Letters from the Head

This is not a topic that I should be talking about, believing as I do that adults should model what they preach. Last night I was doing the dishes, laundry, and ironing, and trying to finish an assignment for a class I was taking. The time? Closer to midnight than I would like to admit. This, despite the fact that I know about the research saying that adults need serious sleep to regenerate after a day’s work. What I did not know until very recently was the research on the vital importance of children’s sleep.

Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman report in their book NurtureShock (The Parents League will be hosting Bronson for a book talk on October 13th at 7:00 pm at Temple Israel, 112 East 75th Street, admission $25) that children around the world are now getting an hour less sleep than they did when you were their age, and the impact of that deficit can be measured in “emotional well-being, IQ points, ADHD and obesity.” The problem has some obvious roots – too many activities, televisions and cell phones in bedrooms, decreased attention to bedtimes, homework, and working parent guilt. Many of you are working later but want time with your children when you return home. Many of you want to avoid the battle that comes over enforcing a bedtime that may be earlier than a friends’. And many of you are, as I am, staying up too late yourselves so that you have a skewed sense of what time it really is.
However, Bronson and Merryman write, a child’s brain grows until they are 21 and much of the growing happens when they are asleep. That lost hour has a much bigger impact on children that it does on adults. The authors tell of a study conducted at Tel Aviv University that concluded: “the performance gap caused by an hour’s difference in actual sleep (as demonstrated looking at a one hour difference of sleep for several days on a test of neurobiolgical functioning which is highly predictive of current achievement test scores) was bigger than the gap between a normal fourth grader and a normal sixth grader (or two years of maturational development)! Study after study shows a correlation between amount of sleep and school grades.

Sleep also affects attention during the school day and memory – especially important for tasks like memorizing vocabulary for another language. Add to this, pronunciation of another language and those motor skills to pronounce a new word. That vocabulary is synthesized in the hippocampus early in the night during ‘slow-wave sleep’ as well as stage 2 non-REM sleep later in the sleep cycle.

We are asking more and more of our children as knowledge gets more complex and as we move from a curriculum that focuses predominantly on skill development to one that requires more sophisticated thinking and problem solving. Ironically, we are giving them less and less time to consolidate and file away what they know during sleep. While this affects all children, teenagers are most at risk. And teenagers are least likely to see the need for increased sleep and the least likely to willingly comply with reasonable bedtimes and electronics-free bedrooms.
But the brain isn’t the only thing that suffers. Although sedentary lifestyles have been blamed for the increase in childhood obesity, another contributor may be sleep loss, which increases the hormone that signals hunger and decreases the hormone that surpresses appetite.

“Sleep is a biological imperative for all species on earth. But humans alone try to resist its pull,” write Bronson and Merryman. I am going to try and give in to the imperative, at least this coming week, and I hope you’ll join me. All of us in The School community need to store up mental and physical stamina for next Friday night, October 16th, and Saturday the 17th, beginning quite early, when we’ll set up for Rock the Block. Then we’ll have a full day of excitement, ensuring that children and adults alike are good and ready for a brain and body-friendly early bedtime Saturday!

Till next time, Annette
Posted 10/9/09

The last thing that busy parents need is another commit- ment. In between dentist appointments, food shopping, cooking, laundry, and trying to keep track of where ev- eryone needs to be, making a commitment on a weekend just seems like too much. Asking you to volunteer for Rock the Block on October 17th is just one more thing. Why should you do it?

1. Do it for yourself. My kids are eight years apart so I had children in elementary school (K-6) for fourteen years and for all fourteen years I was involved with an extraordinary rummage sale. The weeks before the sale, I was busy tagging clothes, organizing toys and sorting books. During the sale, I was a cashier. But mostly what I what was doing was getting to know other parents who I never would have met. Our children were in different grade levels and we lived in different areas. But small talk led to hellos in school and eventually some surprisingly close friendships, as well as excellent recommendations for a dentist and lowering anxiety about my child’s unwill- ingness to be on an organized sports team.

2. Do it for your kids. Time is more precious than money, and giving of your time models community service and affection for the school to your children.

3. Do it for The School. What resources do we need when we are so well funded by Columbia?

•Performance space – We have outgrown the communal spaces in our lovely building and would like to be able to safely, legally and comfortably accommodate our ambi- tious programming by renting local spaces.

•Financial aid for After School - Although on a sliding scale, our After School program is, for some families, still unaffordable. We’d like to be able to make sure that for families who need and would benefit from the extended programming that our After School offers.

•Support for our academically competitive programs – Each time we enter a chess tournament or robotics com- petition, there are entry fees and expenses. If we end up traveling, we want to ensure that we can support families for whom travel would be a financial difficulty. The crite- ria for attending a competition outside of New York ought to be creative commitment, not bank account balance.

•Support for our new band program – The magic of our music staff is not a mystery to any of you and they con- tinue to have ideas that outpace their budget. The new band program has meant that most families are paying to rent instruments. A donation allowed us to buys some and we’d like to increase the number we own so that rentals will never be an obstacle to band participation.

•A small discretionary fund for the Head of School – While schools can never, and should never, be all things to all people, a crisis in our community can sometimes be softened with a one-time infusion of modest financial support. We want everyone to know that they are loved and cared for. This is not meant to be a regular assistance program but rather an ability to nimbly help someone in unexpected need. Right now, individuals on the faculty are meeting those needs.

We have five hours to staff Rock the Block. We need people with all kinds of talents – table movers, ticket sell- ers, game organizers, bakers, trash picker-uppers, street sweepers, parking preventers, sign makers, food distribu- tors, cashiers, crowd pleasers, and crowd controllers. It will take a lot of work to make this happen - but with our nearly 500 students and 380 families, we can do it.

What is your reward? The pleasures of wearing a bright yellow apron, meeting other parents, modeling terrific be- havior for your kids, and knowing that you are helping make The School a better place for everyone. Please take the opportunity to volunteer. I’ll see you there.

Till next time, Annette
Posted 10/2/09

I don’t know how many of you saw the provocative cover of Newsweek magazine that asked, “Is Your Baby Racist?” I read the article - subtitled “Exploring the Roots of Discrimination” - by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman (authors of NurtureShock, which I am just starting now). There was much in there that has importance for our school, although we do not enroll babies!

The authors contend that parents’ efforts to help their young children to grow up colorblind - in part by never discussing race - are backfiring. Citing a University of Colorado study of children’s attitudes from six months to six years, they write, “[T]his period of our children’s lives, when we imagine it’s most important to not talk about race, is the very developmental period when children’s minds are forming their first conclusions about race.”

It is important to talk about race, as it turns out, to counter children’s tendency to form connections based on outward similarities. At a previous school where older children gravitated toward kindergarten buddies without teacher assignments, we regularly noted that red haired children chose red haired children, that freckles were a bonding factor, that children who shared ethnic backgrounds often found each other and that gender was a point of connection. Children, without being prompted, form groups on the basis of outward similarities, possibly based on what Bronson and Merryman call “the spontaneous tendency to assume your group shares characteristics – such as niceness, or smarts.”

But talking about race is hard. Moreover, the studies mentioned in the article suggest that we are not very good at it. Yet it is clear that when conversations do occur, spontaneous tendencies can curbed and racial attitudes enlightened.
That is one of the best reasons I know to come to the Kaleidoscope Diversity Meeting at 5:30PM on Wednesday, September 30, where parents from all ethnic backgrounds will come together in a safe forum to talk about race-related issues, and discuss how to talk to children about those issues. Childcare will be available - just sign up in advance at the After School Program office.

So, why go to yet another meeting? Doesn’t the very act of sending your child to this school mean that your child has a head start on appreciating the diversity of the world around him/her? It’s not that simple. In fact, without parent participation in both posing and answering questions, children who go to schools like ours have just as many chances “to learn stereotypes as to unlearn them.”

Come to the meeting on Wednesday to exchange thoughts on what conversations about racial bias may do, or undo, on ethnic pride, and on the friendship choices that children make. Come talk about why talking about race seems to be much harder than talking about gender. Share your struggles and your ideas, your anecdotes and your triumphs.
The Newsweek article is available at http://www.newsweek.com/id/214989 and will be on hand at the meeting. As you’ll see, Bronson and Merryman pose more questions than answers. One conclusion, however, is clear: It is better to talk and make mistakes than it is to be silent. Come problem solve and learn from each other.

The 5:30 – 7:00PM meeting will fly by. While I doubt that you will leave with definitive solutions to the complexity of prejudice, I am certain that knowing each other better and having a safe forum for discussion is an important beginning.

Till next time, Annette

Posted 9/25/09

How many times have you heard that teaching children is the ideal job because you are finished at 3:30 and have your summers off? What they never say is that teachers are haunted by the desire to become more accessible, more efficient, more interesting, more motivating, and better prepared. They never mention that teachers routinely stay up at night worrying about an unclear assignment, a childʼs misunderstanding, or a missed opportunity to make a curricular connection. They donʼt add that teachers scramble to stay on top of new research that challenges their approach and that there is a constant need to rethink what we do. They also donʼt talk about the outpouring of affection we develop for your children and how we find the space in our hearts to celebrate with them and worry about them and hope for them even when not in the classroom.

So, what did we do during our summer vacation?

We traveled to learn Spanish in Spain, Nicaragua, and Mexico. We participated in an archaeological dig in the Virgin Islands. We learned about Japanese schooling in Japan. We volunteered in India and collected information about major cities there. We studied culture in Morocco. We gave a presentation in Scotland. We traveled throughout Laos and Vietnam to better understand history that feels relatively current.

We studied school law, school administration (both public and private), and dance history. We learned more about technology at a national conference and at a local week- long session. We studied the future of learning - the impact of digitalization, globalization, and research on the brain - and creativity at Harvardʼs Project Zero (zero being how much educators knew about creativity when the project started). We learned more about literacy. A dozen of us went to Dana Hall to study math together. We took courses at Teachers College toward more degrees, enhanced professionalism, and more effective teaching.

We taught about the intersection of the spirit and the intellect, about mathematics, and we taught at the Royal Academy of Dance. We taught a workshop on math for all of our new colleagues. We taught at our summer school. We learned about advanced art techniques like weaving and then wore some of our creations. We worked on tightening up our social studies scope and sequence and tweaking our daily schedule to optimize the hours we have with your children.

And, of course, we read. At a minimum, we read one of the four books about diversity that will help us frame the year. We also read for pleasure. Being a passionate reader is a core value we hope to both live and pass on.

What did we do during our summer vacation? We worked on broadening ourselves personally and professionally to get ready to welcome you and your children to a new school year enriched by everything we have experienced.

And thatʼs why, when it comes down to it, I believe that what they say is true - teaching children is the ideal job.

Till next time, Annette

Posted on 9/11/2009