What We Did This Summer

Summer is a time for faculty to rest and recharge, certainly, but for so many in our community, that “recharging” takes the form of amazing learning opportunities. From workshops in New York City to teaching in Rwanda to curriculum design projects and technology workshops right here on campus, Hackley’s faculty engaged in a wide range of enriching and, often, inspirational endeavors on their “time off."

Lower School

Angela Alonso (Spanish) took an intensive course in Long Island to obtain FLES Certification (Foreign Language in Elementary School). She has been teaching Spanish for the past 21 years at the Middle and High School level and wanted to be ready for the new challenge as our new Lower School Spanish teacher. The course provided great insight into early childhood development as well as how to plan successful lessons. It also provided a wide repertoire of activities, resources and fun games to implement in 3rd and 4th grade classes.

Corie Buonanno attended a Poetry Foundation seminar in Chicago.

Second grade faculty Jane Dean, Mary Stapleton and Heather Dini participated in a Smartboard workshop in NYC.

Lower School kindergarten teacher Tia Donlevy spent three weeks in Rwanda during the month of August. During that time, she participated in back to school teacher meetings, helped ready rooms for first day of school, and taught in Nursery (N) and Primary (P) divisions, N1 (3 year olds), N3 (kindergarten) and grades P1 – P6. During her last week, she also led the Wednesday after school staff meeting in the Primary Division. She traveled to the rural village of Musha to deliver teaching materials to Duha Complex School and almost 300 t-shirts to an orphanage, as well.

Shannon MacDonald (Literacy Specialist) attended a workshop on iOS Creativity and Productivity: Creating Digital Multi-Media Projects with the iPad. Participants were engaged in understanding the full depth and meaning of implementing the iPad using the SAMR model as a gage to assess our teaching and curricular goals. The programs utilized in this full day training were iMovie, Keynote and iPhoto.

Susan Reynolds (1st Grade), Jane Dean (2nd Grade), and Heather Dini (2nd Grade) attended a two-day conference on best practices with Singapore Math.

Eva Van Buren (Math) attended a three day NYSAIS STEAM Camp conference, which focused on design thinking and project based learning. The conference provided wonderful opportunities to work with various teachers in all grades as they shared and explored curriculum in the intersecting areas of science, technology, engineering, art and math.

Madeleine Lopez (4th grade) worked on creating a new integrated and differentiated spelling program for the 4th grade that incorporates pertinent spelling patterns, vocabulary from the 4th grade novels and history units, and individualized spelling words for each child. The weekly activities include, sorting words alphabetically, looking words up in the dictionary for definitions, syllables, and parts of speech, and completing sentences and analogies with the words. She also attended two sessions of Technology training at Hackley for the Lower School, including one on using Google drive with the iPad cart and another on using Discovery Education for Social Studies.

Classics

Adrianne Pierce (Chair) attended, and loved, a two-day professional development workshop in archaeology at the Museum of NY in Albany. According to Adrianne, “it provided some great ideas which she, and anyone else who is interested, can incorporate into the classroom. Archaeology, it turns out, has a lot to do with sustainability and diversity, as well as global education, science, math, visual arts, history, literature, and, of course, Classics”

College Counseling

Peter Latson and Jean Nadell attended the Association of College Counselors in Independent Schools summer workshop in St. Paul, MN. Peter Latson also attended the annual Scarsdale Symposium, which brings together a group of about thirty admissions deans and high school counselors to discuss college admissions issues.

Community Studies

Melissa Boviero (MS Science), Cyndy Jean (MS English), Meredith Maddox (Performing Arts), Emily DeMarchena (Modern Languages) and Assistant Headmaster and Community Students department head Kevin Rea comprised the Hackley delegation attending the Georgetown Day School Equity Collaborative in Washington, DC, as part of Hackley’s ongoing commitment to diversity. At the collaborative, they discussed issues of diversity, anti-bias, and social justice and developed strategic plans to bring back to their home institutions for further review and execution. This dynamic collaborative provided opportunities to plan initiatives that will positively impact our students.”

English

Anna Abelaf (US) and Richard Robinson (Chair) attended the Shakespeare Set Free/Folger Institute Workshop in July. The sessions focused on using performance-based strategies for helping students to unpack, close-read, understand, and enjoy Shakespeare.

Suzy Akin (Director of Communications, US English) completed coursework toward a Master’s degree at The Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College. Her courses included “Fictions of Finance,” which looked at the role of financial markets in American literature and culture, and “American Artists and the African American Book,” which considered the ways in which we interpret visual media and its intersection with text.

Nicole Butterfield (MS/US), Cyndy Jean (MS), Trevor Ogden (MS), Richard Robinson (Chair), Anne Siviglia (US), and Brad Walters (MS) attended a seminar at Hackley on Flipped Grammar, led by Dan Lipin and Erich Tusch.

Mike Canterino (US) attended a NYSAIS workshop for early career teachers in Pawling, NY this August. He described it as “extremely helpful” and a “great opportunity to meet teachers from other independent schools in the area.”

Cyndy Jean (MS) attended a week-long writing institute with Bard College's Institute for Writing and Thinking. Her course, Revolutionary Grammar, allowed her to work on and adopt new lessons plans for the instruction of grammar and writing.

Wil Lobko (US) attended a Poetry Foundation seminar in Chicago.

Richard Robinson (Chair) revised and expanded the English Department Mission Statement. Responding both to changes in culture, technology, and pedagogy and to changes in Hackley's schedule, calendar, and mission, the English mission explores such topics as diversity, global studies, student self-reliance, pedagogically productive and vital technology, critical thinking, and the complex business of reading, writing, and communicating in a digital age. It will serve as a point of reference in the ongoing process of updating the curriculum. In its simplest form, it states that Hackley English seeks to graduate skilled readers, writers, and thinkers who employ critical thinking skills to close read media and their world, who delight in creativity and reflection, who develop and communicate ideas clearly and persuasively, and who act not as inheritors of narrow allegiances and traditions, but as citizens of a diverse world who have moral responsibilities near and far.

Raegan Russell (US) work on a redesign of the English 10 curriculum. She reports, “It was a pleasure working to redesign this curriculum to meet the changing needs of our students. In our video-rich world, students spend less time with complex texts than students of previous generations, so our new tenth grade course seeks to lay bare some of the assumptions of traditional modes of literary study which are no longer intuitive. Why do we value critical reading? Why might we use literary texts to understand philosophical problems? How do different studies within the humanities relate to one another? Having a sense of the answers to these questions will allow students to read thoughtfully and write purposefully.”

History

Bill Davies (Chair) attended Bowdoin's "alumni college," which focused on "The Afterlife of the American Civil War." New England, Maine, and Bowdoin in particular are all rife with Civil War connections. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Brunswick after what she said was an inspiration that come over her during a service in the town’s First Parish Church. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, made famous by Ken Burns’ Civil War and the movie Glory was a Bowdoin professor, later its president and a governor of Maine. General Oliver Otis Howard, who led the Freedman’s Bureau after the war was a Bowdoin alumnus. William Pitt Fessenden, a leading anti-slavery figure before the war, was Lincoln’s Treasury Secretary during it was also an alum. The four days drew on all these connections (we did work in the archives with the Howard papers, for instance, and also looked at various archival sources on the “true” story of Little Round Top), but also touched on the poetry and war work of Whitman, the use of wet plate photographic techniques in delivering war images to the public and the lithographic work of Winslow Homer to consider not only the war in its own time period, but also how it has lived on in American consciousness.

Steve Fitzpatrick (MS/US) took a class with Cyndy Jean, Raegan Russell, and Erich Tusch on the use of iPads in the classroom. He reports, “It was both interesting and beneficial from a practical perspective.”

Vladimir Klimenko (US) visited Moscow, where he and his wife had lived and worked for three years as journalists covering the collapse of the USSR. He spent his days visiting historically-significant sites as well as friends and acquaintances who work in journalism, publishing, business, the arts, government, academia and human rights activism. “After a six year absence, I was impressed by the amount of new cars on the roads and, just as important, the degree to which drivers – and people in general – had become more polite and considerate in their public demeanor. And yet the people with I spoke were almost universally pessimistic about the country's future.” He notes that historical pessimism occupies a large and, one might argue, justified place in the Russian national psyche. “These days most urban educated professionals express disdain towards Vladimir Putin's government, which they criticize for its authoritarianism and corruption, both of which impede Russia's relationships with Europe and the US. A well-informed journalist opined that, were it not for petrodollars, Russia's socio-political stability of the past decade or so would quickly evaporate. The trip left me with much food for thought about the ever evolving, never ending process that we call human history.”

Erica Jablon (MS) attended the Bard Institute for Writing and Thinking. The workshop was an in-depth look at how to write across curricula using a variety of different types of texts and images and, she reports, it was truly inspiring.

David Sykes (US) attended a week long seminar at Kenyon College on teaching college level writing in English and non-English classrooms. Dave was one of ten participants, working closely with two college professors. In his words, it was “a great week of learning new techniques, thinking outside the box, and collaborating with smart and motivated teachers from around the country.”

Library

Bria Judkins (Chair) attended the ISM “Chairing your Department, the First Five years” conference.

Math

Keshena Richardson (US), Courtney Kelley (US), Karen Casper (US) and Diana Kaplan (Chair) redesigned the Algebra I, Algebra II, and Pre-Calculus curricula to include more project based work.

Modern Languages

Rebecca Garfield attended Columbia University's Klingenstein Summer Institute, joining 74 other teachers from around the world on Lawrenceville School's campus for a residential two week program. Classes explored teaching styles, educational philosophies, and educational topics particularly pertinent to independent schools. While workshops included fantastic opportunities to work closely with other Modern Languages teachers, Rebecca was particularly struck by the wealth of insight to be gained from collaboration with colleagues in fields as diverse as philosophy and physics. The two weeks were simultaneously exhausting and stimulating. After leading a Hackley language immersion trip to Costa Rica, she also attended a four-day conference for Middle School Deans through Independent School Management. The conference looked at the particular joys and challenges of guiding students through Middle School's social, emotional and academic challenges.

Danny Lawrence (Chair) did three sessions of Technology training at Hackley, including Google Docs, use of iPad, and use of smart board.

Diane Remenar spent a great deal of time this summer working on her approach to and curriculum for AP Spanish Language in anticipation of the new AP exam for this course that will premiere this May.

Chase Russell (MS) attended the New Teacher’s Seminar sponsored by NYSAIS.

Roy Sheldon (MS Chinese, History) took a refresher course at the China Institute in NYC this summer from a master Chinese character calligrapher. Having introduced calligraphy to Chinese 7 , 8 and US classes last spring through an HPA funded guest teacher and in joint collaboration with the MS Art Department, he will continue work on calligraphy this year in class. In addition, using resources from the C.V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia, he researched and presented a series of lectures at the 92nd Street Y in NYC in July and August on the founding of the Republic of China and the War Lord period (1911 – 1928). He plans to use some of these materials in MS Chinese classes to teach our students key milestones in modern Chinese history. Also, he participated in weekly Skype calls June - August to a peer Chinese language teacher (native language speaker) in Beijing as part of Hamilton College's STARTALK summer program for Chinese language teacher development. STARTALK is a Presidential initiative to provide training in critical languages for non-native speaking students and teachers. (The target languages of STARTALK include Arabic, Chinese, Dari, Hindi, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, Turkish, and Urdu).

Jessica Spates joined Rebecca Garfield as leaders on a student language immersion trip to Costa Rica.

Performing Arts

Megan Fogarty (Choral Music) participated in a course on Choral Conducting at Westminster College of the Arts in Princeton, NJ, an intense week of study with Dr. James Jordan, one of the nation’s pre-eminent conductors, writers and innovators in choral music. During this course, participants were taken through Jordan’s conducting text, Evoking Sound, which was named one of six books that are a “must read” for choral conductors. This was a unique opportunity to study with the author of one of the leading conducting texts in the country.

Lauren Rigby observed rehearsals with the Frankfurt Radio Jazz Orchestra in Germany, which enabled her to learn about rehearsal strategies (as well as managing musicians with personality clashes!). She also took conducting lessons from an amazing composer and jazz trombone player named JC Sanford.

Science

Amanda Esteves-Kraus (US) attended the Beginning AP Biology Teacher Program at Taft.

Jason Gilley (US) attended the AP Chemistry Institute at Taft.

Tessa Johnson (US) attended the Advanced AP Biology Teacher Program at Taft.

Dan Lipin (MS) attended Flipcon13 in Stillwater Minnesota in mid-June. This is the largest national conference that focuses on flipping the classroom, and provided a great opportunity to connect with other teachers who were also flipping the classroom. He took a training course in Camtasia video editing software and hear many inspirational and educational talks by leading proponents of flipping like Ramsey Musallam, Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann. Dan also led a course with six English teachers at Hackley during the week after school ended, teaching them how to create flipped videos for use in their classes.

Dan McElroy (MS) attended a Flipped Learning workshop by NYSCATE.

Bill McLay (Chair) recorded 60 9th Grade Physics lectures to try Flipping the Classroom this year.

Andrew Ying (US) worked as a technology instructor for three camps at the American Museum of Natural History. He worked with the Digital Universe Flight School Camp, the Cretaceous Seas Camp and a camp entitled “Where did the Neanderthals Go?” Andrew also designed an app for tennis coaches called Game.Set.Match.

Technology

Melissa Brennan (US) spent July travelling in Thailand, where she volunteered a portion of her time teaching English in the northwest town of Mae Hong Son. She worked with other volunteers teaching children at a Burmese refugee camp and Buddhist monks in a local temple. They practiced their vocabulary and built their confidence using the English language through conversation. She reports, “I was lucky to be able to have an inside perspective of the Thai culture and further develop my understanding of the importance personal connections can have to both a student and educator.”

Anne Budlong (MS/US), along with three Upper School students, attended the Columbia Scholastic Press Association Summer Journalism Workshop. Anne took a course called Digital Bootcamp, where participants engaged in activities designed to enhance high school digital newspapers. One of the students took a course called Reporting and Writing, and two others took Editorial Leadership.

Jennie Lyons, on leave for the year to participate in The Albert Einstein Distinguished Educators Fellows program, began her fellowship with an orientation week filled with meetings to discuss ways in which the Fellows could use their experience and knowledge to help teaching science. One day included a visit to George Mason University to discuss plans to design a program for primary school teachers in the 10th largest school district in the United States. Another day involved an introduction to The International Spy Museum. Following a visit to the museum, personnel worked with Fellows on the possibility of enhancing school programs to more effectively teach some of the science involved in espionage. Working with professors at the University of Virginia, we are also participating in the review and design of a year-long engineering curriculum for elementary and middle school students. The program begins with paper models, and the ultimate goal is to create models to be printed on the 3D printers. Learning more about the approaches of teaching STEM subjects from representatives of Engineering is Elementary and Sally Ride Science rounded out our introductory week at the Triangle Coalition for STEM education annual conference in Washington, D.C.

Visual Arts

Thomas Chin took a lighting course at the International Center of Photography in New York. Titled Lighting for the Modern Photographer, the course covered basic as well as advanced studio portrait lighting techniques. Taught by portrait photographer, Ports Bishop, the course began by reviewing basic portrait techniques that include high key light, butterfly, loop, Rembrandt, and split, and participants also experimented with specific lighting techniques, various ways to use light reflectors and other types of light bouncing devices. In addition, he spend some time in Vienna and Prague visiting art collections and photographing architecture and interiors that he will use as illustrations in his photography classes.

Sarah Coble created a ceramic tile project that commemorates Eulace Peacock, who was known as “the world’s fastest man” in 1935. Commissioned by the City of Yonkers and the Blue Door Gallery, these tiles were installed on a large cement planter in front of the Yonkers Metro North Train Station. “I have completed four planters there with ceramic tiles and portraits of inventors from Yonkers: Leo Baekeland; invented “Bakelite” plastic, Edwin Armstrong; the FM radio, Charles Harvey was known for engineering the first elevated railroad and Elisha Otis designed the safety elevator. Ian Parnell 2013 modeled for the portrait of Peacock. The train station is a wonderful Beaux Arts building; the ceramic sculptures along the sidewalk complement the sculptural elements of the building.” She also took a 5-week Metal Sculpture class at Silvermine School of Art.

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What We Did This Summer

Hackley School