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