Earlier this week, I walked down to our gym right before lunchtime. We recently created some new lunch protocols, given the omicron wave and knowing from the research that mealtimes pose higher risk of transmission: we are asking students to spread out at 20 long tables spaced across the gym. The trick is that we […]
We will be away from school on Monday in celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This year, we will begin a new tradition: an annual MLK Day Speaker Series. I’m delighted to announce that our inaugural speaker will be Angela Onwuachi-Willig, the dean of BU School of Law. Dean Onwuachi-Willig’s fascinating research explores the intersection […]
I had the pleasure of watching BUA’s annual Concerto Competition on Tuesday. Three students competed, one on saxophone, one on clarinet, and one on violin; they played challenging pieces from Villa-Lobos, Debussy, and Mozart, and did so beautifully. This language appeared at the bottom of the program: “[T]he winner will play their concerto movement with […]
One of our long-time teachers recently asked me why I visit classes. My practice is to pop in for 10-15-minute observations of each teacher at least once per quarter, followed by a short sit-down for me to get more context, offer praise, and ask questions; our Associate Head of School, Dr. White, follows the same […]
Last Friday night, the girls’ soccer team won the league championship in a hard-fought 2-0 win. It was a cool 45 degrees on the metal bleachers, but the excitement, camaraderie, and ample pizza kept our parent and student spectators warm. The newly-formed pep squad led the cheering, and the girls on the field provided the […]
I visited a ninth-grade English class yesterday. The group was discussing an early passage in Homer’s Odyssey where Telemachus, Odysseus’s son, was expressing frustration about the bad behavior of the suitors, who were vying for his mother’s hand in his father’s long absence during his return from Troy and shamefully taking advantage of the hospitality […]
Last year, several students teamed up with our admission officers to record video information sessions for prospective students and families — not an unusual move, particularly when the pandemic made campus visits complicated. The wrinkle? They recorded those sessions in Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, and Mandarin Chinese — four languages commonly spoken in our students’ homes. Inclusion requires action. It is necessary, […]
I taught American history for many years, and every fall at about this time we would have a debate in class about whether we should continue celebrating Columbus Day or rename that holiday in some way (I assured students that either way there would still be a day off from school — anticipating their most […]
“I’m just not good at art.” How many of us have said, thought, or heard that at some point in our lives? Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of visiting three art classes. I watched students in first-year visual art working on contour drawings of simple objects stacked on their tables. A dozen ninth […]
It’s time to rethink the student participation grade. Every three weeks, our teachers gather after classes for professional learning meetings — a chance for us to share ideas, learn from one another, and improve our practice, all in the interest of serving our students better. The topic for this week’s meeting was student participation. What […]