The Friends School of Atlanta

Bringing forward more than 325 years of excellence in Quaker Education

Thinking Caps

This year in fifth grade Bridges class, we used the book Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman to learn about our own learning. The story, which is set in a run-down neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio, is told in pieces by 13 different characters. Each character is from a unique background and has a different perspective on the events taking place in the community, all of which center around the creation of a community garden. The garden, the neighborhood, and the people are gradually transformed as the story takes root and the members of the community begin to have more reasons to interact with and care about each other.

As we made our way through each new chapter (and character), we practiced noticing which kinds of thinking we were doing in order to fully understand the story. We began with three Thinking Skills, gradually introducing new ones until we were working with eight specific skills. Over time, students began to notice that they used these kinds of thinking everywhere.

Main Idea: We are separating essential information from extraneous details almost anytime we take in information, even in conversations. We also use it when we share information, when we make decisions about which thoughts or other pieces of information are the most relevant to include.

Visualizing: Very often, we make pictures in our minds as we listen, think, talk, or read. Sometimes, we can try to do this in an intentional way to build stronger associations or memories.

Sequencing: Any time we put events, materials, or information in order or perceive a sequence or order, we are using this type of thinking. Schedules, timelines, math operations, story structure, recipes, instructions, portfolios, and many other situations call on our sequencing skills all the time.

Perspective: At times, it can be difficult to imagine things from a perspective different from our own. It can also be incredibly useful to practice doing this, and to consider what makes our perspectives different. We use this skill when reading, watching movies or TV shows, interpreting history and current events, interacting with others, and in order to better understand ourselves.  

Making Connections: When we notice the ways our experiences and thoughts are connected across different parts of our lives, we are building bridges of understanding. For example, we might hear a news story about a wildfire producing lots of smoke that reminds us of our studies of air quality in Science class. When we notice ourselves making those connections, we can start to look for them in less obvious places, where they may actually be hiding out in abundance!

Figurative Language: We use language in almost all areas of life, and understanding and using that language effectively often requires us to discern (and use) nonliteral (or figurative) language. Noticing when and how we interpret language strengthens our metalinguistic abilities (our awareness and interpretation of how and why we use language) as well as our metacognition, comprehension, and expression skills.

Making Inferences: In order to understand much of what goes on around us, we piece together information and fill in any missing pieces with our own prior knowledge. Much of our real-world and academic knowledge may come to us through inference, rather than relying on every single piece of information to be directly stated in full detail. We also depend on others to make inferences on our behalf, to read our cues. We do it so much that it can be difficult to notice!

Predicting: We make predictions in order to plan ahead. We might also find ourselves predicting the outcome of a choice or behavior, the winner of a game, the ending of a book or movie. Thinking in this way, and noticing ourselves doing it, and doing it on purpose, can help us be more engaged with information and more anticipatory or strategic in our thinking.

Not only did students notice themselves using these skills in multiple settings, they also began to notice that they often use multiple types of thinking simultaneously. This was especially evident when we were reading together from Seedfolks. As each new Thinking Skill was introduced, students made a visual representation of that skill on an index card. As we read the book, they would hold up the cards that represented the Thinking Skills they noticed themselves using throughout the chapter. As you’ll see from the photos, they were using many of them in a constant way, so they got creative with how they displayed them. By the end of the school year, they literally had their thinking caps on!  

We began to document some of the ways we were using our thinking skills both in and out of the classroom, and to keep a tally. This way, we could set challenges to notice the ones that weren’t as easy or as obvious, like making inferences. In doing this with the class, I realized my own metacognitive routines could use some reinforcement, and I am now watching out for my own inferences. I look forward to reporting one back to the class soon!

Which Thinking Skills do you notice yourself using more often? Which ones are the hardest to notice? How do you know when you are making an inference, or using another skill? Even thinking about that question is great metacognitive practice. If you need some pointers on metacognition, let the fifth (soon to be sixth) grade lead the way!

By Kerrie Lynn, Middle School Learning Specialist and general learning enthusiast.

No Popsicle Sticks

When Fiona Thompson came to develop the art program at The Friends School of Atlanta, she did so under one important condition.

“No popsicle sticks on construction paper. I teach the visual arts. Respectfully I don’t teach crafts.”

Fiona told this to Waman French, the head of school, when interviewing for the job 10 years ago. And sure enough, look around the art room today, you’ll see no popsicle sticks, or at least none used in a crafty sort of way, with rows and rows of similar-looking works lining the walls. In Fiona’s classroom, stuffed to the gills with art supplies, you won’t find such conformity. You instead find clay figures next to paintings next to a sculpture put together using pieces from an IKEA furniture box—sans instructions, of course.

There’s nothing wrong with crafts; it just doesn’t have much to do with what Fiona teaches. She doesn’t teach art appreciation. The act of appreciation implies a kind of separation, a proscenium between art and its audience. Fiona’s classes have no proscenium.

“It’s not just about what you see in an art book,” Fiona said. “It’s about the visual thinking strategies behind what you see, how you see, and why you feel like you do when you’re looking at art. It’s a unique moment.”

Fiona grew up in a household where inclusiveness and social service reigned. Her father spent time in India during World War II. Then back home in Derbyshire, after retirement, he worked to help recent Indian immigrants find their way within the U.K. She went to college to study art at Bath Academy of Art, taught art in London, then at 21 decided to leave the U.K. and travel. She landed in Egypt, worked at the Schutz American School in Alexandria, and taught art pro bono at an Egyptian school and within the Egyptian community. She wasn’t a post-grad on holiday; she was in the trenches, working and serving.

Life has since brought her to (among other places) the University of Chicago, the High Museum of Art’s Education Department, and then, at long last, to her home at The Friends School of Atlanta. The school’s Quaker philosophy fit Fiona’s perfectly, about channeling the Light Within—with a paint brush, sculpting clay, even assembling IKEA furniture assembled into a new creation—to make the world better.

She teaches artistic fundamentals that involve sophisticated concepts, including main ideas, visualizing, making inferences, perspective. She also applies what’s known as design thinking to problem-solving. In a nutshell, she gives students the artistic grammar not just to appreciate, but to create, perceive, and connect.

In Fiona’s view, artistic concepts are at the heart of humanity, the essence of which can’t be automated. The sensors on self-driving cars can “see,” but they cannot perceive. You’ll find Fiona and her students collaborating with instructors in the 3D printing Innovation lab. The best scientists, engineers, mathematicians, physicists—although they may not realize it, they’re artists and design thinkers too.

Even yours truly, something Fiona insisted after I told her that, well, no, I just don’t have the artist’s muse. She shook her head and dove into a speech I could tell she had given many times before. “I believe everybody can draw,” Fiona said. “There’s no reason why you can’t; you’ve just not been shown.”

Looking at the amazing creations lying about the Friends School art room, I believe her wholeheartedly.

By Tim Heston

Tim Heston has written for business magazines since 1996. He’s won some awards here and there, but his greatest achievement is being the proud parent of an FSA fourth grader.

A True Partnership

By Alex Zinnes, Middle School World Studies Teacher

I have noticed that community service projects are often undertaken from a place of inequity, inequity of resources and of power. The organization serving often comes from the stance of “I have something YOU need. Allow me to give it to you.”

Since the Friends School of Atlanta’s (FSA) first encounter with Our House, which provides child care and support for families who experience homelessness, I have wanted our relationship to be one based in mutuality, a partnership, recognizing that both groups benefit from the experience of working together to support the Our House preK.

Sure, preK kids at Our House benefit academically as well as socially and emotionally with one-on-one contact with our 7th and 8th grade volunteers who come twice a week. (Our House is located about one tenth of a mile from FSA.)And, Our House benefits when we are able to bring donated supplies or to connect the program with our parent community and other resources to enrich the programming.

 

But I want to reinforce that FSA benefits from the partnership with Our House, too. I ask my students if they have ever considered becoming a teacher, camp counselor, babysitter, sports coach, or lifeguard. Many of them say that they are considering those paths. And they immediately recognize that Our House is giving them valuable life experience working with children or even a window into what being a parent might be like.

Our students transition to other schools for high school, and students know that our partnership at Our House offers them a unique experience that communicates to their new schools that they are caring people. They speak of learning about the importance of being patient, kind, and supportive to their little buddies and how that makes them feel good, too. Students often talk about Our House as a formative life experience in their high school admissions process.

I have 7th and 8th grade students with their own learning differences. For a student with a reading struggle, the ability to read a book with confidence to the Our House preK kids is a happy moment of relief. My students who experience social and emotional struggles of their own with their peers feel the pressure ease up at Our House: they get to feel like the cool kids, secure and self-possessed. Over and over again, I witness how family, academic, and social stress just melts away for FSA students at Our House. That is an invaluable offering.

Middle school can be a confusing and turbulent time as students figure out who they are becoming. FSA’s partnership with Our House provides our students with both practical life skills and a pleasant refuge where they can learn, grow, and feel a sense of their own goodness. On behalf of my students and the FSA community, thank you for this vital and sustaining partnership.

Learning the Language of Food

IMG_1573

Un Proyecto Del Libro De Cocina “The Cookbook Project” (2016)

Food. It’s the gateway into culture, people, and language. In many ways, food is the common vernacular of the people and has a reach-potential that goes beyond lingual boundaries. In an effort to get my students to be bold and venture into the world of the unfamiliar (and there’s nothing wrong with the familiar) and to push them to realize the value in other cultures (and there’s certainly nothing against our American culture), I try introducing our students to things like plantains, rambutan, tomatillos, yucca, and arepas. When I introduce our friends to these strange and foreign items, they look askance at me with raised eyebrows and question:

“What is that THING, and why do you want ME to try it?”

But after the guinea pig of a valiant classmate (who will eat just about anything) gives high accolades (and is apparently still alive after taking the initial bite), it only takes a few nudges for the reservations to subside. Students are asking (perhaps BEGGING) to try each others’ dishes that they prepared for this cookbook project.  Hands crisscross as they reach over to grab a few more yucca fries, or dip their chips in the tomatillos “on fire” (en fuego) salsa, or down a gulp of the rambutan shake. It’s a transformative occasion when students realize that they have opened themselves up to culture unlike theirs and tastes that speak a familiar tune yet is otherworldly at the same time.

While the Spanish lesson underlying this whole cookbook project was the grammatical structure known as the imperative form (commands) like “Stir this,” “Chop this,” “Fry that,” the hook (and perhaps the real intent) was exposing our students to the language of food. This endeavor created opportunity for students to drink up (at times literally) the culture of a people different than theirs in an effort to help them understand the other better. A world language class like Spanish affords such opportunities to explore other cultures. And if the language of the people is the key that unlocks the culture, so to speak, the culture’s diverse food is one of the awesome treasures waiting to be discovered.

This project allowed our students to engage in authentic experiences and connect the dots between food, culture, and people. We began our journey dining at and talking to Lis Hernandez, the owner of Arepa Mía, a Venezuelan restaurant in Decatur. The students ordered in Spanish and conversed with Lis and had a personal Q & A with her. Some students had arepas for the first time; they learned about Venezuelan food and heard about Lis’ immigrant story to the United States. The students then took to Your Dekalb Farmers Market to practice the imperative form by completing a scavenger hunt that required our students to “Find this,” “Look for that,” “Write down that,” or “Shake this person’s hand.” This exercise allowed our students to practice this grammatical structure in a fun and meaningful way. An integral wrap-up to this learning experience entailed the creation of a recipe featuring an ingredient that originated from a Spanish-speaking country. They researched a recipe that would be easy for a middle school student to execute (possibly with the help of mom or dad), and they created a dish to share in class and contribute to our cookbook. Students also wrote opinion pieces on their dishes while outlining a basic step-by-step recipe using the imperative forms in Spanish.

This cookbook project brought a lot of smiles to our students’ faces as they ventured out, often stumbling and fumbling over their Spanish, but with a willingness to be brave and open. They made a friend in Lis who exposed our students to new smells, tastes, and flavors. Our students also got strange looks from market shoppers as they literally scavenged the premises with a Spanish dictionary in hand trying to figure out what I was asking them to accomplish. But as our students shared their recipes and dishes on our last day, there was a sense among our students that food matters because people, culture, and language matter. The next time our students find themselves in a foreign place, my hope is that they make a beeline for the closest eatery or market because these places are often the places that foster openness, friendships, and meaningful learning.

By Brian Ryu

Brian teaches 7th and 8th grade Spanish as well as 5th grade math, and he is enthusiastic about project-based learning and opportunities for students to try new foods from different cultures.

All Sides of the Picture

photo drivingNancy Bent knows about seeing the world with open eyes. Her father moved the family down south in the 1950s to work as a UPI photographer. He saw it all—the race riots, the protests, the fear, and the strong yet peaceful tenacity of those who stand up for their beliefs.

He spent years as a photojournalist and a television producer in Atlanta, and his experience taught Nancy to see the world in a specific way. You have one picture of reality with two (or more) sides. You see it all, unfiltered, and, with knowledge and empathy, move forward with conviction to do what’s right.

That conviction eventually brought her to The Friends School of Atlanta, first as a mother, then as a board member, and, starting seven years ago, as a school administrator. She’s now FSA’s Director of Advancement and Admissions.  Serving all three roles has given her unique perspective.

It can be summed up in an experience Nancy had as an FSA parent, looking at a child’s drawing posted among many others in the school hallway. The school project had to do with human and civil rights, and the stick-figure sketch was of a little girl holding hands with two moms. At first Nancy thought that her daughter—who, after all, has two moms— had drawn it. This was the mid-1990s, and having two moms or two dads wasn’t viewed quite like it is today.

But her daughter hadn’t drawn it. It was a girl who the year before had teased her, saying, “You can’t have two moms. That’s illegal.”

Teachers and administrators intervened and got the children and parents together. Turns out the girl’s parents didn’t believe what their daughter had said. “Bottom line, the girl was just being mean,” Nancy recalled. “She was 8; it can be tough age. I got it. I wasn’t upset with anybody, and it was all handled respectfully.”

The next year, when the teacher asked children to draw something that showed a human or civil right, that same girl thought of her classmate and friend. Next to the drawing she wrote, “Everyone has the right to have a family.”

The girl learned all sides of the picture, moved forward with conviction, followed her heart, and did what she thought was right.

That, in a nutshell, is a Friends School of Atlanta education.

By Tim Heston

Tim Heston has written for business magazines since 1996. He’s won some awards here and there, but his greatest achievement is being the proud parent of an FSA fourth grader.