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At a recent Monday Morning Assembly, I spoke to the students about finishing the year strong and the importance of putting in the same amount of dedication, effort, and enthusiasm toward their academic work that they have demonstrated for the first eight months of school. It’s hard to believe that we only have 16 more days of school before the summer holiday. The finish line of the school year is in full site!
By many measures we have had an outstanding year in the Lower School, but I would like to draw attention to one metric that cannot be easily quantified or observed on campus.
On Friday, May 4, our Grade 5 students returned from their class trip to McKeever Environmental Learning Center. This incredible outdoor experience for our students allows them to gain independence by being away from home for a week and to learn about conservation first-hand. They spend almost all of their waking hours outside, working together in small groups, exploring and observing, and laughing together. The staff at McKeever is made up of both full-time employees and college students, who work there as a requirement for their university student teaching experience.
Our Academy faculty, who chaperone the trip, were told multiple times what a great bunch of students we have at our school. They were impressed by how well our students listened to instruction, how interested and enthusiastic they were toward learning new concepts, and how well they got along with each other.
And it’s not just the McKeever staff that speaks highly of our students. [Read More...]
I came out of my office to greet a second grade girl shyly approaching my door. I greeted her by name and asked if she was looking for me. She said yes, handing me a folded piece of paper and saying, “We want our zip line back.”
After a number of renovations to playing fields adjacent to the Lower School playground, the existing basketball and four square courts had been removed and not yet replaced. In evaluating the entire playground area, it was felt that the zip line, a large apparatus not well used by very many students could be removed to make room for the basketball and for square courts.
Well, our Grade 2 students said, “Not so fast!” and put together a petition, which they all signed (all without involving a single adult as far as I could tell). Well, I thanked the Grade 2 emissary and told her I would consider her petition, quickly writing to our director of buildings and grounds and our head of Lower School to ask that further work on the playground be halted until we could evaluate the concerns of our students.
In the end, we were able to affirm that the numbers of students who would benefit from the changes would far exceed the number of disappointed students, so I went to meet with the entire second grade to report on the progress of their petition. I congratulated them for their advocacy of an issue of importance to them and told them that even though they had not achieved their goal of having the zip line restored, they needed to know that their concerns had been taken seriously.
When I mentioned four square, the room devolved into a robust discussion about how much the kids love the game and a review of exactly how it is played: young minds moving positively forward!
What an extraordinary display of independent civic action on the part of these remarkable children. As I told them, when they were faced with something they did not like, they did not merely say, “Oh well, there is nothing we can do.” Rather they advocated for themselves and their position, demonstrating a high degree of maturity, initiative, and organization. If any adult worries about the future, I say don’t, and I point to the example we have right here at Sewickley Academy with our own Grade 2 students!
At a recent Monday Morning Assembly, I spoke to the students about finishing the year strong and the importance of putting in the same amount of dedication, effort, and enthusiasm toward their academic work that they have demonstrated for the first eight months of school. It’s hard to believe that we only have 16 more days of school before the summer holiday. The finish line of the school year is in full site!
