My City School - Blog

Gardening by the Lake

2/6/2020

It's a beautiful day in San Francisco, so why stay inside?! MCS headed out to our local lake to help the Parks and Rec Department clean up an island. With help from our P&R Rep, students learned which plants were invasive and which ones should be left to flourish. We spent hours removing long plants of ivy and meddlesome grasses to make sure native flowers and plants had room to thrive. Our students had so much fun getting down with the soil, some of them even asked to stay longer!

Everyone can make a difference! Contact your local Parks and Rec Department to volunteer and help make our world a litter greener :)

Genes in Action at Cal Academy!

1/30/2020

Ah, Cal Academy - learning hands-on at it's best! For us at MCS, the California Academy of Sciences is a perfect place for our students to explore scientific concepts first hand, and marvel at our world in an extremely experiential way. This week, our students headed out to the Academy to investigate how genes work, and the different ways animals adapt to their environment to survive. By studying animals that change markings over time, or adjust their colors to warn other predators, students were able to trace the genealogy of these animals and discover which traits were successful enough to pass down to future generations! Students then dove deeper and connected this to dominant and recessive genes, discovering which eye color was passed down in their families, how various physical traits are passed, and which features humans have retained after our first migration across the globe. Way to go to our Genealogists for being so investigative!

Benetech Research - Year 3!

12/17/2019

At MCS, we are not only focused on helping our students find their pathway into learning, but sharing these roadmaps with the educational world as well. This week, MCS got to once again work with one of our partners at Benetech to help develop technology for young learners. As a local non-profit, Benetech works to create software that makes it easier for impacted students to read and learn. MCS students got to test out reading software designed for similar learning types, and aid developers in collecting research for designing programs. Thanks to Benetech and people like them, more students with learning differences will have tools available to make learning more fun and accessible!

We are so happy to be able to connect with other non-profits and help them serve the LD community! This partnership has been ongoing for a few years now, and it's so wonderful to see the progress they've made :) To learn more about Benetech and their work in Education, visit their website here. Happy Learning!

Community Day at MCS!

11/19/2019

We love our planet! It's the only home we have, and at MCS, we like to spend time with others helping to take care of it. This month, students worked with the Parks and Rec Department to clean up our community playground and re-multch the land for new flowers and plants. Together, MCS students did hours of work, sweeping out gutters and pathways, clearing the area of leaves and debris to make our space a safer cleaner place for everyone in the neighborhood.
We even got to see the dumptruck in action!

Get involved! Our world needs more ambassadors, and you can help! To become a volunteer and help wildlife in your area, visit your local Parks and Recreation Department. You can find out more about the San Francisco PR Department here. Happy Volunteering!

University of Tokyo Students Return!

10/22/2019

They've returned! This month, MCS is happy to welcome back a new group of students from University of Tokyo to our Learning Lab. These students are on their way to becoming new teachers, and MCS is proud and grateful to be asked to share our teaching styles across the world with growing minds!

Through hands-on math, our visitors were able to experience learning in fashion similar to how our middle school students learn throughout the year. Each group of TSU students were given a math problem and instructed to use the Four Pillars of Learning to solve it together. Using this process, students had to build their math problems from manipulatives to show what they were thinking visually and explain it to others, all before using numbers and equations to show their work. By thinking about math this way, it helps learners who do not think using symbolic numbers, but rather in applied real world math. This process also addresses categorizing and labeling skills, which are commonly impacted areas in Executive Functioning for LD learners. Our visitors did a great job with this challenge, and even created some beautiful artwork to show their math! We're so impressed!

Thank you so much to the teachers are students at TSU! We're so happy to work with you and share our thoughts on LD learning - Can't wait to see you next year!

MCS Joins Climate Crisis March

9/24/2019

As our world gets warmer, slowly consumed by trash and negative human impacts, it is more important than ever that we take a stand for our planet. This month, our students wanted to make sure their voices were heard by attending the Climate Crisis March in downtown San Francisco. Together, they joined thousands of passionate students from all over the Bay Area (and the world) to march in a fight for the future of our environment. Calls for action and responsibility were made throughout the streets as students carried so many handmade signs and flyers. It is so important that we work towards a better future, and so dire that students stand up for theirs - we are so proud of them!

With the world in its current state, we are quickly running out of fossil fuels, and are digging a larger and larger whole in our ozone. Our environment needs help, and won't be sustainable without appropriate action from humanity. As our Science class discussed when talking about energy, the current system of fuel is insufficient for producing what humanity needs long (or even short) term. By protesting in solidation with the powerful Greta Thunberg for renewable energy, our students are hoping to bring about action towards saving our world and their home. Visit the Climate Reality Project to learn about what you can do to spread awareness and help protect our planet today!

We're Back!

8/27/2019

Hello again, everyone! We've been away for a summer, and are happy to return for the new 2019-2020 school year! This first week, we've been diving in head first by getting organized and creating personalized structures for our work throughout the year. To further strengthen our Executive Functioning skills, students worked together to build the tallest, most secure structure in their groups using only a limited supply of tools. We saw all sorts of creative thinking and teamwork; the tallest structure got to be almost 2 feet high!

We can't wait to do more building this year, and are so excited to share our progress with you! Check us out here throughout the school year to see a little bit about how we learn and grow! Happy Building!

Happy Graduation, Class of 2019!

6/6/2019

We did it! MCS is so happy to have another year of wonderfully talented students crossing the bridge into high school. These kids worked so hard this year, and we are so incredibly proud of all the impressive work they've done both inside the classroom, and in their community.

This year, students spent 3 months working on projects for the Ocean Ambassadors program, a marine life institution run through the Marine Mammal Center. Through this program, students designed their own instructional projects to inform the public about the needs of our oceans and its wildlife. After months of work, our kids brought their projects to the Ocean Ambassadors fair, where they shared their passions with other parents and educators. Students even presented some of these projects to a representative from the Marine Mammal Center, with the hopes that their lesson plans could be used in other classrooms to teach about our marine world!

Shakespearian English isn't easy for anyone, and this year, our students got to experience Hamlet both on the page, and on the stage! Over the course of our Spring semester, students not only studied the play and it's characters, but also designed their own costumes and set pieces for their performance as well. Students spent months learning their lines, investigating their character and motives, and learning their stage directions. It was so amazing to see the hard work the kids put into their roles this year. Bravo to you guys!

Along with our learning minds, we also focus on our learning bodies. To symbolize their growth, and the many barriers each student has broken through in their education, MCS students broke boards with Master Pope from FireHorse Taekwando. So Amazing!

We are so proud of all our graduates, and hope you guys continue to do incredible work. You are all so talented, and we can't wait to see what you come up with in high school. Congratulations, and have a wonderful summer!!

Ocean Ambassadors, Away!

5/20/2019

We're off to save the ocean! For the past month, MCS students have been working so hard on their Ocean Ambassador projects, and this week they finally got to showcase their work! The Ocean Ambassador Program at the Marine Mammal Center in Marin helps to inspire middle school students to become spokespeople for the environment, and jumpstart a new generation of young scientists. Our students, along with students from other local middle schools, created a variety of projects focused on saving marine life around us to share with others, and inspire them to stand up for our animal friends!

By inventing new things, fundraising with handmade novelties, and even building board games, students at MCS were able to share their concern about the ocean with other schools and students. Collectively, our students raised over $400 for the Marine Mammal Center, which will go towards researching environmental conservation and providing homes for many of our displaced animals. MCS even caught attention from other schools with one of our students' Ocean Fact Mad Libs, which will hopefully be used to teach kids in other places about protecting the environment! We are so proud of these guys, and all their hard work! Yay saving the environment!

MCS Education Abroad - Hong Kong!

4/22/2019

It's time for education outreach, and this time it's worldwide! This Spring, MCS is proud to announce that we were invited to make our first trip to the 21CLHK (21st Century Learning Hong Kong) conference, and what a trip it was! At the conference, attendees “come together to learn, share and discuss current and emerging topics in education with thought leaders, technology, and learning experts," and aim to discover what other educators are developing in the world of specialized learning - the perfect place for MCS! We are so thrilled to know that there are so many others in the world who truly wish to focus on the quality of education across schools internationally!

Over the week, we discovered a great community of people who wish to make strides in teaching techniques, and schools who are striving to make a shift towards the type of education that My City School provides and advocates. One speaker, Andy Hargreaves, who is a great researcher and speaker on education, spoke to the point that a learning environment is important for both academics and social development:

"...schools are not only places where students acquire academic skills; they are also social environments where children can develop the social and emotional competencies they need to thrive. Well-being is needed to support achievement, especially where children come from backgrounds that present them with great challenges."

Our teaching model strongly supports the concept of making a workable environment like this, and uses a Wellness class to address different forms of wounding and triggers that can influence a student's ability to learn. We're so excited that this model, and others, are being touched on in the broader spectrum of learning!

Our experience at 21CLHK was truly inspiring, and we can't wait to start working with other schools to help spread ideas and continue to work towards changing education! Here's to more learning (and teaching) abroad!