Off and running, or should we say dancing in 2010!
Hauoli Makahiki Hou 2010! Aloha, families! After the two-week interim, it was a joy to welcome the students back to school, many them wide-awake and enthusiastic as they stepped out from their cars or walked onto campus. As you can imagine, the children were brimming with yuletide stories of Christmas gifts, family outings, and New Year celebrations, and the teachers made sure there was plenty of time this past Wednesday morning to share these memories at morning circle. What does a school do during the interim? Many teachers enjoyed the holidays with their families and friends, some traveling to be with family across the Pacific. On campus, the business and school offices remained open while maintenance crews did extensive cleaning in the classrooms, such as floor waxing and carpet cleaning. Speaking for the faculty, I know how much we appreciate our maintenance teams and the outstanding job they do in keeping our facilities and campus safe, well maintained, and aesthetically pleasing.
Prior to Wednesday when students returned to school, the preschool and elementary faculty met on Monday to review school, professional, and personal goals and met in grade-level groups to plan second-semester curriculum inquiries. On Tuesday, the K-12 faculty gathered in our elementary dining room to hear a riveting presentation by Alfred Solis of the Buck Institute for Education, on project-based learning, another name for inquiry-based learning. This non-profit is focused on improving teaching and learning in the 21st century by creating and disseminating knowledge, practices, research, and products for effective learning, specifically project-based learning. The faculty is excited about this professional development resource, which will serve to improve our teaching schoolwide.
In an effort to deepen our understanding about learning at Mid-Pacific
Institute, all faculty members have begun classroom visits to each
other's classes. They've begun these non-evaluative observations in an
effort to collect data on demonstrations of learning throughout the
school. Tony Wagner introduced us to the notion of "collaborative
inquiry," which will be a method for assessing the educational
landscape at MPI. This schoolwide research is noteworthy because the
teachers themselves are conducting it, and we'll have time to discuss
our findings on the next professional development day, February 12 (a
no-school day). The three principals have been working collaboratively
as a leadership team to guide the professional development of our
respective faculties. You'll be hearing more about our ongoing
Schools-of-the-Future efforts. Back on the preschool/elementary
campus, the K-5 teachers will continue their lunch meetings, during
which time we discuss professional reading, analyze student work, and
discuss teaching videos. It is an invigorating time to be a teacher at
MPI!
I'd like to invite you to attend Salsa Under the Stars, a preschool
through high school community event, organized by representatives
throughout the school. The event is this Friday, January 15, at the
elementary campus, 6:00-9:00pm. Rolando Sanchez and his band will
perform music while we salsa under the stars (let's hope for clear
weather!). I understand there will be lots to eat, thanks to the
donations we are beginning to receive. We're grateful to Diane Koshi
who is the originator of this brilliant idea for a school community
event and has expertly organized a school leadership planning team
whose members are just as excited as she is about the event. The
children and faculty are learning a salsa line dance to perform on
Friday.
