Quaker Education

Kids holding marshmallows on sticks over a bonfire

A Place Around the Rug for Everyone

Throughout the month of September, in community meetings and in our Looking-glasses [4th-5th grade] meetings and journaling, we have been reflecting on community: what makes a community, how we feel in a community, the challenges of being in community, and what our responsibilities to one another are. Given the ways in which our society often…

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…

NaNoWriMo

In the middle school writing rotation, fiction writing came up on my unit map this year. While I have a curriculum that I regularly use to teach writing, I had a crazy idea- what if my students participated in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)? NaNoWriMo is traditionally an adult-led tradition where people worldwide commit…

On Saying “I don’t know.”

Twenty-first-century education can not be about simply filling kids’ heads with knowledge, but rather it is about teaching them the skills and attitudes that they need to become learners.  Today, through our digital connections, more information and knowledge than ever is at our fingertips.  Just to read through everything on Wikipedia would take a lifetime. …