Pumpkins!

As part of our Middle School Spirit Week, we had a pumpkin carving contest, with each 7th grade advisory submitting a pumpkin to be judged. Some of the creations were excellent! Below you will find a witch (Madame Bofill-Polsky's advisory), Mike Wazowski from Monster's, Inc. (Mrs. Finnegan), a scary "smokin'" pumpkin (courtesy of Mr. Doss and his boys' fog machine), and the award-winning, first-place cheeseburger pumpkin from Senora Sachar's advisory! Friday is costume day. Any guesses as to my costume?

Book Recommendation

I highly recommend The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch. It is one of the very best books on education I have ever read. Dr. Ravitch covers historical topics; reviews testing, accountability, and school choice in detail; and offers a compelling vision for what public education should look like in our country. Multiple case studies reinforce her key assertions. I am not going into any more detail because I want you to read the book! I have the exciting task of introducing Dr. Ravitch and presiding during her speech next Monday at the Association of Independent Maryland Schools Annual Conference, so I read the book to gain a greater understanding of her mindset and beliefs. If Dr. Ravitch's speech is half as good as her book, it will be outstanding!

Community Building

We have had multiple excellent and very well-attended "community building" events over the past several days: Fall Family Outreach Day (90 people), Race for the Cure (98 members on Team Calvert, which is a new record for us!), Lower School Calvert-in-Action Day this morning (50 parents) , and a "Fostering Resiliency in Children" Parent Workshop this evening (50 parents) led by our counselors, Tracy Hannah and Terri Merwin. Moreover, we hosted both a girls' soccer game and a 6th grade boys' flag football game on campus this afternoon. If you blink, you will miss a great deal of activity here at Calvert!

A Big Wellness Week Ahead!

We have a full seven days of wellness and outreach activities on and off campus, starting with our second annual Fall Family Community Outreach Day on Saturday, 10/22. During Outreach Day, Calvert families will beautify campus, clean up Stony Run, and make casseroles for Baltimore's neediest citizens. On Sunday, the Calvert School Race for the Cure Team--which is over 70 strong as of now--will run to support a cure for breast cancer. The Fall Food Drive will take place from Monday, 10/24, through Friday, 10/28. This year, we are collecting fresh foods for the first time, which will provide families from area city schools access to healthy food and produce. Great foods to contribute would be russet and sweet potatoes, squashes such as butternut, acorn and spaghetti, and root vegetables such as radishes, parsnips, turnips and beets. Other items needed include green beans, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, apples, and oranges. Moreover, on 10/24, Lower School classes will plant 50 trays of seeds in a collaborative effort with Real Food Farms and Constellation Energy. A few weeks after, some Middle School students will plant the mature seedlings in the ground at Real Food Farms, and then in a few months, students (and families if needed) will harvest the plants and sell at a farm stand. Many thanks to Calvert teachers Mollie Williams, Jennifer Yapsuga, Larisa Kamp, Erin Strom, and Jennifer Armstrong for overseeing the aforementioned activities! It should be a terrific, worthwhile week for students, faculty and staff, and families.

Ted Lord '89 Stresses Values

Ted Lord '89 spoke this morning at our Middle School assembly. After Calvert, Dr. Lord attended Gilman, the University of North Carolina, and then Harvard Medical School. He spoke about how Calvert teachers paid attention to him and stressed citizenship as well as academics. Dr. Lord told a story about how he did not receive a seal for citizenship one month because he had been unkind to a classmate. This lesson stuck with him, and he never missed another citizenship seal during his Calvert years. Dr. Lord discussed his extensive travels through Africa; the landscape, people, languages, and poverty all made a significant impact on him and his worldview. He also recounted his experience teaching English in Kazakhstan! Now, Dr. Lord serves as an anesthesiologist in Boston. In closing, Dr. Lord explained that there is no such thing as a self-made man. He has relied on his family and friends for support, and he urged the students to thank their parents for all their love and guidance. Thank you, Dr. Lord, for a wonderful assembly!

Another Friday in the Middle School

As on September 16, I found myself in the Middle School on a Friday afternoon amidst a rare stretch of unscheduled time. Here is what I saw as I walked around: 8th grade Spanish class using "Word Champ" software to study gender, tenses, and capitalization (1:15 PM), 7th grade American history class, with laptops out, working on an outline for an essay about the colonies (1:17), two teachers planning for a field trip (1:19), 8th grade Latin class conjugating verbs (1:23), a teacher preparing her "blast" email for the week (1:25), 7th grade English class, with laptops out, working on a character sketch essay (1:30), and a 5th grade PE class playing soccer outside in the brilliant sun (1:35). A few hours later, the 6th grade would return from five days and four nights at the Echo Hill Outdoor School (located in Worton, MD). The students were tired and, shall we say, a bit "rumpled," but they were very happy!

Emerging Issues Committee

As Vice President of the the Board of the Association of Independent Maryland Schools (AIMS), I have the pleasure of serving as Chair of the newly-formed Emerging Issues Committee, or EIC. The purpose of the EIC is to advise the Executive Director (Ron Goldblatt) and the Board on a broad range of emerging issues that are affecting or could affect member schools, including educational trends, finance, and demographics. The nine-member EIC seeks to identify, analyze, and “sort” emerging issues. This past Monday, we held our first meeting of the school year on the beautiful campus of The Key School in Annapolis. We were quite fortunate to have an outstanding guest presenter, Donna Orem, the Chief Operating Officer of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS). Ms. Orem led a lively, interactive dialogue on trends that NAIS is following at a national level, including demographics and the economy, "disruptive innovations" such as distance education, a changing consumer base, and the new workforce. We met for two hours, and, quite frankly, could have used two more, as the discussion was so pertinent for all the school leaders at the table as well as for AIMS as a whole! Our next meeting will be held at Calvert in January. While the exact topic is TBA, I believe we will focus on one of the aspects of Ms. Orem's presentation and examine it in more detail. I will report back with a synopsis of future meetings.