Dear Parents, Last Friday’s tragic school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut has caused many to stop and think in the awful aftermath of this significant loss. As an educator, I feel an extra degree of sadness when confronted with the death of so many children. While we shoulder many tragedies through […]
AAS Guest: Chris Waddell from AAS Moscow on Vimeo.
I got an email this morning from a group of concerned students that had come across something interesting on Facebook. After watching the 30 minute video detailing the atrocities of a Ugandan rebel named Kony, a group of 7th graders were inspired to setup an email account (invisiblechildrenaas@gmail.com) and organize around this inspirational cause. Here […]
Kids are happy and showing up at our doorstep with a record number of smiles on this first day of the 2012-2013 school year. It’s a pleasure to greet and encourage everyone as they arrive and it was fun to hear about snippets of summer vacations. We then proceeded to the PTO meeting and greeted […]
Initial thoughts: The initial question posited to the conference panel that I’ve been asked to address: Information Technology in school – Does it improve learning? Gathered some resources to begin to address this question and related topics: https://www.evernote.com/pub/chinazurfluh/technologyitems The key issue associated with answering the question revolves first around how you define improving learning. […]
Open publication – Free publishing – More…
Dr. Jamie McKenzie inspired us recently with a short visit and spent time with teachers, parents, and administration. He reinforced the notion that our hopes and dreams for students are not always about preparing them for a technologically challenging century, but that we must always remind ourselves that the primary goal is nothing less or more […]
AAS 5th Grade from Jon Zurfluh on Vimeo. Erin and her classmates entertain parents at recent gathering. BTW – All video done with iPhone and edited with iMovie on the iPhone. Amazing…
You may have seen the notice in the recent Dispatch that I’m launching a new annual tradition that I would like to call“The Director’s Challenge.” From the Dispatch: AAS has always been quick to take on community service projects at all levels and divisions in support of good causes or to reach out to groups […]
Two events this past week reminded me of the often-raw nature of student expression. Emotions bottled up seemed to often find their way to the surface and spill into the hallways and various events that are part of the AAS smorgasbord. On Monday last, our IB Drama students took to a small stage to put […]
Hard to find words to describe this… Wonderful!!! What a great capture of what goes on at AAS every day.
I dropped off my 8th grade son for his trip to Altai this evening and waved as buses filled with 35 students and their luggage headed for the airport and a trip to a place known for its convergence of Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan. There are many curricular goals for this trip, but I […]
It’s 11:00 a.m. and it almost seems too quiet. I can almost feel the learning begin in the classrooms throughout the building. After speaking to PTO about our sense of community, we are all taking a short breath before we gear up for the many activities ahead, starting with our opening this afternoon. As each […]
Tomorrow we begin the final moments to the start of school with the New Family Orientation. This week has been inspiring, talking with teachers and preparing rooms and minds for the journey ahead. This video captures just a bit of the process initiated toward alignment and clarity in both our vision and mission. What do […]
Our media department here at AAS captured the moment yesterday when we welcomed new staff the AAS campus for the first time. Mixed into this memory album is pictures of our greetings at the airport and the traditional bread and salt greeting on the front steps of the school. We finished with a dance around […]
Any teacher will tell you that the biggest difficulty they face as educators is helping parents to understand the complex nature of the interactions that take place in a classroom to achieve learning for any individual student. Test scores give us the impression that education is an assembly line of facts being fed into a […]
I know this is just a gadget on one hand, but for those with a science fiction come reality sort of mind, what are the implications of this? Are we preparing kids for a world with stuff like this? I mean really – Do the classrooms of today bear any resemblance to the technology they […]
These guys get it… Look especially at 25:40 for the key question on individualizing… Powerful – listen for the shoe story.
As the days of summer dwindle, teachers and administrators are busy reflecting on growing their professional skills. Many are involved in advanced coursework, while others are reading books that are stacked ready for summer consumption. While reading one piece of online professional literature, I could not help but wonder how summer was going for our […]