Live, Laugh & LEARN!

Wow! What a great turn-out at the rollerskating party last night! The positive persistence of new skaters, and the grace and speed of our experienced skaters was impressive. Thank you, PTA, for coordinating this fun opportunity for our families.

On April 1st, we had a little fun with the students by surprising them with a staff switch. It made us laugh to see the initial confused looks on the children's faces, then the lightbulb moment of realization, followed by their giggles and smiles at the April Fools joke that we played. 

Our PE Teacher was "Mr. Secretary" and gave the morning announcements on April Fools Day, too!

Several Dryden teachers and I had a wonderful opportunity to spend the first days of our spring break in Houston at an international education conference by ASCD. We learned so much, and are excited to share with our colleagues, students and school community over the coming months.  

One of the keynote speakers was Yale Professor, Dr. Sarah Lewis, author of The Rise: Creativity, The Gift of Failure and The Search for Mastery. 

In her speech, she focused on three main traits of great scholars, artists and entrepreneurs such as J.K. Rowling, Albert Einstein and Fredrick Douglas, worth nurturing in ourselves and in our children: 

1. Focus on Mastery--Let yourself be a "deliberate amateur". There is no end to striving towards mastery. Approach learning with the curiosity and wonder of a child. There are no foolish questions.  Explore and play! Play sustains interest and attention.
2. Cultivating a Private Domain--Everyone needs a safe, personal space to try things out and be protected from premature critique. Innovation can at first look like failure. Innovation can be suppressed if the person feels like there are high stakes for being wrong. 
3. Nimble Grit--Grit is the greatest predictor of educational achievement. It is developed through experience and partnership. Persistence and perseverance need to be combined with the insight to know when to "surrender" to failure and choose a different path. The path to excellence is not a straight line. 

Another keynote speaker was Nicholas Negreponte, Founder and Chairman of One Laptop per Child, and Co-founder, Director and Chairman Emeritus of MIT Media Lab. He views one's right to Internet connectivity as synonymous with one's right to an education. He believes our motivation is not so much about using technology as it is about learning, collaborating, communicating and innovating. Through his proto-type of $100 hand-generated and solar-powered laptops, he has brought over 3 million laptops to the most remote areas of the world. This access to education is empowering underdeveloped, struggling villages to overcome many of their challenges. 

Negreponte also spoke to the value of learning computer programming. Coding requires one to think about thinking, and take an iterative approach to learning.

Negreponte concluded with the reminder that children are our most precious resource. He challenged us to create learning opportunities for them where there are no ceilings.