Third-graders enjoying recess together

Wings

Fifth-graders taking risks supported by friends
at Frost Valley

Working with children can seem an impossible balancing act between contradicting notions. Without sufficient routines and structure, children don’t dare to take the risks that build their confidence. With too much structure from adults, they can simply seek to please or take inappropriate risks to escape control. The end game is that they must, with our guidance and support, find themselves and their own way in the process.

It is a messy business. Children need to be allowed to make mistakes so that they can learn from them. However, as parents of Lower Schoolers, it is our first instinct to rush in and protect. But holding back is not always the answer either. There are times when we need to rush in, even for our 20-year-olds! What makes it even more difficult is that the balance is different for different children and the balance point changes over time.

It is hard enough to be a teacher, but as I know only too well, 

Crossing a stream on a cable bridge
can take a lot of courage for some
fifth-graders at Frost Valley

all that experience seems to fly out the window when it is your own child, and emotions cloud the modicum of good sense that might otherwise guide you.  This all seems a recipe for high anxiety, if not a complete mental break down. After all, being a parent is at once the hardest and most important thing that any of us does. Talk about high stakes!

Take a deep breath, share stories with parent friends who are going through similar trying times and LAUGH. Listen to your children’s teachers and try to do what feels right. We must accept that we will never be able to get it right all the time. If it weren't for us, our kids would have much less to complain about. It is important to try hard to be the “best parents we can be”. Knowing that you tried your hardest will protect you from bouts of unbearable guilt when they predictably hate you in their late teens.

Fifth-graders canoeing at Frost Valley

There is no magic right way. Just as it was difficult at first to learn to get it right when learning to ride a bike, ski, kayak, golf, etc., there is often a sense of balance that emerges when you relax and go with the process. Yes, children need protection as well as consequences. They need “nos” as well as “yeses”. They need structure and freedom. They need encouragement and self-discipline. However, most of all, they need to develop their own wings to confidently fly away from us. Ironically, they can do it best if we ground them with sturdy roots. Keep that in your heart, and you can’t go too far wrong.

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How Standardized Testing is Evolving in the Lower School

Sometimes it is important to find just the right place to read!

At Dwight-Englewood, any standardized testing we administer is not mandated, and funding and ratings have never been a factor. We make intentional choices in the use of standardized testing that are tied directly to our mission and our need to to evaluate how to provide the best education possible for our students.

There are two major visible changes in the area of 

Third-graders paying their respects to a bird that
they found.

standardized testing in the Lower School, but also quite a few others that have a large impact on how we deliver and evaluate instruction and its effect on student progress.

First, the CTP4 will now only be administered in the 3rd and 5th grades. This will return valuable instructional time to fourth grade teachers, while still allowing us to view the progress of individuals and groups over time, and maintaining our ability to assess the effectiveness of curricular changes and compare ourselves to other high achieving independent schools.

Second, the WrAP, the independent school normed test of writing, will now only be administered once a year (fall) instead of twice in grades three through five. Again this will return instructional time, while still allowing us to gauge progress and evaluate our program.

Fifth-graders at Frost Valley learned
about water ecology.

This year, we have begun a mathematics assessment for kindergartners. As young children bring a wide variety of informal as well as more formal school experiences to their study of mathematics in kindergarten. Our teachers now work individually with kindergartners to determine what they have learned informally about counting, solving problems, and understanding the size of numbers. The assessment also helps us determine how much each child has already learned about how to read and write numbers, what arithmetic facts they know and how much they understand about base ten concepts. 

As appropriate early intervention can be so important for some of our youngest students, several years ago, we began regular yearly OT (occupational therapy) and speech and language screening for our preschool and kindergarten students. This is performed by outside specialists, with the results of any findings, as well as recommendations, communicated directly to parents.

One evening at Frost Valley fifth-graders
had a session with the "Bird Man."

We have pushed ourselves, through professional development and work with internal and outside consultants in the areas of both language arts and mathematics, to develop the pedagogy to better address the educational needs of the full range of our student learners. With that in mind, it has been important to develop the means to measure the progress of our students in an on-going manner. Teachers now regularly use Fountas & Pinnell reading assessments and a variety of interim assessments in both language arts and mathematics to assess individual student progress, allowing appropriate flexible individual and small group instruction to promote mastery. 

The Lower School's revaluation is part of a larger school-wide re-examination of the ways in which we assess our students and program. Through this analysis, we began to question if the standardized tests that we were administering enabled us to answer the important question: Does the Dwight-Englewood School fulfill its Mission? We found that the standardized assessments we were administering allowed us to examine one aspect of our curriculum but missed some significant components of our program. To read a description of the changes in the school-wide standardized testing, click here to read a statement from Erika Raser, Director of Student Support Services.

A Message to the Kindergarten, First- and Second-Grade Parents

from Dr. Ann Niles, Lower School Psychologist

I will be having a conversation with each of the homerooms on the topic of Good Touch, Bad Touch, and Unsafe Touch. As educators and as parents it is incredibly important that we continue to talk to our children about their own bodies, their rights to privacy, and what type of touch is OK versus not OK - and how they should respond to bad or unsafe touches. Just as we teach children other ways of staying safe, such as fire safety or playground safety, it is just as important that we teach them about personal safety in regards to types of touches. I will be reading an age appropriate page from the book "It's NOT the Stork" by Harris and Emberley - a book for children ages 4 and up- that covers many topics related to bodies, families and friends (see book description below). 

The way it is described to the children is this...
It is normal for us to want kisses and hugs from people that we trust and love - these good touches make us feel loved, safe, warm and smiley. Good touches are to keep us safe and healthy and may not always feel good - for example, getting a vaccine or a splinter pulled from our toe may hurt a little, but it is to keep us healthy and safe, so is still a good touch. 

A bad touch is one that does not feel good and is not healthy and is often sudden and physical - such as kicking, biting, hitting, pushing - anything that makes us back away and say "ouch!". 

Unsafe touch has to do with behaviors that are more secretive - sometimes kids are forced or tricked into unsafe touches. We will discuss what body parts are "private (generally described to young children as those under bathing suits) and that children should not feel that they need to let others see or touch, nor should they be asked to see or touch other peoples private parts. We will discuss examples of safe behaviors such as a trusted adult helping with washing in the bath or changing the diaper of a young child. If a child ever feels uncomfortable, even with a family member, babysitter, neighbor, sibling, or friend - they should tell a trusted adult such as a parent, teacher, school psychologist, or pediatrician - and keep telling people until they receive help and do feel comfortable and safe. 

I know that this is a difficult topic and a difficult conversation to have with your child, but it is an incredibly important topic. There are tens of thousands of reported cases of abuse each year, and there are many more cases that are never reported. Even a single incident of abuse can be incredibly damaging to a young person, and it is important as the trusted adults in their lives that they learn these safety messages from us and have no question about how to handle such situations. They need to learn to respect their own bodies and to say NO to unsafe behaviors.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like any further information on how to continue these lessons with your child at home. We have a copy of "It's NOT the Stork" in our Lower School library, and I highly recommend this book as a resource for speaking with your children about many important topics at home.

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Mrs. Milbauer's Musical Moments Blog

Mrs. Milbauer teaches music to preschool though kindergarten students.