Social Equity, Environment, & Development

S.E.E.D. Mission Statement: SEED nurtures and challenges interested, curious and compassionate students to grapple with today's major social issues and, in turn, produces empowered leaders.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Teaching Philosophy

Statement of Teaching Philosophy

I believe that, while content is important, what we teach is often just a medium through which we engage teenagers in meaningful human relationships. While I want my students to learn Calculus, I equally want them to be compassionate and caring. While I want them to show their work and thought-process, I also want them to be creative and curious. I believe that the top priority of an Independent School is to promote conscientious and caring human beings with the academic prowess to become positive agents of change.

I believe in equity, first and foremost, and try to incorporate issues of equality in my teaching. I believe that my role in schools is to help chip away at the disparity between those with access and those without. I think it is imperative that we engage our students and teachers in discussions about race, gender, class, and other important diversity topics so that we can work toward understanding each other better.

I believe in inquiry-based learning. I believe that the teacher’s role in the classroom should be that of an experienced learner, not the one with all of the answers. I believe the focus of each lesson should be on “thinking” rather than “knowing.” This can be accomplished through projects which allow students to learn through discovery. That being said, I believe there is a place for more traditional lectures in a class.

In a math class, I believe that a teacher must strike a delicate balance between challenging a student and fostering self-assurance. The role of a teacher is to challenge each student appropriately. This, of course, requires the teacher to know each student substantially. I believe that confidence affects students’ performance in math more than in any other course. Recognizing that there are many different learning styles, and adapting our teaching style to reach each of our learners, allows each of our students to be more successful.

I believe that appropriate use of technology is one way to aid many of our students. I have recently been recording classes on the SmartBoard and posting video of each class and pdf files of the class notes. Students have been able to review old lessons or print out notes from the day. I have found this most helpful to students with dyslexia and dysgraphia. As teachers try out new methods of incorporating technology, we are reminded of what is like to be a novice. This is in and of itself an invaluable lesson.

Lastly, I believe in a strong sense of collegiality among the faculty. Independent Schools are inherently busy, and teaching is largely a solitary act. We need to create viable opportunities throughout the day and week for teachers to share ideas and work together. When we inspire and are inspired by our colleagues, we cannot help but create a vibrant learning community.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Some wisdom from a Zen Master

I just came off my hammock, which was slung between two mangrove trees on Playa Flamingo. My dog Omaha slept beneath me, in the shade cast by the hammock. My wonderful wife Kelsey read nearby, head resting on a fallen log.

I was reading an excellent book, Novice to Master: An Ongoing Lesson in the Extent of My Own Stupidity, by Soko Morinaga. The following two pieces of wisdom, which pertain hugely to education, come from that book and I feel compelled to share them.

Lesson #1: Teach Children to Understand their own Power

"School teachers often see it as their sole duty to entice children to take an interest in studying. Many parents believe the ability to parent lies in rearing children who cry out as seldom as possible, who chafe as little as possible.
I ask you to consider this carefully, though. Is our society, into which these children will eventually enter, an understanding society?... It is a society full of people who relish the failure of others, who savor the poverty of the next-door neighbor as they savor a tender morsel of duck... When children are brought up by teachers who seek always to entertain, to sympathize, and to allow their students to have their own way, and by parents who try in any way they can to prevent their children from knowing pain and inconvenience, what happens to them when they are thrown out into the kind of world we have?
I wonder why it is that parents, teachers, and other adults do not try to provide children earlier with the opportunity and the training to realize for themselves the power inherent within themselves, the power we all possess to stand up and work it out ourselves in times of trouble. Only when we taste frustration does the spirit of intrepidity, the resolution to rally and march on over every obstacle, arise from our innate force, from our inherent power."


Lesson #2: Having a Still Mind

"The truly still mind, with which you were born, is the mind that moves freely. Without ignoring anything, it reacts wholeheartedly to everything it encounters, to everything on which it reflects. And yet, for all that, it is the mind that is never seized by anything, but is always ready to react on the spot to whatever it encounters next. The mind that is still is the mind that never forfeits its freedom and is able to constantly keep rolling and rolling and rolling.
The mind that neither ignores anything nor attaches to anything is not something that is obtained through training. It is the natural "power" with which you entered this world. Those of us who are called Zen monks enter the monastery in order to awaken through practice to this power that we inherently possess, to freely demonstrate it, and to bring it to life."

Thursday, September 2, 2010

On Creating the Schedule...

Three At Home, One Away


Did you know that when Dartmouth decided to go co-ed, in 1972, that they at the same time adopted their “Dartmouth Plan,” a year-round schedule broken into quarters. Dartmouth hangs it’s hat on this unique program. It is said that they created this to increase enrollment without increasing the facilities. However, the rumor is that they adopted this plan because it allowed them to admit women without reducing the number of men. The “Dartmouth Plan”, therefore, was apparently created as a way to assuage the resistance of losing the number of males enrolled, while allowing the school to go co-ed.


Sometimes, strange forces drive school schedules. The derivation of SEED’s Three at Home, One Away schedule came out of a brainstorm with Marco Morrone, a former colleague. We were working at a start-up school in Northern California, renting an odd space in a performance center. The school, at the time, was six years old. We had grown from 40 in the first year to 215, and we were busting out at the seams.


Marco and I shared the same free period, and without a classroom or office to work in, we sat on the floor of our reception area. We were told that soon we’d have our new campus: the money was there, the land was secured, the builders were ready. But, wary of the optimism, we would waste our entire prep period concocting wild ways in which to deal with too many students for too few classrooms.


We talk about the “Ah-ha” or light-bulb moment for our students. Well this felt like a full on electrical storm when we stumbled upon the rough draft of SEED’s year-long schedule. Like the Dartmouth Plan, we looked at a quarter system. Unlike the Big Green, whose students have one quarter of vacation per year, we recognized that we could use that quarter as an equitable enrichment time. Therefore, every quarter, one grade level is off-campus, involved in life-changing experiential education.


Many studies show that the education gap is more closely tied to disparate vacation experiences rather than differences in school systems. In other words, those students with access are able to do things over their breaks which keep their brains ticking; while many underprivileged students are unable to spend the time as academically productive. SEED’s schedule would give all its students the opportunity to enrich their studies with global and local exposure and experience.


Imagine the energy that this would create. Every quarter, a grade level is away, sending e-mails back to school and posting blogs on their experiences. Every quarter, a grade level has just returned- changed, enthused, motivated. Every quarter, a grade level is preparing for their trip- excited, anxious, curious. The schedule creates perpetual energy, curiosity, engagement and excitement.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

On Travel and Experiential Education...

When I walked through the iron gate and into the front hall of our cozy house on the corner, the ripe smell and noisy crowd were unfamiliar. The house served as my safe zone - my mama’s huge and embracing arms welcomed me home each day and gave me the quiet I needed to process a day filled with Xhosa, lamb skulls, questions, smiles, and stares. That day, however, did not provide the quiet and warmth that I needed after a tiring day. Instead the warmth that filled the house was that of family coming together and slaughtered goat intestines being cooked on the stove. Were it not for the six goats, bare and legs flung up to the ceiling as if running in heaven, I might not have known the peculiar smell floating out of the kitchen area. That day the complicated and loving wide circle of family I was welcomed into rivaled the complicated family structure I had at home. The unfamiliarity was familiar at the same time - the two months I had spent living in Newanga Township, Port Elizabeth, South Africa, had made the feelings of unfamiliar and uncomfortable a way of life rather than an anomaly. As I wove my way through the crowd I found my mama and she gurgled a deep laugh and cooed “Oh Kelsey” in her loving and protective way. Her smile embraced me first, but the enveloping hug that followed was all that I needed to feel at peace.


I learned more from my Mama than I did from many of the teachers I have had in my life. It was not in a four wall classroom, but in our little home nestled among other homes on a small street, that gave me insight into the concept of Experiential Education.


A dear teacher to my heart and my ethos, my Mama will forever remain as a woman who guided me not just in the Xhosa language and culture, but in how to live in a diverse and complicated world.


-Kelsey Sullivan, Co-founder of SEED Academy