Renata McAdams

Two students wearing masks and reading books, sitting on a rug in front of a bookshelf full of books

Looking for space, joy and grace

A few months ago, I was in a Zoom call with Deans of Students at various Quaker schools. One of the questions asked, to which everyone took turns responding, was basically, “What does it feel like at your school right now?” And what I said, a few months ago, was, “It feels like we’re trying…

Gender Relations in the Classroom

A couple of weeks ago, two students in my room—a boy and a girl, friends who often play as part of the same group—were on the outs. Small conflicts kept erupting. On the advice of one of our parent volunteers, who had just finished a difficult recess with them, I pulled those two students aside…

Kids Being Awesome

One thing I heard over and over when we began remote learning—first for a few days here and there in the fall, and then in December—was parents expressing amazement at how much more responsible and independent their children were during remote learning this year. It’s strange that we have this point of comparison. Whoever would…

Science

One of the most compelling pedagogical concepts I’ve ever come across is very simple: Don’t teach a vocabulary word until students already know the concept it describes. Let the experience you create be not, “Okay, there’s this word, and apparently it means X,” but, “Oh! That’s the word for that!” During the fall term, In science class,…