Thanks to Frank Bonanno and Erin Schlesinger for re-directing the energy and talent of our students in a wonderfully successful re-scheduled “Holiday” Concert. Our faculty worked creatively to make the rehearsals possible, and my thanks to Jeanne May for arranging for discounts on dinner! Thanks also to all of you parents who found a way to attend!

 

Program Excellence

As I noted at the concert, the excellence so audible at the concert is emblematic of the strength throughout our program. The work that our teachers expect from our students, and the way that our students respond, is exceptional. We have the luxury of bright, capable students who, on average, match or exceed independent school averages on the ERB test at each grade level. That means that the students are on average significantly outperforming national norms. With that “raw material” with which to work, it is not surprising that we can enrich and extend the curriculum. You will be receiving your children’s ERB results (grades three – nine) with the first semester grades/progress reports on the schedule below. If you have questions about the score reports, please contact your Division Head, Learning Specialist Sandra Lashway, or me:

• Upper School grades and ERBs will be mailed by January 29;
• Lower School grades/progress reports and ERBs grades 3 – 5 mailed by February first.

Our Martin Luther King Assemblies provide another glimpse of excellence. Students actively engage with material from King’s life and share their work. In Upper School, the Student Council planned a series of activity stations, one of which replicates the wax museum project that second graders do. Because of the delayed opening last Friday, they will present their activities this Friday, again re-scheduling to assure that we affirm the value of the work done. The Fifth graders opened the Lower School assembly with a timeline of King’s life. Grades three and four closed the assembly by doing a choral reading of Joan Nichols’ poem “Let Freedom Ring.” Nichols weaves King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and the remembrances of a young black girl into a moving tapestry; and it was clear to me that our students understood the power of the combination.

 

“Wired Kids” – Challenges for Parents

I wonder if you had the chance to see Frontline’s Kids On Line program on PBS last Tuesday, January 22. I am sure that you can find it re-aired. I recommend it as a startling yet balanced view of the virtual environment that is for many young adolescents their real world, just as the world of the mall or the telephone or the soda fountain was once the non-adult world in which to try on behaviors and personas. You might consider viewing it with your own Upper School child(ren) and using it as a springboard for conversation.

 

It has long been good advice to find ways to avoid having our children grow up too fast. Put differently, it is appropriate for parents to be caring, wise and to set limits. David Elkind’s The Hurried Child encouraged us to provide time and creative play in our children’s days, to avoid over-scheduling and the rush to adulthood. His more recent All Grown Up and No Place to Go examined the pressures on teenagers and by extension pre-teens, particularly when the adult influence is not present.

 

While the internet can be a powerful tool for good, it can also be a place where adults do not exist. I urge you to be knowledgeable about and make informed family decisions about this “virtual reality.” We work with our students to help them understand appropriate ways to use the internet and what to be cautious about. We also purposely do not have wireless internet access available to our students except under supervision. As the Frontline program notes, by the way, it is not adult predators who are the real danger; our young users know perfectly well to delete anyone who expresses inappropriate interest. What is problematic is the varied unsupervised “play” of an entirely peer and unexamined information environment. If you would ask your children to be home by a certain time, not allow some movies, identify some areas of your town as off-limits, and control their allowance, you can do the same with their virtual reality.�

 

Just as Elkind suggests about the “post-modern” teenager in the real world, children are not well served by existing for lengthy periods of time in a virtual, parentless reality; and I include the plethora of video games in this context. Our older Upper Schoolers reasonably can expect to engage in the virtual world in some ways and need to be prepared as they grow into teenagers and young adulthood. They will find ways to do so if you try to completely prevent them. But do students really need web phones while at Applewild? To what purpose? What children of all Applewild ages need is time, including creative unsupervised real play and time with you – to share reading time and to have conversations about what is alive in their world, which includes the wired world. We know that TV at too young an age actually retards brain development and that video games and “Myspace” sites can be addictive. Because the medium is so seductive, it wins in competition with the delayed gratification of reading, the harder work of thorough preparation, introspection, and overcoming adversity. Yet that real world work is essential in the transition from children to young adults and may be particularly what boys nationally are avoiding through “macho” video games that purport to demonstrate skill but ultimately do not translate into real world self-confidence.

 

It is up to you to decide when access is acceptable, for how long, and how much latitude you will give your children. We cannot prevent them from exposure; we need to help them understand the positives and avoid the negatives. We need to be wise, engaged adults.

 

Coming Events

With regard to parenting, I hope you will engage in the following:

          �•Tuesday, January 29, 7:00: Board President David Stone, Director of Finance and Operations Dave Wood and I will provide a look ahead at plans for Applewild, including tuition;

•A “Survey Monkey” online questionnaire (one of the positive uses of our wired world!) that will go out to our parent email group in February. Thanks to Parent Association president Lisa Bakstran for designing the questionnaire, though any mistakes will be entirely mine (Please contact Jeanne May if you will want a hard copy of the questionnaire or want to be added to our email group).

•Tuesday, April 22, 7:00: Internationally known speaker Jamie McKenzie will work with our faculty during the day and speak to parents in the evening about exciting, positive ways for children to appropriately access the wired world.

We have begun second semester with great enthusiasm. Every day there will be important growth throughout our curriculum, and you can have confidence that we support and stretch each of our students. In addition, I look forward to Kevin Brodeur’s fifties radio play, performed by fifth graders January 31 and February first, and to the return of Rob Rossel in mid-February to help us glaze our ceramic tiles as part of our fiftieth celebrations. We also will enjoy Melinda Jaz’s adaptation of Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War February 21, 22 and 23 as our Upper School play, adapted with the support of the Cormier family, who will attend the performance February 21. Because of the more mature subject matter, our Lower School students will not be included in the audience of this show. Finally, our Upper School Symphonic Band will begin rehearsing Roland Barrett’s original composition Anthem for Applewild, commissioned by the Crocker family to honor Applewild School's Belief in the Future on the occasion of its Fiftieth Anniversary. I am eager to hear it – and to share with you the joy of working with our outstanding teachers and talented students.