty, staff, students, parents and community members that are a part of Nueva’s family both near and far. We cherish you and we honor you by continuing to live our values through The Nueva Way.

Bibliography

Principle 1 - A Place of Belonging for Gifted Learners

“Te Columbus Group | Gifed Development Center.” Gifed Development Center, www.gifeddevelopment.com/isad/columbus-group. Accessed 4 Aug. 2020.

Daniels, Susan, and Michael Piechowski. Living With Intensity: Understanding the Sensitivity, Excitability, and the Emotional Development of Gifed Children, Adolescents, and Adults . Unknown, Great Potential Pr., Inc., 2008.

Rivero, Lisa. “Many Ages at Once.” Psychology Today, 24 Jan. 2012, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/creative-synthesis/201201/many-ages-once .

Roeper, Annemarie. “Gifedness | About Us | Ricks Center | University of Denver.” Ricks Center for Gifed Children, www.du.edu/ricks/about/gifedness.html. Accessed 4 Aug. 2020.

Siegle, Del. “Gifed Children’s Bill of Rights.” National Association for Gifed Children, www.nagc.org/resources-publications/resources-parents/gifed-childrens-bill-rights .

Szabos, Janice. “‘Bright Child, Gifed Learner.’” Challenge Magazine , no. 34, 1989, www.swasd.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Szabos_J_-_Bright_Child_Gifed_Learner.pdf .

Tolan, Stephanie. “Is It a Cheetah?” Stephanietolan.com, 1996, www.stephanietolan.com/is_it_a_cheetah.htm.

Principle 2 - A Love of Learning

Ambrose, Susan A., et al. How Learning Works: Seven Research-based Principles For Smart Teaching . Jossey-Bass, 2010.

“Changing Education Paradigms.” TED Talks , uploaded by Ken Robinson, 1 Oct. 2010, www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms

Wolk, Steven. “Joy in School.” Educational Leadership , vol. 66, no. 1, 2008, pp. 8–15.

Principle 3 - A Student-Centered School

“Constructivism.” Center for Educational Innovation - University at Buffalo , 8 June 2020, www.buffalo.edu/ubcei/enhance/learning/constructivism.html

“How to Develop Culturally Responsive Teaching for Distance Learning.” KQED, 20 May 2020, www.kqed.org/mindshif/55941/how-to-develop-culturally-responsive-teaching-for-distance- learning.

Malaguzzi, Loris. “‘Your Image of the Child: Where Teaching Begins.’” Reggio Alliance, www.reggioalliance.org/downloads/malaguzzi:ccie:1994.pdf. Accessed 12 July 2020.

McTighe, Jay. “Tree Lessons for Teachers from Grant Wiggins.” ASCD Inservice , 1 Sept. 2015, inservice.ascd.org/three-lessons-for-teachers-from-grant-wiggins.

Principle 3 - A Student-Centered School (continued)

McTighe, Jay and Grant Wiggins. Improve Curriculum, Assessment, and Instruction Using the Understanding by Design® Framework ASCD Professional Learning Services, 2014.

Sparks, Sarah. “Differentiated Instruction: A Primer.” Education Week , 9 Apr. 2020, www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/01/28/differentiated-instruction-a-primer.html?print=1.

Principle 4 - Fostering Social-Emotional Acuity & Kindness

Bailey, Carrie Lynn. “Social and Emotional Needs of Gifed Students: What School Counselors Need to Know to Most Effectively Serve Tis Diverse Student Population.” American Counseling Association , Oct. 2007, www.counseling.org/resources/library/VISTAS/2009-V-Online/Bailey_social.pdf

Brown, Brené. “Clear Is Kind. Unclear Is Unkind.” Brené Brown , 22 Aug. 2019, brenebrown.com/blog/2018/10/15/clear-is-kind-unclear-is-unkind.

CASEL. “Equity and SEL - Casel Schoolguide.” CASEL: Guide to Schoolwide SEL , schoolguide.casel.org/what-is-sel/equity-and-sel Accessed 4 Aug. 2020.

Mullet, J. H. “Restorative Discipline: From Getting Even to Getting Well.” Children & Schools , vol. 36, no. 3, 2014, pp. 157–62. Crossref, doi:10.1093/cs/cdu011.

Simmons, Dena. “How to Change the Story about Students of Color.” Greater Good , 18 Apr. 2017, greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_change_story_of_students_of_color.

“Why We Can’t Afford Whitewashed Social-Emotional Learning.” Education Update , vol. 61, no. 4, 2019, www.ascd.org/publications/newsletters/education_update/apr19/vol61/num04/Why_We_Can’t_Afford_White washed_SocialEmotional_Learning.aspx

Stemm-Calderon, Zoë. “Let’s Ensure Equity Is at the Heart of Social-Emotional Learning.” Raikes Foundation, 19 May 2018, raikesfoundation.org/blog/posts/let%E2%80%99s-ensure-equity-heart-social-emotional-learning.

Zakrzewski, Vicki. “Making SEL the DNA of a School.” Greater Good, 27 Apr. 2017, greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/making_sel_the_dna_of_a_school.

Principle 5 - Building a Beloved Community

Arao, Brian and Kristi Clemens. “From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces: A New Way to Frame Dialogue around Diversity and Social Justice.” In Landreman, L. (Ed.), Te Art of Effective Facilitation: Reflections from Social Justice Educators (pp. 135-150). Stylus Publishing, 2013.

Bibliography pt. 3

Principle 5 - Building a Beloved Community (continued)

hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom . Routledge, 1994.

“John A. Powell on ‘Bridging’ with Conservative Arthur Brooks.” YouTube , uploaded by Othering & Belonging Institute, 2 Nov. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESuzqFEJy3A&t=317s

“Te King Philosophy.” Te King Center, 8 Jan. 2019, thekingcenter.org/king-philosophy

Wright, Arthuree. “25 Traits of Te Beloved Community.” General Commission on Religion and Race, 4 June 2020, www.gcorr.org/25-traits-of-the-beloved-community-2

Principle 6 - A Nimble & Innovative Spirit

“Developing a Growth Mindset with Carol Dweck.” YouTube , uploaded by Stanford Alumni, 9 Oct. 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiiEeMN7vbQ

Gross-Loh, Christine. “Carol Dweck Explains the False Growth Mindset.” Te Atlantic , 16 Dec. 2016, www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/12/how-praise-became-a-consolation-prize/510845

© The Nueva School 2020