Month: December 2018

“We are a small school, you have probably never heard of us, but if you have heard of us, you have probably heard good things.”

17-29-19, those are the attendance numbers of our last three Open Houses. 17 and 19 at our two Lower School Open Houses and 29 at the Middle School Open House two weeks ago. As a point of reference, when we have held lower school open houses in the past, we have never had more than a handful of people and the most at a middle school one would be 15.

Why the increase? I would like to say that it is due to the banner at the Orinda Bart, the yard signs, or our Facebook push. But every time I ask a family who tours how they heard of us, they inevitably tell me a current or former family told them about Saklan. Word of mouth is one of the most powerful forms of advertising out there. In the independent school world, it is the most important reason people decide to join a school.

We hope you place our Saklan magnet on your car out of pride, but also to give others a chance to ask you about our work here at Saklan. The more children that experience an education like the one Saklan provides the better it is for our world.

So hopefully we will be soon saying, “We are a small school, you’ve probably heard of us and heard good things.”

Warm regards,

David

You Say Tomato, I Say Field Study

If you have heard us talk about our students’ “field trips” recently, you may have noticed that we try to exchange the word “trip” with “study” or “experience,” or even used the term “field work.” Words matter, they send specific messages in our educational culture. The phrase field trip is predominately used when describing experiential learning. But “field trip” sounds close to going on a fun excursion as opposed to doing the work of real world learning.

Today, our kindergartners went “into the field” to do the serious work of researchers. They are currently studying the different aspects of what makes a community and traveled to the Moraga Fire Station. At the station, they interviewed the firemen about the different roles they play in our community. They discovered that a fireman not only puts out fires but helps with medical emergencies, educate citizens, as well as participates in activities that bring our community closer. While I am sure the students had fun (engaged learning is fun), make no doubt about it, the students were doing the work of researchers in the field.

Next week, our 8th graders head to Washington D.C. to do field work. Their objective is to understand how D.C. represents American cultural values. They have been doing research over the past two weeks in order to do a real world investigation of their driving question. To understand their question at a deeper level, they will be examining artifacts, hearing from experts, as well as learning from each other.

In the case of both the 8th graders and the kindergartners, students are doing the serious work of researchers. They are investigating, talking with experts, reflecting and revising their understanding. In other words, they are approaching learning like graduate students. Which is why we prefer the phrase “field experience” or “field study” to field trip as they more accurately describe the serious nature of the work our students do.