A few themes ran through our projects this fall: one of them is civic engagement—in the season of national challenge and heated elections, many classes looked at how we live, contribute, and engage the world around us for good. What does it mean to be a citizen? What does it mean to be an adult?…
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And why we are planning in-person experiences even while classes will be online. Note: Waterloo School will begin classes online on August 17th. A Community Learning Time during the hour from 9-10 a.m. will allow students to meet in-person or via Zoom with a teacher and a different group of students each day for a…
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I have always appreciated the cool head and heart in a hot room. You know the person: something happens that others react emotionally to in fear and alarm, and the cool, calm, collected person brings confidence, peace, and hope to those around him or her. I appreciate the coolness, because that kind of calm creates…
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If we’re honest, the college application process over the last ten years has seemed to get worse for students without improving the outcomes. Higher stakes for tests, grades, and resumes to feed a more competitive application process (partially because students apply to twice as many colleges as they once did). Add to that a pandemic,…
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THE WORLD IS ALWAYS OPEN FOR LEARNING—EVEN NOW What do we study during a historical pandemic? We look at the old questions, and find new relevance. Spring Term 2020 was like nothing we had planned even just two weeks before it began. Yet the world is always open for learning, even now. There is a…
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Learning at Waterloo in the time of COVID-19
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What is a student showcase? A student showcase is simply a showcase of students sharing what they have learned. Every twelve weeks, we ask students to create something they can share with others as a demonstration of the learning they have done. Not in addition to the test—everything they did to prepare for tonight was…
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“I used to think…” “I used to think…” It is such a great way to be able to start a sentence, isn’t it? To start a sentence that way requires change and growth. It implies learning new things and letting go of perspectives. I used to think it meant admitting I was wrong, which, in…
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In his New York Times bestseller Love Does, Bob Goff proposes that “the language of love is laced with whimsy. It sometimes borders on the irrational. Like I’ve been saying, though, love is a do thing. It’s an energy that has to be dissipated.” “Whimsical” is not how most of us would think about love,…
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Making School for Kids, not Kids in Schools ’21st Century Skills’ is a buzz word in education right now. In fact, it has been for…a few decades. Yes, we are twenty years into the century, but it is a buzz, because educators feel painfully that the 20th century way we do education is disconnected from…
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