Our First Meeting of the Year

Hello, friends,

I'm looking forward to seeing all of you on 9/25 for our first CFG of the year!  Our agenda should have reached you by email; please let me know if you didn't receive it. To welcome our new members we'll spend some time going over our touchstones, doing a reflective activity to help us think about the relationship between our teaching style and individual students (related profiles here), and we'll take a look at protocols for observation/looking at student work that may guide us through the months to come. You can find the protocols in that collection here.

We'll see you at 3:30 in the Morris House Conference Room!  Please bring your CFG binder if you have one, a journal or notepad and a pencil or pen.  You may want to grab some water, tea, etc. before you head up, too.
See you soon!
Kirstin

2014-2015 CFG Calendar

Thanks so much to everyone who joined us for lunch or gave feedback about calendar dates.  It looks like a Wednesday-Thursday rotation will again allow the maximum number of participants this year.  I had to switch one date due to a HAC retreat, so you'll notice a break in the pattern early in the school year, but most of the year will follow a Wednesday-Thursday pattern.  Please add these dates to your calendar!  All meetings are scheduled for 3:30-5:30.  Locations are unconfirmed and may change--I'll update you as I learn more.  Janet, Colesie and Erin have offered alternative spaces, so we may have some meetings in their cozy spots!

To all meetings please bring a journal or paper, pencil or pen, your CFG binder if you have one.  If you're a new member, you may want to obtain a binder for keeping protocols and articles. Our dates are now as follows after receiving some date change requests from Lyn:

Thursday, September 25th in Morris House Conference Room
Thursday, October 16th in Morris House Conference Room
Wednesday, November 12th in the DVR November 5th in Morris House Conference Room
Thursday, December 11th in the DVR
Wednesday, January 14th in the DVR
Thursday, February 19th, location TBA
Wednesday, March 11th in the DVR March 18th, location TBA
Thursday, April 16th, location TBA
Wednesday, May 27th, location TBA

Our September meeting is open to all faculty/staff, whether exploring to see if the CFG meets your professional development needs or committed member.  Please join us!

Welcome Back!

Ah, friends, it's good to be together again!  Please join us on Thursday, August 28th for our annual back-to-school lunch gathering. This will be a time for us to welcome interested faculty/staff who want more information about the CFG and to set our calendars for the year! Grab your lunches and meet us in the outdoor seating outside the Dining Hall (on the south side).  Not quite as beautiful as the garden near Morris House, but easier to get your lunch to!  Please bring your calendars so we can find the most inclusive dates and times possible.

I'm reading a wonderful book by Terry Tempest Williams called When Women Were Birds:  Fifty-four Variations on Voice.  It's a book of reflections by the author after her mother had, in a long tradition of Mormon women, willed her daughter all of her journals when she died.  When the author opened them, she found each and every one blank.  When Women Were Birds is the author's reflection on all the myriad of possibilities those empty journals might say and mean about her mother's voice.   A few passages in this book remind me of all of you:

'The stars are our ancestors,' write Mary Evelyn Tucker and Brian Swimme in The Journey of the Universe. 'Out of them, everything comes forth...For stars, creativity depends on maintaining a state of disequilibrium...It is the dynamic tension between gravity and fusion...outward expansion and contraction...Stars are wombs of immense creativity.

***

Conversation is the vehicle for change.  We test our ideas.  We hear our own voice in concert with one another.  And inside those pauses of listening, we approach new territories of thought.  A good argument, call it a discussion, frees us.  Words fly out of our mouths like threatened birds.  Once released, they may never return.  If they do, they have chosen a home and the bird-words are calmed into an ars poetic.  The [members of] my family didn't always agree, but it was in their company I felt inspired and safe.

Thanks to all of you for being that family of safety and inspiration. I can't wait to see what ideas we test, what new territories of thought we explore this year together.

Preparing for Thursday

Many thanks to Erin for offering the warm and wonderful Community House for our meeting on Thursday!  Please see your emails from Erin for directions.  David has also offered to support this retreat-style meeting with some delicious treats, so look forward to some snacks and tea.

After looking over our notes from our last meeting, I've planned the agenda to give us opportunities to both connect with one another about our work from the year as well as to facilitate some goal-setting for next year.  At the Lower School Curriculum Task Force today we looked at a daunting timeline of all the initiatives we are exploring, piloting, and implementing in Lower School.  Tracy and I had a chance to talk about this after school and the subjects of simplicity and overlap came up. When planning this month's meeting, I considered these questions:

• How can our whole-school focus on inquiry help us see the common threads of the work we are doing?  
• How can our own teacher inquiry serve to teach us about how to nurture our students on their inquiry journeys? 
• Where will the children's questions and our questions lead us in regards to our other areas of focus (social-emotional, ICC work, enhanced math thinking, etc.)? 

Instead of beginning our meeting at 3:30 with our usual reflective writing, we'll begin with ten minutes to read and mark the article we'll use in our protocol.   I'm including the link to that article here in case you suspect you will arrive after 3:30 or if you'd like to bring it up on a device to read.  (Not sure about internet connections there, so maybe load it before arriving). I will also bring print copies. If you need guidance about the kinds of passages to highlight, we will be using the Three Levels of Text Protocol. 

Looking forward to seeing everyone on Thursday!
Kirstin

PS:  A spring gift, The Well Rising from William Stafford:

The well rising without sound,

the spring on a hillside,
the plowshare brimming through deep ground
everywhere in the field--

The sharp swallows in their swerve
flaring and hesitating
hunting for the final curve
coming closer and closer--

The swallow heart from wingbeat to wingbeat
counseling decision, decision:
thunderous examples.  I place my feet
with care in such a world.

May Meeting

Hello, friends!
It sounded like Thursday 5/22 was best for most people, but the MH Conference Room isn't available.  Shall we meet in a classroom?  3:30-5:30--Any volunteers?
Hope you can all join us!

Rescheduling May Meeting

Hi, everyone!
We'll need to reschedule our May meeting--please anticipate the May 8th date as cancelled and look for a new date for our final meeting soon. Would Wednesday May 21st or Thursday May 22nd work for people?  Email me to let me know your availability and I'll confirm when I know when everyone can make it. Thank you!
Kirstin

Tuning Protocol for Tomorrow

Hello, friends!

I'll print the agendas for tomorrow, but if you'd like a paper copy of our Touchstones or the Tuning Protocol with you, please visit these links to print them or check your CFG binder. Janet and Tonya and perhaps Jackie will present the work and wonderings they have related to their Heroes project.

We'll also spend a little time following up on past protocols, so if you've presented work or questions this year, we'd love to hear an update on how things are going!

Until tomorrow,
Kirstin