Introducing New Faculty Members!
Great News! Sue Ford has agreed to be our new music teacher, beginning with the 2013-14 school year. She has also begun working with a few Rainbow grades this year — conducting a music residency with preschool, kindergarten, first grade, and 5/6 for Imagine. Sue used to teach music at Rainbow, but left to pursue a full time position as Evergreen’s music teacher for the last seven years. She is well known for the children’s marimba band she leads in Asheville. Sue has decided to retire early from full time teaching, so she was really excited to accept our part-time music position. Sue is wonderful with children, has a vast repertoire, and will be really fun to collaborate with. We are grateful to Joy Black for coordinating the music program for the second half of this year, in-between permanent music teachers. Joy has brought in diverse music styles for the kids and she has brought “joy” into music class. Thank you so much!
By now, you should have received an email introduction to Melissa Scott, Rainbow’s Sixth Grade teacher for next year. This is a new position because 5th and 6th will not be combined. Melissa has an MA in teaching from Brown University and some incredible experience as an environmental educator, literacy coach, and curriculum coordinator. We are excited to welcome another amazing educator onto our prestigious faculty!
Also, please introduce yourself to Jessica Bachar and Mary Yacovelli, who are the interim preschool teachers while Teddy Humpert and Kate Couture have their babies. Jessica and Mary are very accomplished educators at both the preschool and elementary levels. Some of you already know Jessica, who is mother of Jaggar in kindergarten. The faculty held a Blessingway ceremony and gift-giving party for Teddy, Kate and their partners in March. It is beautiful to watch our family grow! The next addition to the Rainbow family will be Jessy Decker’s baby who is due in July. Wow! What is in the water in the preschool? The Saga of “What shall we call ourselves?” continues…
Okay, I heard some of you loud and clear. On the Rainbow name survey, a few people said, “Enough, Already! Either keep the name, or choose a new one, but get on with it!” We have let this process linger for almost a year now. There have been long periods of time that we have simply let it sit, as it didn’t seem prudent to move too quickly since the decision we make will be very permanent. Nonetheless, our goal was to make a decision by the end of this school year, and it looks like we will meet that goal. Elly Wells Marketing held a listening session in March, where they listened to a group of people comprised of two parents, two board members, two administrators, two teachers, and one alumni parent. They were also given the results of the survey we sent out. Over 70 of you responded – a higher response rate than we have had on any previous survey! Despite the great response and lots of good feedback, which were very helpful, the surveys did not provide any clear direction. In fact, the largest number of respondents were neutral about the name with about an even number liking or not liking it on each side of neutral. The only crystal clear aspect was that if we keep Rainbow and/or Mountain, the word “Children’s” can be eliminated. A few people pointed out that if the point of changing the name is to broaden the appeal of Rainbow Mountain for marketing purposes, then maybe we should consider that admissions is busier than ever before. Good point!
There were a couple of valid concerns expressed in the name survey comments that deserve a response. One was that we should focus our resources on the classroom and not on marketing. Please be assured that is always what we do. In fact, we used to spend less than 1% of our budget on marketing. In the past two years, we increased our marketing spending to 1.6% of the budget. Even though that is still a very small slice, it allowed us the funds to make a beautiful video about the school, improve the website, develop our Facebook page, and increase the quality of our advertising. We are reaping the rewards of our increased investment with the vast increase in admissions, which will quickly trickle down to improving the programming for every child. When enrollment is up, everyone benefits, especially the children. Fortunately, Elly Wells, who is sympathetic to the needs of non-profit organizations, is giving us a great deal on the branding work she is doing.
Another concern was a question about if we were looking at changing the name because of confusion with the LGBQT movement. Personally, I believe the biggest concerns about our name are that it is perceived as a preschool (only), and that the name has some cliché elements to it that perhaps keep people from regarding it has a credible educational institution. In addition to that, a much smaller issue is that Rainbow is a brand that has been used by several businesses and movements, including South Africa’s Rainbow Nation, the Rainbow Gathering, and the Gay and Lesbian movement. While these are all movements that Rainbow Mountain is sympathetic to and/or aligned with, we don’t want people to confuse us as being synonymous. That is what branding is all about – defining yourself as you, not to be confused with others– even others with whom we have a lot in common. Rainbow Mountain will always be an open and affirming community for all types of families, no matter what our name.
Playground Update
Once the roofs for the gnome village are completed and the structure poles cemented in, progress will be quick. I estimate the project will be done shortly after May 1. Then, the beautiful new preschool playground will be built this summer. Landscaping will also begin this summer, which will dramatically improve the aesthetics of the playground. We are still almost $15,000 short of our fundraising goal. We’ve raised 82% of the goal for the playground, so we may have to decide if we need to cut back on the plans. We would all like (especially the children) to build 100% of the fabulous plans, rather than 82% of them. I think there is lots of hope that a few final donations will roll in to make it happen! Any donations turned in before June 30 will be applied to this year’s campaign – there is still a chance to have your family’s name on the gnome village structure along with other donors. It’s going to be really special. Many thanks to the parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and students that helped us fund this project through monetary donations, donating materials, and their precious time!
Sheila is very busy!
Last year we had two tours in the month of March. To give you an idea of how different and busy admissions is: Lately, we average close to two tours a day! It is people like you, who believe in holistic education, and have seen the quality of our teachers and the results for your children, who are recommending Rainbow to new families. Many of you will be receiving a $300 discount on your tuition for next year, thanks to a family you referred who is enrolling. We can’t wait for you to meet the many wonderful new families and children who will be here next year. Thanks for all the great referrals!
The Biggest News of All
Taking into the consideration our busy admissions and our need for classroom space, the board is considering the most affordable and appropriate ways to reach our goal of having enough classrooms for each grade to hold 15 -20 kids per class. At the board’s March meeting, they voted to develop a master facilities plan for Rainbow that will include a round Deltec structure, large enough for four new classrooms! Jeff McGahee, an Asheville-based site planner who has done a lot of great work around town (including most recently, the site planning for Wicked Weed Brewery), will be doing a preliminary master facilities plan, based on physical needs and feedback received from parents and other stakeholders during strategic planning last year. This is very exciting and very challenging, as we have a huge number of factors to consider, including working around our many large and beautiful trees, run-off considerations, sustainability, and more. The goal is to have a plan by mid-May. If our enrollment grows sufficiently, and we can conduct a successful capital campaign, we may be able to build as soon as the summer of 2014!!!
Summer Fun:
Three artists (and Rainbow moms) are offering three separate weeks of arts programming (and lots of other activities, with academics integrated in as well). SOAR – Summer Of Art at Rainbow – is definitely going to be a memorable experience for your rising 1st , 2nd, 3rd, or 4th grader.
Also, Elana Kann, another Rainbow mom, is organizing a permaculture program for Omega students, and alumni. This will be taught be permaculture expert, Chuck Marsh, founder of Earthhaven. Chuck is a pretty dynamic guy!
Springtime is busy and creative
The main focus for the staff over that last several weeks was preparing for conferences. Just writing the narratives alone requires 20 – 50 hours that each teacher finds outside of class time to complete – and they work so diligently on making thorough and thoughtful reports.
Therefore, for our February training, we did a mandala-making workshop that was an opportunity for spiritual fellowship with each other, inner guidance as individuals, and enjoyable. Our March training was with Donovan Zimmerman, our main Imagine artist. Along with some hard-working parents, they began designing and assembling some large puppets to be used in our Imagine celebration of the arts. Donovan of Paperhand Puppets out of Chapel Hill (similar to Bread and Puppets), will be working with many of the elementary level classes from April 29 – May 3 as our main Imagine artist-in-residence. (By the way, Donovan will spend that week in Asheville with his wife and 1 year old daughter. We are looking for a Rainbow family who is willing to host the family. Donovan is fun, friendly, and will be a wonderful house guest!) This promises to be the most intriguing, fun, and creative Imagine yet. The big Imagine performance will be on Friday, May 17 in the afternoon. The Imagine committee has yet to narrow down the exact time, but it will be approximately from noon – 4pm. Please mark your calendars, and set that afternoon aside in order to see the performance.
More Spring busy-ness: I won’t list all of the events coming up in detail, as you have Rainbow Reminders for that, but some of the highlights are Grandparents Tea, staff appreciation day, the student talent show (many peoples’ favorite event of the year), May Day, and of course Imagine. There is also an open house on April 10, and you may have friends you want to refer for that event. This is a great opportunity to meet your child’s teacher for next year, ask questions, and find out a little about next year. Of course, friends and neighbors are always welcome to come to any Rainbow events. Spring is always a time for blossoming!
Academic Achievement of Rainbow Learners: Alumni Performance After Rainbow
We wanted to track our alumni performance after Rainbow and share just how well our students perform.
Finding data that accurately reflects how our holistic learners perform academically is complex.
Standardized tests certainly don’t reflect our curriculum or our beliefs about developmentally
appropriate education. Our curriculum emphasizes critical thinking and innovation.
In looking at facts and figures in math, Rainbow students score highest on quantitative reasoning and sometimes lower in rote computation. Language arts and reading scores commonly reflect slightly lower numbers on mechanics (spelling, punctuation, etc.), but high on reasoning, analysis, and organizing ideas.
Our Students Are Prepared to Lead
As we move into the age of artificial intelligence, our graduating students are prepared to be leaders. They know how to truly think, design, plan, and act. For a child who progresses sequentially through the grade levels at Rainbow, the early years allow ample time to explore, think, and learn content – especially science and social studies. Students explore their world, ponder it, organize, and eventually learn how to re-create it, with unique ideas.
In later years, students learn mechanics and perfect their computational skills. This allows them to learn those skills quickly and easily. This frees up time in the younger years so that they have every opportunity to “light up all areas of the brain.” They don’t have to overly drill on these few, narrow skills. By the end of 8th grade, our students are ready for high school and beyond. They often test out of introductory courses into more advanced levels of Math, English language and reading, as well as more advanced world language classes.
How Do Rainbow Graduates Do In High School?
One of the most common questions parents ask during the admissions process is “How well do Rainbow graduates perform in high school?” While the majority of our graduates attend SILSA – an all honors science inquiry-based program at Asheville High – RCS students attend a variety of schools.
The Data
Recently we asked SILSA and Asheville High to disaggregate the GPA data of Rainbow students attending high school there. They analyzed all 29 RCS graduates, from freshmen to seniors, and compared their GPA averages with the rest of the SILSA student population overall:
We’re grateful to SILSA for compiling this data for us! SILSA often compliments us on our Rainbow graduates. We get news of the many awards they win, and this numerical GPA data is very helpful in helping us track how well our students are doing.
The second most common school our graduates attend is Carolina Day School. We will be sure to collect a list of the many awards they will be garnering at the end of this year. Last year, a Rainbow graduate won the Faculty Prize at the Carolina Day graduation. This is a terrific honor. This prize is prestigious: all the faculty vote for a student based on character, academics, and service.
We are so very proud to send Rainbow students into the world who are accomplished, confident, and creative learners. They are prepared to be compassionate leaders in a changing world. They think out of the box and are poised to innovate.
In fact, our current 4th grade teacher, Susie, shared a funny story recently. In her first year at Rainbow, she was administering a standardized test to her students. She knew she was at a different kind of school when her students started coming up to her saying, “We don’t like any of these answers. Can we just write them in?” This is not unusual for an RCS student, and it’s what sets Rainbow Community School apart.
Kaleidoscope: The many colorful things happening at Rainbow, from the Executive Director
Hello beautiful Rainbow Community. I am so happy spring is here! It was a mild winter in terms of weather, but emotionally speaking, I found it hard to keep the ol’ disposition sunny during the dark days of winter. How about you? Was it a little harder to be patient with your family or community? At school, the kids seem fine with the darker days. In fact, in our fast-paced, extroverted world, the slower, inward days of winter are a time for the children to focus on academics. At your child’s conference, you will find they have accomplished a lot over the winter months.
No matter what one’s age, the gloriousness of spring lifts the spirits, and it is good to see everyone outside more often. Every grade, K-8 is busy with their citizen science outdoor projects. What is citizen science? It’s the collection and analysis of data that is contributed to national scientific projects. So essentially, our students are participating in collaborative projects with professional scientists throughout the year to help identify trends or changes locally, regionally and nationally! Here are the projects our students are participating in:
Kindergarten and 2nd grade – Nature’s Notebook – recording observations of local plants and animals.
First grade – Project Squirrel – tracking our squirrel population.
Third, fourth and fifth grade – Project eBird – tracking bird populations on our campus and other local areas.
Omega – Project Budburst – tracking plant phenophases throughout the year.
Speaking of science, did you see the cool one minute video that Michael and Ange made from the Design Fair and Science Fair? If not, CLICK HERE, and be sure to share it on social media!
Keeping Tuition Affordable: Help Crack the Nut! It sounds like there is going to be good attendance at this Community Circle meeting coming up on Tuesday, March 22nd, 4 – 6pm in the 4th Grade Classroom. Child care is free during the meeting. Please be a part of this important discussion. (More information is at the bottom of this Kaleidoscope.)
YOU make all the difference in the world
One of the strategies for “cracking the nut” is to raise grant funds, but this requires proof that our program works. That requires lots of data, and YOUR data counts, literally! PLEASE CLICK HERE NOW, and complete the research survey that PhD candidate, Alan Bush, has created. Alan is tabulating all the answers and providing us with a report. What an awesome opportunity – don’t miss it!
YOUR CHILDREN make all the difference in the world
Our Rainbow kids never cease to amaze me. I recently received this message from the highly esteemed Dr. Theo Dawson:
Hi Renee,
I’ve been checking out your students’ Reflective Judgment scores today and I think they may well be the most impressive results we’ve ever seen. It’s making my heart sing!
Warmly,
—Theo
Dr. Dawson, and her team at Lectica, has spent almost three decades creating tests that can assess student’s complexity of thinking and ability to reason ethically. This work is based out of research from the Mind, Brain, and Education program at Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the work of Kurt Fischer. Rainbow’s fourth through eighth graders took the Reflective Judgment test, which reveals how they think about inquiry, evidence, learning & the mind, truth & certainty, conflict resolution, persuasion, and deliberation.
As you can imagine, I was pretty thrilled to get a personal email from the head of the Lectica saying our students’ scores may be the best they have ever seen!! Soon, we will be receiving the formal score reports and sharing them with your children and with the world. It is so exciting to finally have real scientific evidence proving what we already knew – Rainbow’s holistic program creates kids who are highly ethical, empathetic, and cognitively developed to a level of sophistication that is beyond their years. (Of course, Rainbow students score very well on traditional standardized tests too, but those tests only show a small sliver of rote skill attainment, without showing complexity of thinking or soft skill development.)
Rainbow students’ high level of social/emotional skills will serve them very well when applying to colleges. The most prestigious universities are now changing their application processes to make the SAT optional, and to stress empathy as the most important quality– and this trend is going to become much stronger by the time your kids are applying for college. I recommend clicking the link for the following Washington Post article: To get into college, Harvard report advocates for kindness instead of overachieving.
Everyone a Changemaker!
Rainbow’s new Director of Equity, Kyja Wilburn, and I attended an Ashoka Changemaker Summit in February. CLICK HERE to view Kyja’s presentation on our experience at the summit, information about the Changemaker network, and some of her thoughts about building equity in schools. If you haven’t met Kyja yet, this is a great introduction. Incidentally, Kyja and first grade assistant, Clarissa, also coached Odyssey of the Mind this year, and our team is going to state!
Smart People Strategizing
On Wednesday, March 16, one of my professors from Columbia University Teacher’s College, Lyle Yorks, and his colleague, Harold Penton, are consulting with the Rainbow board on something called Blue Ocean Strategizing, and they will be interviewing various people on campus for research they are conducting. (Another great opportunity for Rainbow!) I hope you get to meet them.
I can’t wait for Domain Day!
Domain Day is Friday, March 18, and the whole school is celebrating. Children will spend almost the whole day “specializing” in one of their favorite domains in multi-age groups. I am one of the leaders for the spiritual domain. Chris Weaver and I will be taking eight young children on a magical hero’s journey for the day. I LOVE my job!
Rainbow-ize everything!
It will take many years before the new section of campus is “Rainbow-ized” like our old campus, but we make creative progress little by little. This weekend, community muralist, Ian Wilkinson is painting a rainbow and a sun on the front of the Rainbow Community Center (auditorium) building. Ian has created more than 40 murals in Asheville. His most famous is the chess player painted on Lexington Ave underneath Highway 240.
As promised above, more information on the upcoming Community Circle:
On Tuesday, March 22nd from 4-6pm, in the Fourth Grade Classroom, RCS will hold a Community Circle meeting. No fee for childcare during the meeting. As a community we have such amazing ideas and we each have incredible contributions to make to our school. We work together to solve so many challenges. At this meeting, we need the collective wisdom of our community members to “help crack the nut!”
Rainbow Community School needs to solve the largest puzzle that we have. The board calls it “the nut we have to crack.” Essentially, the “nut” is that we charge tuition and that makes it hard to serve a wide array of families. The “nut” is trying to figure out how to keep tuition as low as possible, so that Rainbow education isn’t just for those in the highest social-economic demographic. At the same time, we need to have enough revenue coming in to pay our staff, maintain/improve facilities, and to keep a low teacher/student ratio and all the quality programming that we have. Currently, we do it by paying our staff very low salaries. Rainbow lead teachers make, on average, about $7,000 less a year than Buncombe County teachers and North Carolina ranks 46th in teacher pay in the US.
The board has decided that we have two major equity issues to tackle – racial equity and teacher pay equity. There are only two ways to solve the teacher pay equity issue – either save money by staffing more kids per teacher or increase revenues. Doing the former would compromise our quality, so that means focusing on the latter. So, how can we increase revenues? Tuition is our only consistent source of funding, and it makes up 95% of our revenues. Currently, tuition goes up quite a bit every year, just to keep up with the 3%-6% salary raise teachers receive annually. If we started providing larger staff raises, tuition would have to increase immensely.
How else can we raise more revenue— A LOT of revenue, like $200,000/year more– without making Rainbow totally unaffordable? We could have a much larger annual campaign, but the $80,000 we currently have is not easy. We could raise tuition steeply, but on a sliding fee scale. This has its obvious drawbacks. People have also suggested we have an additional fee each year and families below a certain income wouldn’t have to pay it. Again, this has some major drawbacks. While we may have to consider some of these options, the ultimate goal is to get creative and find funding – consistent annual funding — from outside the parent body.
COME TO THE COMMUNITY CIRCLE MEETING ON MARCH 22nd TO HELP US FIGURE THIS OUT AND MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD!
We need the collective wisdom of our community members to crack this nut!
I am the earth and the earth is me. Each blade of grass, each honey bee / each bit of mud, and stick and stone / is blood and muscle, skin and bone. I am the earth and the earth is me!
~One of Rainbow’s May Day songs
The song “I Am the Earth and the Earth is Me” captures the heart of Rainbow’s underlying philosophy: We are all interconnected. I recently heard about a satellite video where one can “see” the earth breathing. We are all a part of one giant organism, and that is the underlying message we hope to convey to every child. It’s a very different message from an educational paradigm that assumes that we are all competing with each other.
The hidden curriculum
The term “hidden” curriculum refers to everything children are learning outside of the stated curriculum. The hidden curriculum includes how the classroom and campus look and feel, how people treat one another, how the teachers speak to the children and so on. Some experts believe that children learn far more from the hidden curriculum than anything else. Our beliefs and values are shaped by the hidden curriculum. In short, we become our environment.
Traditional education
Personally, I grew up in a traditional educational space where we were told to “treat one another as you would want to be treated,” but the hidden curriculum had a different message. The hidden curriculum taught us to primarily “watch out for number one,” which may seem like a simple self-preservation technique; but ironically, when humans try to out-compete one another we end up putting the whole world, including ourselves, in jeopardy. Thus we have racism, global warming, extreme economic injustice, and a host of other human-caused maladies.
Interconnectedness
How does this understanding of interconnection affect our educational model on a day-to-day basis? One simple example is the three breaths every class takes together at the beginning of morning centering. Many schools that are still operating in the “competition paradigm” are adopting mindfulness practices, which is great. However, often these practices are intended to make kids behave better, or perform better, which is fine, but so much more is possible. Instead of having a group of 20 children individually close their eyes and meditate, we begin the day with students taking three breaths together, at the same time. In the simple act they become as one organism – like one giant set of lungs. This helps set the tone for the whole day. The hidden curriculum is one of being connected.
Sue and Hobey Ford on May Day
May Day
Another aspect of the hidden curriculum is the underlying meaning and message in things as simple as the games we play, the songs we sing, and the things we celebrate. May Day is a celebration of Life and all its glory, which includes celebrating glorious you, glorious me, and all of the glorious children. Were you able to attend the May Day celebration? Did you wear wings or a crown of leaves? Sit on the grass? Did you dance to Jai Ma? Eat strawberries and cream? Hug a friend as tightly as possible? I hope you made the most of every minute. May Day also marks the school year coming to an end. We are so grateful for this wonderful year and are looking forward to some new additions for next year.
Staffing Transitions
It’s that time of year when we get ready to say goodbye to friends who are moving on to new adventures and welcome new staff. Over all, we again have very little turn-over, but here are a few of the changes for the 2019-20 school year:
Kurt Campbell
Kurt Campbell is hired to teach fourth grade next year, as Molly Sawyer is leaving that position. Kurt is pretty well known around town as a popular elementary teacher for Asheville City Schools, as well as for the local volunteer work he does. One parent who found out about him coming to Rainbow sent me an email:
“I am so happy for him and for Rainbow, he is such a multi-talented person with so much heart, I’m excited for his future students!…Just wanted to say, great choice. 😀 I know Kurt primarily through Asheville Performing Arts Academy where he does *amazing* work with musical direction and encouragement for the kids, but I’ve also witnessed him as a soccer coach when [my son] played a couple years ago…Whenever we were on the same field, I was so impressed with his ability to really connect with each kid and find both goals and encouragement for them all. So happy to hear this has worked out!”
We look forward to having him on staff next year. He is already busy with our “onboarding” process, which includes trainings, mentoring, meetings, classes to take, and observations. His two boys will also be joining Rainbow.
Justin Pilla
In Omega, we have some shifting around. Omega’s structure is changing slightly, and 6th grade will be more deeply incorporated with 7th and 8th grade, particularly for elective classes in the afternoon. Therefore, Omega will have two assistant teachers who will also lead elective classes. Justin Pilla will still spend some time in 6th grade, where he is currently Assistant Teacher, but he will more often be in 7/8, and he will teach humanities and art electives.
Christa Flores
On a lucky lark we had the opportunity to hire Christa Flores as the other assistant teacher (primarily in 6th grade) and as a STEM educator. Christa has a degree in science education from Columbia University. She is an author and educator who specializes in the “maker movement,” teaching kids how to invent and engineer. Some of you may know her from the “How to Invent Anything” after school club, which she taught here through the Asheville Museum of Science.
Mark Hanf & Kate Folkman
We wish Mark Hanf and Kate Folkman well. Both have held part-time positions in Omega, and both have decided that their position and/or part-time work was no longer a fit for their next phases in life. Mark has been at Rainbow in several different capacities for 11 years. Kate was new to the staff this year, and we hope she will continue here as a parent or in another capacity.
Paris Sigler & Marisa Capablo
Another change is in the preschool after school program. We wish Marisa Capalbo, After School Lead Teacher, many blessings as she moves to Hawaii this summer! Taking her place will be Paris Sigler. Paris is a Rainbow alumnus who first discovered she loved working with preschool children when she was a counselor in training – an Omega Middle School program where students work in the preschool during the summer. Paris is graduating with her early childhood degree this spring, so we finally get to have Paris, the “child whisperer,” full time at Rainbow!
Shawna Grasty
Finally, Shawna Grasty is going to graduate school, and she will not work in after school next year. In addition to being a caring and grounded after school teacher, Shawna has done an incredible job working with Love in Action, particularly with our food bank, which distributes healthy food to over 30 Rainbow families, serving about 100 people weekly. Shawna has a huge heart. I hope you have a chance to wish her well before the end of the school year.
A New Formula for Math
For over a decade Rainbow has instituted “school-wide math,” where all students, 2nd – 8th grade have math at the same time, which allows students who are extremely gifted the opportunity to go to a math class at a higher level. Our “normal” math track has our 8th grade students completing their first year of high school math and receiving high school credit before they leave Rainbow. Advanced students will have already completed two years of high school math by the time they leave Rainbow!
After many months of analysis the faculty and administration have decided to curtail the program back, so that students in 2nd – 5th grade who are advanced in math can stay in their classroom with their peers. (No more missing part of centering while transitioning between classes!) Once students start in Omega (6th grade), they will have many levels of math, including the more advanced classes they can travel to. We decided this adjustment was in the best interest of all students, and the healthiest for the culture of each class.
Got Anxiety?
Our world has become such an anxiety-producing society that almost all of us have more anxiety than we are even aware of. Stress is normal, and according to psychologists, even necessary, but anxiety can be debilitating. If you listen to the news you are probably aware that anxiety in children and young adults has become a national epidemic, a mental health crisis. But there is hope. My recent blog post talks about this and a solution being researched at the Yale Child Study Center.
Screen Free Week
Screen Free week has ended, but feel free to be free! I LOVE this piece of art Mark Hanf did for Screen Free week. The message is clear. There’s a whole world out there.
Dissertation
On a personal note, it feels like I am starting a “new life!” I will still be executive director at Rainbow next year, but I am so excited to have more time. You may know that I have been working on a doctorate degree from Teachers College at Columbia University. Last month I finished my dissertation. The title is, “Learning That Meets Life: The Lived Experience of Teaching with Secular Spiritual Pedagogy.” The dissertation journey was incredibly rewarding, and I learned a lot from the research, which I will be sharing with the faculty. But, as you can imagine, it feels great to be done. However, I will be missing almost a full week of school from May 21-24, to travel to New York with my family and participate in graduation and the 250 year old “hooding ceremony” at St. John’s Cathedral. I promise to share pictures.
Stand Against Racism
For Stand Against Racism Month, Rainbow participated in two events. We hosted the “How to Talk to Children about Race” workshop for parents and educators. The event was so well-attended; we had to slightly adjust our plans for the evening. Participants were divided into the age group they were interested in, age 2 to 13. Each circle learned about stages in children’s development and racial identity, and we discussed how they play out on a day-to-day basis. Rainbow faculty has been using these stages to do a racial equity curriculum audit all year, and it was rewarding to expand the discussion to parents and other educators.
The other event was the Westside Walk for Peace with Hall Fletcher, Asheville Primary, Vance Elementary, and Francine Delaney. Children made signs, marched along Haywood Road; and they gave speeches on the lawn of Trinity Methodist. Several Rainbow students, including children as young as first grade, spoke to the crowd. My husband attended (as a reporter for Asheville FM) and he said, with tears in his eyes, it was “The best thing I’d ever seen!” I was so proud of all the kids who spoke. As always, children are so heartfelt. Their simple wisdom and truthful words cut through any confusion, declaring things like, “Sometimes people are treated different because of the color of their skin. And that’s just not fair!”
The Green New Deal
Also inspired by young people, I attended the Sunrise Movement’s event about the Green New Deal, which was hosted at Rainbow last weekend. The young people and adults at this event helped me understand what the Green New Deal is, and I felt so much hope. I highly recommend you watch this very short animated video to really understand the vision. It’s brilliant.
“A miracle worker is not geared toward fighting the world that is, but creating the world that could be.”
~Marianne Williamson (A Return to Love.)
I chose to be an educator so I could help create “the world that could be.” Just as every child is a miracle – the potential for the world that could be, so is every teacher a miracle worker. We only have a few precious weeks left in the 2018-2019 school year. I hope your family makes the most of it; and I hope you have the opportunity to share you appreciation for all the miracle workers in your life.
Dr. Theo Dawson and her team at Lectica have spent over two decades designing formative, standardized educational test that can assess student’s complexity of thinking and ability to reason ethically. This work is based out of research from the Mind, Brain, and Education program at Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the work of Kurt Fischer, a Lectica board member. After testing 25,000 students Dr. Dawson found the jackpot to their research – Rainbow Community School. Rainbow’s scores shows higher student development than any school tested. See graph. (Note that Lectica has graphed out the projected developmental levels of students older than 8th grade)
This February, Rainbow’s fourth through eighth graders took the Reflective Judgment test, which reveals how they think about inquiry, evidence, learning & the mind, truth & certainty, conflict resolution, persuasion, and deliberation. The test consists of open-ended questions about dilemmas, such as ethical dilemmas or societal issues. Students must write essays in response, and must defend their thinking. Lectica has a complex scoring system that codes each response and examines lines of reasoning in order to determine cognitive development.
From Dr. Dawson, “Lectica has tested many other private schools – very good ones–and also public schools of high socio-economic level, but we have never seen scores like Rainbow. We had to create new language to describe students’ thinking – embedded learning.” (Remember also that we accept a much broader demographic of students than most private schools. So our Lectica test scores include students with diverse learning needs, too.)
Not only were Rainbow students’ levels of development higher on average for their age than any school they had tested, but their level of coherence was higher than they had ever seen. Coherence is the ability to connect thoughts intelligently and develop a persuasive argument. Additionally, she said our students have incredible “perspectival” abilities to take the perspective of others — empathy, essentially.
Dr. Theo Dawson’s blog post about Rainbow Community School’s Lectica test results includes an excellent, easy-to-watch video explaining Lectica tests.
We never thought it would be feasible to have quantitative data that shows the true value of a Rainbow education, since what we do is very sophisticated. Sure, Rainbow students score very well on traditional standardized tests, like the SAT10, but those tests only show a small sliver of rote skill attainment, without showing complexity of thinking or affective skill development. Those tests only show the achievement of our students, but Lectica’s tests show development. Lectica has done the impossible – produced a way of giving a numerical score for holistic development – they’ve come as close to looking at the whole child as any quantitative test could.
What does this mean for your child? It means your child is incredible. We are so proud of the students here at Rainbow. They are truly motivated, empowered, and sophisticated learners who love learning. It means that with the collaboration between family and school, we have created a curriculum and school design that is, in fact, supporting the achievement of all seven domains… It means that the incredible sacrifice you have made to send your child here is paying off.
Rainbow students’ high level of social/emotional skills will also serve them very well when applying to colleges. The most prestigious universities are now changing their application processes to make the SAT optional, and to stress empathy as the most important quality– and this trend is going to become much stronger by the time your kids are applying for college. The Washington Post has a great article on this.
What does this mean for Rainbow Community School? Rainbow’s holistic program creates kids who are highly ethical, empathic, and cognitively developed to a level of sophistication that is beyond their years, and now we have quantitative proof. The researchers from University of Texas, Columbia, and LSU that have visited this year is only the beginning of what is to come. Our Seven Domains model of education will be sought out for research, in the hopes of it being implemented in more places and accessible to a broader demographic. Thank you for investing in the vision! We are providing hope for education and for a better world.
