by Susie Fahrer | Nov 1, 2021 | Blogs, CEO's Kaleidoscope
October 2021 Kaleidoscope
The turn of the seasons is in full swing. The morning greets us with crisp autumn air and the afternoon sun provides a welcome warm up for outdoor activities. This time of year is filled with breathtaking beauty. A final burst of bounty before the stillness of winter. The natural flow of the seasons, each having its own turn in time, can be symbolic of our own rhythms for health and wellness.
This month’s Kaleidoscope* brings Rainbow’s focus on Health and Wellness to the forefront. In doing so, we provide an opportunity for reflection, contemplation, and progression.
Holistic Approach
Rainbow’s holistic approach to learning is at the heart of student wellness, especially as we learn to negotiate the evolving impacts of pandemic education. Our student’s social and emotional needs are nurtured through strategies like providing adequate time for transitions, breaks, and play. Leading with a lens on holistic wellness helps to counterbalance the cultural narrative that schools must “make up for lost time.” Instead, Rainbow is taking the time to attune with our students, and build a responsive and responsible approach focused on growth. This helps us calibrate our learning environment with the children’s current needs preserving their sacred relationship with life long learning.
- Gathering benchmarks and data is another way that we are building an approach that is responsive and relevant. Teachers will be releasing progress reports to families in November with Parent Teacher Conferences (November 22-23rd) serving as a tool for individualized discussion and follow up.
- Our Wednesday training schedule is a critical resource enabling time to focus on best practices in the classroom. On Wednesday afternoons, teachers collaborate and innovate, cultivating a dynamic experience for our students.
- A Rainbow education inspires students to achieve in the present, and prepares them for life long learning. Our engaging Middle School program features rich and meaningful course work, diverse elective experiences, outstanding educators, and a finely crafted curriculum fostering adolescent thriving. Come learn more and hear from our insightful alumni about the transition from Omega Middle School to their High School of choice. This is one of the most powerful ways to understand the value of completing the Rainbow journey through 8th grade. Join us on November 9th from 6:30-8:00pm. RSVP to the event here.
Social and Emotional Domains
The social and emotional domains are integrated in every classroom, and we have a fantastic team of counselors to support the teachers, students, and families when the need for more personal care is present.
- The counseling team includes Will Ray, Mark Ackerman, and Jamie Rischitelli. They have coordinated their schedules so that we always have a counselor on campus. The Counseling Program is available for general support in the classrooms, and can provide more personalized sessions for students and families as needed.
- Additionally, we are launching Affinity Groups for our BIPOC students in November. Several emails have been shared about the details of this initiative. Most importantly, it furthers our investment in cultivating a diverse community that also experiences a culture of belonging and connection.
- In the spirit of inclusion and wellness, Rainbow is in the process of establishing a Pronoun policy. This is currently being reviewed through various Dynamic Governance circles and will be shared with the community as soon as it is finalized. This policy brings visibility and transparency to establishing a culture of safety, sincerity, and allyship.
Culture of Engagement
A culture of engagement creates a community that is connected, collaborative, and compassionate. Since the launch of the school year, there have been several highlights within our community exemplifying this value.
- The Rainbow Community School Board put together a video explaining their role in the long term success of our school. The Board is an outstanding group of volunteers that guides the school’s future planning in partnership with the Executive Director. They are an integral part of our governance model and a resounding source of support to Administrative leadership.
- Additionally, our Parent council is a governing circle whose primary function is to help community relationships flourish. From teacher lunches to initiating class gatherings, their impact is powerful and appreciated. The meetings are open and anyone is welcome.
- Joining a circle is another way to invest in Rainbow. Our circle meetings are published in Rainbow Reminders, and are open for anyone to join.
- In the spirit of celebrating community engagement, we are planning to reinvigorate a tracking system for volunteer hours. This will help support efforts directed at outside funding and grant opportunities. More details will be shared in an upcoming Rainbow Reminders.
Health and Safety
Along with emotional wellbeing, our physical safety is a top priority at Rainbow. This includes continued reflection on our Covid Mitigations aligning ourselves with best practices and relevant data.
- Our pool testing program has been running for the past two weeks. The students and teachers have quickly adapted to this routine and we move efficiently through the process. So far, the pool reports have been negative. We will only send out notification and next steps if a positive pool is received.
- At the start of school, our mitigation strategies were built in alignment with CDC guidance. Additionally, the context of high infection rates, a fully in person model that included our largest cohorts since the beginning of the pandemic (Preschool, K-2, 3-5, and 6-8), and the return of the Rainbow’s End program informed a structured and cautious launch. Despite these significant changes, we have experienced great success to date. As a result, we are reviewing our mitigation guidelines to consider shifting our masking protocols outdoors and exploring more long term adaptations, as vaccination becomes an option for more of our student body.
- To help us explore the landscape as it relates to Rainbow Community School and Omega Middle School, we are asking that all families complete THIS SURVEY.
Please have your information completed by November 2, 2021.
Yours In Partnership and Gratitude,
Susie Fahrer
Executive Director
*Communication is central to the success of our community. In collaboration with weekly publications like Rainbow Reminders and regular classroom newsletters, Kaleidoscope captures the bigger picture of what is happening on campus and exciting news for Rainbow’s future.
by Susie Fahrer | Aug 24, 2021 | Blogs, Director's Blog
The first full week of school is here and I find myself filled with gratitude. Already students and families are finding the rhythms of drop off, pick up and everything in between. There is a happy and hopeful energy all around campus as students co-create their classroom culture, mascots, and learning routines.
Communication is central to the success of our community. In collaboration with weekly publications like Rainbow Reminders and regular classroom newsletters, Kaleidoscope captures the bigger picture of what is happening on campus and exciting news for Rainbow’s future.
The opening weeks of school can feel like information overload. While the return to school is often filled with many highlights, it can also feel like we have shifted into high gear. School preparations, paperwork, Covid protocols, and campus procedures start to blend together, and it can be difficult to keep up. Here are a few ways to help you regroup, and make sure you have all the information you need.
Parent Handbooks
Our preschool, K-8, and Covid Handbook can all be found on our website. These documents have lots of information. We respectfully request that you read the handbook aligned with your child’s grade level and the Covid Mitigation Document. All families should submit an acknowledgement form that these documents have been read.
- Calendar – Our school calendar is located on our website. Upcoming events are also published regularly in Rainbow Reminders and classroom newsletters.
- Parent Plus Portal – This is our school database. This will be the tool used to share school wide forms, communication, and alerts. It is also the location of your child’s narrative report (P-8) and grades (6-8 only).
- We are here to help – Please know it is always ok to reach out to administration, or your child’s teacher, if you are in need of support. These resources are great, and sometimes it can be critical to talk things through or speak to someone directly. During the day you can call the main office line and/or text or call Kate B. or Susie directly.
Listening Conferences
Our narrative and conference reporting flow is designed to build a strong story arch to your child’s learning journey. Next Thursday and Friday, September 2 & 3, will be the first step along that path with Listening Conferences. This is a time for families and teachers to build a shared understanding of how best to support each child’s holistic growth this year. The teacher primarily takes on a listening role. The intent is to learn from the expertise of the family in establishing a safe, aligned, and responsive space for each child to develop. Below is a graphic that shares the primary reporting flow between teachers and families.
Read more about Teaching the Whole Child here.
Feedback
Feedback is one of the many ways we grow to serve you better. One way we gather feedback is through an anonymous end of year survey that is completed by students, staff, and families. One trend that came out of this feedback was a desire to have more clarity with our resources through Student Support and Counseling. These two pages were added to the Preschool and K-8 Handbooks to help with building that transparency.
Another trend framed parent’s desire to learn more about how Rainbow’s holistic approach evolves as students matriculate. Particular interest focused on Omega Middle School and how the 7 domains integrate with a dynamic and rigorous academic experience to build a strong foundation for high school and adolescent development. This topic is truly inspirational, and a point of pride for Rainbow. We will be bringing visibility to the learning trajectory from preschool through 8th grade through highlights in Rainbow Reminders, subsequent in depth explorations in Kaleidoscope, and more.
Safety
Safety is central to a thriving community. Fortunately, one silver lining to pandemic education is that we have built a strong foundation in personal and collective responsibility for our wellness. Moving into this year, I hope we will continue to embrace the motto, “We Are In This Together” recognizing that we each have a role to play in maintaining our community health.
Masks are a primary tool in the fight against Covid-19 transmission and the commitment to keeping kids in school. Current guidance distinguishes the pathway for school exclusion as a result of Covid contact based on masking. Therefore, we would like to request the following compliance with masking protocol. If any family needs help with purchasing masks, please reach out to Love In Action.
- Use a mask that fits snuggly but comfortably around the nose, jaw and chin.
- Use a mask that does not require consistent adjustment throughout the day.
- Gators are used with the addition of a disposable mask or double layered for appropriate fit and thickness.
- Masks with a ventilator are not used on campus.
Health Checks are now completed at home before school starts. You have likely seen our sandwich boards with the health screening questions. Please be reminded that students should not be on campus if they are not well or if they have contact with someone with Covid or Covid-like symptoms. Sometimes it can be difficult to determine the true status of your child’s health. Reach out to Susie, Jessy, or Kate at any time for support in determining your health status. Text is the best way to reach us with important updates on health status so we can attend to this information in a timely manner.
Traffic flow on campus should always move slowly to ensure the safety of our community. The upper and lower campus parking lots are one way driving.
- Upper campus enters from Haywood Rd. and exits onto State Street.
- Lower campus traffic enters from State Street and exits on Pennsylvania Ave.
- Omega pick up can result in a long car rider line. If you are the first to arrive, please pull all the way to the edge of the lot by Pennsylvania Ave. The cottage will be on your right hand side. We will bring your child to you. Additionally, parents can park in the Omega lot and we will walk students to your car. These two steps will help ensure we don’t have a pick up line that backs onto State Street.
- Traffic directions are also part of our walkway systems. When dropping off or picking up for preschool or afterschool by the butterfly house, please observe the one-way walking patterns and physically distance if there is a line.
Affinity groups are another way that we are supporting safety and wellness within our community. An affinity group is a designated “brave space,” where everyone in that group shares a particular identity. This identity can be based on race, gender, sexual orientation, language, nationality, physical/mental ability, socio-economic class, family structure, religion, etc. Affinity groups can be a place for people in a community to come together to learn more about their identifiers and to feel more connected based on those identifiers. At Rainbow, we collectively reaffirm our commitment to a culture of caring for all by beginning these Affinity spaces for our least represented populations. We will be sharing more with the community about this initiative in the coming weeks.
This is just the beginning and our Dynamic Governance model helps us foster engagement and feedback on behalf of all stakeholders as the year continues. A reminder that today (8/24 at 3:30pm) is our first Equity Circle of the school year and that our first Parent Council meeting is this Friday (8/27 at 9:30am). The Finance Team begins the following week and Pollinators will be up and running soon with tentative meetings scheduled for Tuesday, September 7th from 9:00-10:30 and another meeting on Tuesday, September 14th from 9-11. Look for these and more opportunities to get involved in Rainbow Reminders.
In Gratitude for All That Is and All That Will Be,
Susie Fahrer
Executive Director
by Cynthia Calhoun | Jan 28, 2020 | Blogs, Home Page News
Fourth graders figure out their favorite Greek deity
We headed over to 4th grade recently where our students were immersed in the world of ancient Greece. They learned about mythology and creative arts. Their teacher, Kurt, said they really loved learning about the Greek gods and doing hands-on activities related to their learning.
Because of that, Kurt let them do a special activity that would further their learning with Greek mythology. They investigated their favorite god by reading a story, and created designs using paper shaped like pottery. These designs were based on what they knew about the deity they studied.
Hercules – probably the most famous Greek deity
They started off their lesson with a short video about Hercules. They talked about how the story of Hercules is from long ago when “chaos reigned.” Students realized there were many references to pottery and design, as well as other historical events.
Greek Pottery
Fourth graders had a chance to look at examples of ancient Greek pottery. They saw references to Achilles, a centaur, minotaur, war and peace, Hercules and more. Once they had a chance to look at different examples, their teacher explained that stories they were about to read would also inform the designs they’d create on their pottery.
Stories about Greek gods
Each student paired up with another and chose their favorite Greek deity to study. They were allowed to read the story to each other, silently, or alternate between silent reading and reading aloud as they liked. Once finished, each student created their paper pottery. Essentially, they created a stencil using one piece of paper, cut it out, and finally glued it onto paper with a brown background.
After students finished gluing their stenciled piece onto the background, they could begin drawing designs. They worked with pencils and black markers. Some designs were quite eloquent and detailed. One requirement was to reference the story they read within their pottery design.
These pottery designs complemented the rest of their unit on Greek mythology. Intricate and detailed, each pottery piece reflected each student’s drawing style. As students concluded the unit, they did further research on their chosen Greek god. This research led to a one-page report, which they later presented to their class.
This one lesson touched on several different domains: the social and emotional, in which students were able to collaborate with one another, and worked together to complete their stories and pottery projects. They engaged in the mental domain in researching more about Greek deities. They were able to use the creative domain with their pottery designs and even touched on the spiritual domain with regard to Greek beliefs and mythology itself. All teachers at Rainbow create units that incorporate the seven different domains at least once.
by Cynthia Calhoun | Dec 9, 2019 | Blogs, Home Page News
Classification of shoes to teach valuable lessons
We headed to second grade recently to find students doing classification of…shoes! There is a very interesting reason why.
As students started out this lesson, they began with some silent reading time. These quiet moments helped get them ready for what was next.
It was so quiet you could hear their minds “thinking.” Little did they know, they would need their sharp minds and their shoes for the subsequent portion of their lesson.
Their teacher, Eddy, had them take their paired shoes and separate them. They put one on the checkered green rug in their main classroom, and the other on the green rug in the library/centering room.
Classification of shoes in different ways
The kiddos separated into two groups with the following instruction: to group or separate the shoes according to a system they would create. In other words, students could separate shoes by color, brand, size, or some other determining factor. They brainstormed different ideas of how they might classify their shoes within their groups.
Each group chatted and came up with a plan that all could agree with and implement.
Neither group had any idea how the other was classifying their shoes. However, they each came up with very different ways of grouping and organizing their shoes.
In the library room, students grouped shoes by their overall color. In the main room, students grouped them by how they “closed” or secured to the foot, such as with velcro, slip-on, shoestrings, etc.
Once they did that, their teacher asked them to reclassify their shoes and come up with a second way to group them all. Students in the library decided to group by the “purpose of the shoe,” such as hiking or running. The other group classified all the different shoes by size.
Why classify shoes?
Why would students do this?
They brainstormed about labeling and classifying things to make sense of the world and understand it better. Eddy asked them, “aren’t there lots of different kinds of trees?” All students agreed that there were. He asked them about animals, plants, and seeds. Everyone agreed that, yes, there are many different varieties of each of these. It is in classifying and grouping plants, animals, and seeds, humans can identify what they are and understand what they do and their role in the world ecosystem.
Learning about the animal kingdom
After everyone got their shoes back, they began talking about the scientific system of classification. They learned about the five main kingdoms of living things: plants, animals, fungi, bacteria (monera), and one-celled organisms (protists). Later, they went more in-depth with the animal kingdom. Eddy gave each student a piece of paper with the name of an animal on it. Each student had to determine if the animal they had was a mammal, reptile, amphibian, fish, or a type of bird. Some of them were tricky! Did you know that a whale is a mammal? Or that a skink is a type of reptile?
Students walked away with a broader understanding of why people classify the world around them. They explored a number of ways in which it’s possible to do so. What a fun way to use methods of scientific thinking to reason, deduce, classify, as well as integrate other skills such as collaboration, discussion and reaching a consensus.
We love how Eddy integrated elements of the 7 Domains. Students were able to move around the classroom. They worked together to complete their tasks which reinforced the social domain. This process of reasoning and classification touched on the mental domain. Talking about organisms in nature brought in the natural domain. One lesson with multiple approaches. That is a day in the life of a Rainbow student.
by Cynthia Calhoun | Oct 30, 2019 | Blogs, Home Page News
Learning about the Rock Cycle
First graders have been studying the rock cycle, and they’re learning it through the seven domains: the mental domain, creative, and natural, among others.
The story of Piedra
Have you heard of Piedra? She’s the main character in the story their teacher, Rachel, told. Students gathered around while they heard the tale of Piedra, whose journey spanned MILLIONS of years.
Rachel told of how Piedra lived in Appalachia, then made her way to a nearby river where she stayed for hundreds of thousands of years. Over the course of that time, she witnessed turtles, ducks and river otters going about their lives. Little by little, Piedra rolled and rolled downriver, eventually finding herself out at sea. Piedra saw sea animals that she’d never seen before swimming all around her.
Millions of years in the making…
Gradually sand and silt from the sea bottom began to cover her up until she was completely buried, taking about 20,000 years to happen. Piedra stayed there for another million years until she felt a warmth coming from the earth. She felt a whoosh and before she knew what happened, she erupted through a volcano as hot lava, and immediately cooled once she hit the air. She emerged once again as a rock upon a mountain. Only this time, she was a rock who had changed.
Through this compelling story, students learned about how a rock might go through the entire rock cycle. They talked about other cycles they might be familiar with: the lava cycle, the water cycle, and the butterfly cycle.
Illustrating the Rock Cycle
After students heard the story, they had an opportunity to create an illustration of the rock cycle. Miss Rachel led them through a guided drawing.
They began with a line.
Followed by a volcano.
Next they erased the left part of the line and replaced it with a wavy ocean line.
They followed that with a “lava ball”…
…that grew into a lava chute.
They erased the top of the volcano to allow the lava to exit the earth, and had some fun drawing globs of lava “splashing out and spilling over the side”.
Next came creative layers that represented millions of years of creation.
The final steps were to go over their pencil lines in marker…
…and fill in their drawings with watercolors.
Our first graders now can tell you all about the rock cycle, starting with a tiny little rock on the side of a mountain.
