As the middle school teaching team, Alyssa and I are often thinking about how to better prepare students for high school. Alyssa and I are both familiar with Chicago Public Schools and some of their expectations for high school students, but I wanted to learn what high school is like at schools that are more…
Real-World Application- Sport Meets Social Studies
I am a passionate middle school Humanities teacher, but anyone who knows me also knows that I am a passionate lover of the Beautiful Game – football. No, I don’t mean American football, I mean what locals here call soccer. When I heard seven years ago that the 2022 FIFA World Cup would take place…
Gratitude and Quaker Values
This month, we are starting to reflect on Gratitude as a whole school. The image I have attached is of squares from a whole-school gratitude quilt that students are working on. As you can see this group of kids are grateful for a range of things: pollinators; music; a roof over their heads; medicine, even…
From Chicago Friends School to High School: One Parent’s Perspective
[A guest post written by the parent of a graduate from Chicago Friends School’s class of 2022.] It’s “afternoon pick-up” time on a sunny, autumn day. I scan the crowd as more than a thousand teens stream out of the three-story, 210,000 square foot building. A loud “thunk” announces our high schooler’s arrival as he…
Saying “Gay”
Today, I pulled a teacher out into the hall while their class was working independently to check on something, and while we were chatting, one of the students came out with a vocabulary question. This student had encountered a word they were unfamiliar with in something that they were reading, and came out to get…
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…