Last night I welcomed Upper School parents to our annual Back to School Night.  The following is a written version of my remarks:

We know the main focus for you on BTSN is meeting your child’s teachers, to put faces to new names, or to reacquaint yourself with a teacher you have met before.  This is a night where teachers provide an overview of their courses, but even more importantly convey their enthusiasm for their subjects and for the students they teach.  We have a thoroughly professional, highly engaging group of teachers who seek to inspire and connect every day with their students.

 

I am pleased to report that we have a strong cohort of new teachers who have already made a strong impression with their colleagues and their students.  Paul Augustus comes to us from Louisville, Kentucky, where he was a math teacher, dean of students and swim coach.  (He was an NCAA division 1 swimmer at Louisville.)  Austin Harvey, our other new math teacher, spent a decade at the Fountain Valley School, where he served in a number of capacities, including working in the admissions office.  He is also teaching AP Economics for us—something he did at Fountain Valley as well.  New to our world language department is Sonia Sitja Rubio, a native of Venezuela who has lived in many places around the world, including Montreal where she earned her bachelor’s degree before doing graduate work at the University of Texas-Austin.  Her assignment includes Spanish 2, Heritage Spanish and AP Spanish Literature.  We have a new member of our English department, Ross Holland, who grew up in Connecticut and attended a very fine independent school there.  He got his degrees from Colorado College and Columbia University, first taught in Darien, Connecticut and then in the Cherry Creek school district.  Finally, biology teacher David Frankel comes to Colorado Academy all the way from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which is a suburban district outside of Philadelphia. He has experience in middle school and upper school science.  All five of the teachers I just mentioned are also ninth grade advisors this year.

 

So I hope you will enjoy meeting these folks this year and will be pleased with the positive energy they are bringing to our Upper School community.

 

Something else many of you will notice--and I hope appreciate--tonight as you visit classes is the fact that several of our courses are being co-taught or team taught.  This year we are offering twelve such courses, including Global Design & Social Innovation, Modern Dance and AP Computer Science Principles.  In fact, every department except math is offering a co-taught course this year, and the only reason the math department is not doing it yet is that they have for years worked closely together in teams anyway.  (For instance, all the Math 1 teachers meet regularly and coordinate their assignments and assessments, and are open to any student from any sections working with them on the class, so in that sense it is a team taught course.)

 

Overall, the advantages to more than one teacher working with a group of students on a class are many.  First, the dynamic of the class shifts and is naturally de-centralized, especially given the fact these courses tend to be discussion-based or group project-oriented.  The two or more teachers are still in charge, but the freshness of this new arrangement supports the unique subject matter under consideration.  Second, the teacher-student ratio is obviously lowered, thereby giving more individualized attention to students and groups.  Whichever way the teacher work load is divided, we can be sure that two adults can spend more time with 18 students than one can.  Finally, I think it is very healthy and informative for students to observe the collaboration between two adults.  Sometimes there may even be differences of opinion exhibited in the class discussion and watching the two teachers engage in civil disagreement can be intellectually rich.  There is of course an upper limit on how many of these types of courses we can offer with the staffing resources we have.  Still, we believe strongly in this approach as another great example of embracing the best practices of a 21^st century education.

 

A final point to be made about what you will see tonight.  The presentation style most teachers will employ in their presentations to parents is quite different than what happens on a regular basis.  That is, the “stand and deliver” approach that will be the norm tonight is truly the exception in our typical school day.  I get around to a lot of classes – in fact, I will visit every teacher in action at least twice this year – and what continues to impress me is how active your students are.  While there is still time and space given to the teacher delivering content, the bulk of the time is devoted to letting kids do and work.  Gone are the days when a teacher droned on in the front of the room, as in the classic movie Ferris Buehler’s Day Off.   Now the teacher might start class by introducing or reinforcing a point, setting up a lab or a problem set, laying out a complex problem, and then often put the kids to work either individually or, quite often, in small groups.  At that point the model of “teacher as coach” takes over, and the teacher then floats around the room helping students trouble shoot, offering words of support and guidance, and clarifying a concept.  Science teachers have been doing this for years, of course; that’s what doing labs has always been about.  But now teachers across disciplines are increasingly spending class time observing and supporting students at work.  Not only does this help our kinesthetic and hands-on learners, this model encourages 3 of our school’s 6 C’s-- collaboration, creativity and critical thinking.

 

The Upper School is a dynamic place, and that’s what makes it such an exciting atmosphere to work in, and for students to learn in.  While I know we can only offer you a taste of that tonight, I hope all of you walk away with a sense of the excitement.  One of the best things I can possibly hear at the end of these nights, and I am pleased that I have heard it frequently, is “Wow, I wish I could be a student here.”