Happy Holidays from NCS

I hope the vacation has started well. You should receive your child's reports soon. I trust that all the Fall term stories that you are hearing are good ones. Snow has continued to fall since the students have left and John, Larry, Nick, and Mike report excellent skiing on our hill. Finally, lots of work continues on campus ... The enclosed picture is
alumna Kelli Culpepper helping mill logs for boards that will be used in the new student residence. Happy Holidays!

Santa Comes to NCS

Ninth grader Toshiki Tago arrives by sleigh to wish the entire community a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday. He hands out candy canes to all, and his best wishes for safe travels ... Your children are heading home, it has been a wonderful term, many thanks.

Holiday Banquet

Packing Up

An NCS student buried under a pile of sports equipment, barn chores apparel, and school supplies as all students spent time cleaning out their ramp lockers.  The goal is to cart a full term's worth of stuff up to your house in one trip.  The discerning eye might just pick out the small teddy bear tucked into the ski boot next to Keun Hyung Park’s sneakers.  Needless to say, the children are incredibly excited.

Sunday Open Houses

We continued our holiday festivities this morning with four houses hosting the NCS community for breakfast.  Students traveled around from Cascade, to Mountain, to Meadow, and as pictured here, Algonguin House to get various courses of the meal.  The menu included: quiche, crepes, smoothies, tea, and strawberry shortcake! Monday and Tuesday we will have a slightly altered class schedule to make room for packing. Happy Holidays.
Hock

21st Century Skills, Values, Aptitudes

Notes captured from the initial few minutes of our discussion of the video clip, "Did You Know?"

More Strategic Planning

(Click on the picture to enlarge it.) Last night a dozen off duty staff got together for a four hour focus group facilitated by Hock. The goal was to review the work on the 2001 strategic plan, brainstorm what big challenges the institution might tackle moving forward, and to prioritize some of the items on the list for a potential capital campaign.

Fascinating Educational Blog

These two prominent educators and policy wonks, have a go at each other from opposite ends of the educational continuum. I was exposed to both Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch when I was at the Klingenstein Center in the early 1990s, getting my Masters at Columbia.

Out Time

After school activities are from 3-4:30. Your children sign up daily unless they make a commitment to a team or on-going activity. Today's activities included: ice climbing, capoeria, Nordic ski team, packing the ski hill on snowshoes, barn work job, basketball team, bread making, recreational cross country skiing, rehearsal for Mr. Willoughby's Christmas, and two different walks.

Mindsets: Intelligence, errors, and learning

Recent New York Times article on the NEA research study

NCS Council

Ninth grader, Lea Collins conducting the afternoon all school meeting.
This rite of passage highlights one of the many informal ways we build
social skills as well as self confidence in your children. It was
great to talk to so many of you at Thanksgiving.

Creativity as important as literacy and numeracy

Video excerpt of Sir Ken Robinson

300 People

Our 69th Thanksgiving Feast. We had 16 turkeys, 75 pounds of squash,
125 pounds of potatoes, and homemade bread made this morning ...
Almost everything was grown and prepared by our students and staff. Happy
Thanksgiving.

Long Standing Tradition

Eating lunch in you locker - in the Ramp - gives us time to wax the
Dining Room for Thanksgiving. In 48 hours we have a sit down feast for
300! Happy Thanksgiving.

Alternative Energy

Newspaper article: NCS sets pace

After much work, North Country School and other customers have gotten the village to revise its contract with the New York Power Authority. Given this change school and camp will be able to sell power back to the grid, an idea originally proposed by our architects designing a new student/staff residence.

Reading for Fun

Research on Reading

For well over a decade North Country School has had a vibrant program of free reading called Title Trekking. Alison Follos - our librarian - engages students in "collecting literary 46ers" much as our hikers climb the Adirondack 46ers. The program supplements the school's Language Arts academic program. However, the specific goals of the Title Trek program are to have fun, to gain exposure to different genre, and to keep a journal of literary analysis. (As I always tell the children, NCS is philosophically a school without a trophy case, and there are only two ways to memorialize your name on a plaque ... one for free reading prowess and the other for exemplary performance on manual work jobs.)

Snowing hard

Not the first one of the season BUT the one that says let's start
skiing, sledding, ice climbing, snowboarding, ski joring, ice skating,
igloo building, and winter mountaineering. The NCS snowball policy has
3 components: don't do it near windows, mutual agreement, no one gets
hurt. Yahoo.

Creativity and the Classroom

Short essay by Sir Kenneth Robinson

Multi-disciplinary learning

Sixth graders making models of Chinese biomes for science class. Which
supplements their study of Chinese fables and history.

Hock's Tag Cloud

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NCS Arts

This photo is to remind you of how much art your children get ... Six
hours a week, 15 arts electives, 6:1 student to piano ratio and 34
students taking private piano lessons, not to mention the incredibly
small classes and the weekend programming.

Read Aloud

The research literature is very conclusive, reading aloud to students
has significant positive benefits right on through high school. Here
our librarian - Alison Follos - reads to a group of 7th graders.

NCS town meeting

Almost every week we set aside a class period to discuss important topics ... This past Wednesday our conversation revolved around why people use "hate speech," the table in the picture shows Level I students getting ready to "think-pair-share."

What's Really Important in Education

This video is quite short; just under two minutes long. Please do not be put off by Daniel Pink's talk of college. I think you'll find that his critical educational elements: curiosity, passion, patience, high concept, and high touch are the fundamentals and hallmarks of your child's time at school or camp. I hope you will be intrigued enough to read his excellent book, A Whole New Mind.

A Whole New Mind at Amazon