January 22, 2011

Dear Families and Friends of Willow,

As I gaze outside and enjoy the new snowfall, I am reminded of how much I appreciate the change of seasons. It reminds me that we are “of the earth”—part of the natural life cycle that ebbs and flows with the seasons of the year—“connected to all things.”

I love this image because it so properly places the growth of a child in the context of the interdependence of the natural world; and from there we can envision the future contributions that our children will make as adults.

As a school community, we acknowledge the gift of your children and accept the responsibility to be good stewards of those entrusted to our care, including our students, each other, and our natural resources.

While The Willow School is full of academic opportunity, it is also a community committed to leadership and service. We educate our young students by inspiring them to fulfill their potential and to dream of their impact on a world that needs them.

At this midpoint of the year, we take a moment to look at ourselves, our accomplishments and goals. Middle School students and their teachers are carrying out integrated service learning projects through committee work as well as individual self defined projects. They continue to meet academic challenges and prepare for what is ahead this spring. Lower School students are engaged in complementary on-campus activities as their social studies work integrates essential concepts that are both mission based and service oriented.

Our faculty continues to pursue the themes of stewardship, service, and leadership beyond single projects this year. We anticipate that ongoing service events will support the many initiatives we employ to exercise community awareness, generosity of spirit, and productive participation as citizens. In age appropriate ways, we will work within Willow, in the local community, nationally and internationally, to engage our students in the important issues of the day—those of education, poverty, peace, conservation, and service.

The explicit message that began the year stated good stewardship of our community relationships and our environment are essential and that this generation of Willow students—and their teachers—will leave a legacy of love and commitment to the greater good. Our commitment has not wavered as we pause to assess how our work is progressing.

As always, our commitments are bound to the wider Willow community. In this year of the school’s 10th anniversary, we are particularly mindful of our good fortune to be located in such a beautiful area of this state, surrounded by like-minded individuals, embarking on a new building to expand our campus and educational opportunities. As a school for the elementary years, we embrace the potential of our students, strive to challenge their thinking and set rigorous expectations for ourselves. We live—and our students learn—amid just such expectations.

Despite our protected, quiet environment, life at The Willow School includes the world beyond The Willow School. Our graduates report to us that they are thriving in the varied settings where they continue the secondary level of their schooling. Secondary placement for our current eighth grade students is proceeding exceedingly well and we anticipate successful placements again this year.

All that our students learn and observe, all the role models they meet, the revisions they draft, the rehearsals and practices they attend, and the rule setting in all the games they play, are experiences to prepare them to take it on the road, to serve and lead others in worthy directions. We are confident, as they grow in confidence, in their abilities to meet these expectations.

Our Board of Trustees is entrusted with guiding our school as we continue to strive to meet our mission and challenges. Approximately two thirds of our trustees are current parents who are fully aware of the financial commitment being made to ensure a quality education for each student. In setting tuition rates for the 2012/13 school year, they struggled to balance the financial needs of operational costs and respect for the impact of a slow economy. Therefore, a graduated increase across grade levels has been approved, averaging three percent overall. With this increase, Willow tuition remains lower than comparable local day schools.

At Willow, we frequently share the expression “we’re part of something larger than ourselves.” I am committed to the idea’s dual meaning. First, it means that each of us has a place in the grand scheme of things—that each of us belongs—that no one is alone. Second, it means that each of us is a necessary part of the whole and shares in the responsibility. As students, teachers, administrators, and parents, no two of us will play the same role. Each person brings unique perspectives and ideas to this school.

So, being part of something larger than ourselves is both an expression of belonging and a dynamic call to action. We will continue to respond to this call as an essential part of what makes Willow a unique school and special community.

We see our students as “of the earth”—as fluid and free as the seasons, part of nature, creative and resourceful— able to match the challenges that will come their way.

Take comfort in knowing that we are each entrusted to the care of the other. In this community, that is a blessing indeed. We are very happy that you are a part of Willow and I am deeply grateful for your confidence in our mission.

 

Sincerely Yours,

 

 

Kate Burke Walsh

Head of school

 

Friday, September 30, 2011

Dear Families and Friends,

I found this article very interesting and want to share it with you. Please note that three years ago we established the Handwriting Without Tears program at Willow for kindergarten through fifth grades.

Have a good weekend,

Regards,

Kate

See you l8r, cursive

When it comes to handwriting, parents and teachers are divided on whether the pen is mightier than the keyboard

By SARA STEWART

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/see_you_cursive_YZjiumDdR8ixRB2Zkkm4QM#i xzz1ZSyAnqhG

Think kids should still learn cursive writing? LOL. UR so lame. As kids head back to school in our keyboard-centric world, having beautiful penmanship is increasingly seen as about as useful as carrier-pigeon handling. And because instruction on writing in script is not required by the state’s Board of Education, and children are becoming more reliant on computers and phones to communicate, the practice is fast becoming a cultural artifact. “My older son, who’s 15, couldn’t care less,” says Nancy Jacobs, 50, a fiction writer from Boerum Hill, Brooklyn.

JONATHAN BASKIN The rise of typepads and keyboards is rewriting school curricula and raising questions about the value of old-fashioned penmanship. Some kids now sign their names in block letters.

“When he’s asked to sign his name, he just writes it in print. My younger son, who’s 13, doesn’t really know cursive, but he tries to kind of link the letters to make it look like cursive.” As a writer, Jacobs says she’s disturbed by the prospect of her kids not knowing how to write — or read — cursive, which for her generation was a staple of education.

“My mother, when she was alive, would write letters [in cursive] to the kids,” she says. “When they would come across a capital G, they didn’t know what it was!” Michelle Dal Piaz, 35, teaches fourth grade in the South Bronx, at a school where “cursive in the curriculum is nonexistent,” she says. “And I would say it’s important. Your signature’s going to be with you the rest of your life. If you take a

look at the Constitution, it’s written in script. And I want students to know it, even if they don’t use it. I want them to know how to read it. At least get familiar with it, even if you don’t want to do it.” There are wide-ranging benefits from learning the practice, recent studies have found: Different parts of the brain are activated when a child is writing by hand, ones that aren’t involved in the process of typing. And this is part of the reason companies such as Kumon, an after-school tutoring program in math and reading, are picking up when schools drop the ball.

“Resources are dwindling in schools to work on cursive,” says Nathalie Le Du, an associate editor at Kumon, which is releasing cursive writing workbooks this year. “And we’ve gotten a lot of feedback through the centers — parents asking, ‘Do you do cursive? Because my child’s having trouble with that.’

“Writing by hand is more than a way of communicating,” she says. “It’s a different way to engage the brain. These are cognitive exercises that develop children’s spatial- reasoning abilities.” Dick Riley, spokesman for the New York City Teachers Union, says although “there is no citywide curriculum” devoted to cursive writing, educators in general do tend toward wanting kids to learn.

“Teachers are essentially culturally conservative,” he says. “I think most of our teachers would feel it’s an important skill.” Dal Piaz, for one, says she’s even sneaking in a little cursive instruction on the sly. “I have students coming up to me in class saying, ‘Can you write my name in script? I want to see what it looks like.’ The students are interested in it. But I have to go out of my way — it’s not on the curriculum, so there’s no time to do it.”

Parents, on the other hand, are divided on the importance of the practice. While some insist handwriting is a hallmark of civilization, others see no real place for this skill in the high-tech world of tomorrow. “I’m on the fence,” says Kelly Wallace, chief correspondent at Web site iVillage and a New York-based parent of a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old. “Part of me thinks kids need to learn the keyboard. My own writing is a mix of print and cursive. But I lean on the side of thinking they should learn cursive. Frankly, computer-written notes to Grandma aren’t going to go over well in my household.”

In the mostly female iVillage community, Wallace has seen a wide range of impassioned views on the topic. “I asked a panel of New York moms, and they were pretty split,” she reports. “One mom said, ‘Good riddance. I think kids should be doing math and science. Maybe leave cursive as an extracurricular.’ Another mom of two said, ‘I think it’s [a] really important part of the creative process, and I think schools should be required to continue teaching it.’ ”

Another iVillage commenter put it even more bluntly: “I think it should be taught, and it should be covered again and again and again for years. All these kids with illegible writing are graduating from high school, and on handwritten paper, they look like incompetent boobs

Read more:

http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/see_you_cursive_YZjiumDdR8ixRB2Zkkm4QM#i xzz1ZSyS9PSF