The MUS Lower School Blog

Creative to some is deceptive to others

Unrelated to yesterday's posting concerning cyber-bullying, a new twist on "forging a parent's signature" came to my in-box this morning. A teacher told me about an email she received, supposedly from a parent, even including an electronic parental signature. Wow. See what I mean by both "creative and deceptive?" Well, had I had the technology as a student, I would have been tempted to employ such measures, especially if I tried to hide something from my folks. Well, the story goes on to reveal that the teacher smelled a rat, and after a brief interview with mom and dad... you get the picture. 

A few years back, I knew of a case in which a student was intercepting his grades at home and keeping his parents in the dark as to the on-line grade access designed for parents. He cut and pasted some school logos, made the "grade report" to look frighteningly similar to the mailing piece, and for a couple of semesters he kept the demons of his low grades at bay. Yup, he sure did. After a few confusing parent conferences, the truth came out, the parents were shocked, and the student confessed, genuinely contrite. Such is a potential reality in the present age.

Parents, your precious little one, when fearful of potential consequences due to poor performance, can stoop to such "creativity." Any student can. Fortunately, such occurrences are rare. However, we implore parents to approach their children's lives with a "trust and verify" practice for these middle school years. Trust that you have trained him up well to this point; verify that it is indeed the case. You'll hear us say things like this a lot, and for good reason. We want what you want, a well-adjusted boy of maturing integrity, willing to confront his shortcomings with correction and encouragement towards healthy self management.  

Cyber-Bullying and Parent Monitoring

This from Tara Parker Pope of The New York Times:  "Research indicates that as many as 75 percent of teens have been bullied on-line, but only one in 10 have reported the problem to parents or other adults, a new study shows."

I've seen it from our students as well, and I have tried to prove that the messages came from our campus during school hours.

No such luck.

Therefore, the attacks were written from home or a friends house. Believe it or not, such teasing/abuse/messing around out there in cyber space (Facebook, Myspace, for example) makes its way back into our school as it deals directly with our students.

While complicated to some, it's simple to us: an MUS boy is a student 24/7, regardless of where he may be at any given moment. Cyber-bullying of our boys by anyone is unacceptable, but when it is initiated by one or more of our students towards one of our students, such an act is a school discipline measure. 

The temptation for kids these days to post mean things about other kids on the web reveals is a clear and present issue. While children are in middle school, we think parents should be extra vigilant about these kinds of things, and we hope that we would be notified if anyone in our larger community had information from someone's web posting that is mean-spirited towards any peer, especially our own students. We've intervened in the past, to healthy results, and we need extra eyes on task in order to protect kids too young to understand the potentially far-reaching consequences of this unfortunate modern problem.

Memo to teachers: Don't be boring.

This is the kind of quote that should make us stop and think about the purpose of attending class:

Students in the survey gave low marks not just to PowerPoint, but also to all kinds of computer-assisted classroom activities, even interactive exercises in computer labs. "The least boring teaching methods were found to be seminars, practical sessions, and group discussions," said the report. In other words, tech-free classrooms were the most engaging.

It comes from a recent article in the respected Chronicle of Higher Education (Download ChronicleHigherEd072009) courtesy of a former MUS student, a self-proclaimed techie, who sent the article to our headmaster as a "head's up" on what people are saying at the university level with regards to employing technical methods in the classroom.

It's worth a read and a discussion.

Are kids hopeful for their future?

"No Child Left Behind began the recent craze in accountability," says NYU'S Jay Gottlieb, PhD., a long-time, published, and respected educational research professor. I hate to reduce him to this brief vocational description because he's the stereotypical fast-talking New Yorker whose extemporaneous anecdotes and razor-sharp recall of a wealth of case studies and legal decisions are matched only by his humanity and sense of humor. He teaches me this summer at Columbia University Teachers College Klingenstein Center for Independent School Leadership. 

His criticism of the singular focus on quantitative academic assessments seems intuitive, and his call for character education reflects a lot of what Independent Schools offer for both our children's' character development and good citizenship. 

Kids' motivation plays into this larger discussion, and methods of how best to approach the national challenge vary as wide as one can imagine. Realizing that kids are different with various learning styles, we in Independent Schools know that schools are also different, in both culture and practice, and the variety of options accommodates the freedoms of citizens living in a diverse culture. At MUS, we obviously have confidence in our traditional educational methods and curriculum which incorporate contemporary culture as both a comparative backdrop as well as a necessary destination. What we do in our school through serious implementation of our Honor Code, institutional support of student rules and expectations, and deliberately encouraging a sense of personal liberty and corporate responsibility is becoming a rare culture. That Dr. Gottlieb advocates the necessity of what we do for our boys is not surprising, but knowing that the majority of his secondary school exposure has been with the public system in New York is interesting as framing his opinions. 

Maintaining form and content for "freedom and responsibility" with our diverse body of accelerated boys seeking a future of leadership is a tough charge in any era. The Times They Are A-Changin', but "times" always have. What's fundamentally, foundational true in reality and human nature never changes. That is one reason why we teach our boys to learn what it means to be a good person, for themselves and society, as they read good books depicting people, places, and things with our unique culture of teachers shedding light on the human drama.  

Mailings for viewing

These letters and inserts are in the mail. Please download and copy for your files: Download Seventh Grade 2009 new student letter for seventh grade parents; Download Owl Camp Medical Permission 2009 for seventh graders; Download Owl Camp what NOT to bring 2009 for seventh graders.

Download Eighth Grade 2009 for new eighth grade parents.

Please read thoroughly, and read it again! 

We look forward to meeting all of you August 11, 5:30 p.m. for Parent Camp, and enjoy the rest of your summer.

The English Department should be so proud

Encouraging news from the zoo. That is, of course, unless our seventh garders get too far behind on their English homework. Then mom and dad may question the practice of paying tuition in lieu of seeking some employment for little Johnny sweeping up the park, tutored by the crowd over at Primate Canyon.  

We're so hip, we're square

Leave it to The New York Times to remind the world of America's first president's contribution to daily life at MUS. Yes, the Exercise of a schoolboy, a.k.a., the Rules of Civility as the local culture is wont to claim. No stranger to our lads who tempt fate to their own hurt, The Rules help us employ practical, moral, and sometimes creative use of George Washington's classic right here in River City... and beyond. As for the specific focus of journalist David Brook's ire in this article, he writes a compelling piece I think our boys should read. If you take offense at his political specifics, that's his Bobby Brown.

Facebook; teachers and students friending

Students give teachers access to their Facebook pages, the example being a discussion in Sunday's New York Times. Personally, I don't think it is appropriate for minors and adults to disclose personal information on Facebook, the most basic reason being adult responsibility for information a minor discloses. In a perfect world, sure, it could be both healthy and interesting to pierce the veil, if you will. But kids can reveal too much or resort to hyperbole, even be operating their Facebook account under the legal age of 13. It's problematic. It doesn't have to be, and I am sure that there are undiscovered uses for the medium that could be beneficial. Countless technological applications await which could easily be part of everyday learning, but schools are still experimenting with so much. For now, it's all we can do just to keep mothers from texting their sons while the boys are in class. Sheesh.