My City School’s focus for the 2013-14 school was on educating the “Whole Child”.  Students celebrated a re-kindled love of learning and their appreciation for all the Bay Area resources that we used to bring experiential reinforcement to the curriculum. 

Year End Summaries:  in support of the curricular focus on the Whole Child, we created an extensive narrative report system for each student, to help continued learning during the summer or in their next learning environment. Report card narratives for Math and Language arts detail exactly where the student is based on level of mastery.  Each teacher provides Teacher Observations Summaries for every student in order to support the ‘Whole Child’ growth and progress. Below is an outline of our standard year end report:

Teacher Observations - Environment:

·       Environments that work best for the student (seating location and type, frequency of check ins, fidgets etc.)
·       Successful methodologies for learning (visual, auditory, tactile, extra processing time, use of colors etc.)
·       Requirements of presentation of lessons (written, hand outs, oral, symbols, pictures etc).
·       Testing and evaluation process (what’s needed prior to test; orally or written; time needed etc.)
·       Required training and guidance for study skills (executive functioning practice and systems)
·       Additional specific support needed
·       Notable social-emotional and behavioral triggers
·       What to emphasize and deemphasize with student
·       Student personal themes
·       Social skill recommendations

Teacher Observations – Learning Skills (a combination of executive functioning skills and other performance indicators):

·       Completes classwork
·       Works to ability
·       Works independently
·       Works cooperatively
·       Completes tasks on time
·       Brings needed materials to class
·       Listens and follows directions
·       Seeks help appropriately
·       Demonstrated organizational skills
·       Participates in class
·       Demonstrates effort

The reports articulate how to optimize their learning environment, and students are also prepared to be agents and advocates for these accommodations.  

 In the final two weeks of school, we implemented a school without walls, when students engaged in volunteer and project work at the following institutions that they helped to identify and select through the year: 

Save the Bay: Students and Restoration Educational Specialists transplanted gumplant seedlings, went for a “wetland walk” to explore features of wetland ecosystems, and participated in shoreline cleanup. One-on-one time was spent with the students to teach them about the Bay, the wetland ecosystem, and measures we can take to help it thrive. We also studied terns diving for fish and manta rays swimming in the shallows!  Students recovered over 60 lbs. of waste along the MLK shoreline and replanted over 200 plants at the MLK Nursery. Their efforts will help Save the Bay move a step closer toward restoring 100,000 acres of wetlands that will provide valuable wildlife habitat as well as help protect communities from sea level rise caused by climate change. Students were featured in the Save the Bay blog . http://blog.savesfbay.org/2014/06/a-rewarding-experience/

SF Food Bank:  Students began the morning viewing segments of the movie ‘Food Inc’ to understand another perspective on our food industry.  This was followed by two 3-hour shifts measuring and packaging rice, loading apples and other fruit.  http://www.sfmfoodbank.org/

Garden for the Environment –Students worked for an afternoon in the garden collecting fruits and vegetables.   http://www.gardenfortheenvironment.org/

SF Conservancy:  Students removed invasive species at the Rob Hill Camp Ground, to aid in halting of erosion and general maintenance of the grounds. http://www.parksconservancy.org/

Randall Restoration: Students contributed two half days as a thank you for an amazing first year at the Randall Museum by power washing, scrubbing, bleaching and re-finishing the wooden bench that looks over the city of San Francisco. http://www.randallmuseum.org/

Language Arts

April ended with students linking verbs, adverbs and prepositions in grammar, while building to more sophisticated paragraph writing. To bring a kinesthetic element to learning, we introduced games such as adverb charades, and art-adjective. Students created Madlibs for each other to do great re-writes of passages in Esperanza Rising.

Our classwork on sentence structure and parts of speech included white boarding and a color-coding system. To prepare for SPARK projects, we began writing formal letters of introduction and worked on proper email etiquette. Students mailed off letters to people they were interested in contacting for their SPARK project (including Jeff Bezos and  Chef Gordon Ramsay).

Students started to add citations into writing assignments and focused on parts of words - prefixes, base words, root words, and suffixes. We learned the meanings of new prefixes at the start of each language arts period. 

Students finished by writing two 5 paragraph essays, one as homework and the second to develop a show or skit, complete with hand made puppets and props.  Both assignments demonstrated levels of fluency and improvements in creative writing. The assignment focused on appropriate language, good word choices, and strong descriptions. 

Math

Students continued with fractions, looking at problems that combine multiple step problems, including complex word problems.  Students engaged with word problems by identifying key words and the clues they provide for the appropriate function to use in their solution. They used the key words to write word problems for one another.  Students also saw connections between math and science in a data collection project. 

In algebra students covered how to balance equations, the rules for multiplying and dividing negative and positive numbers. Hands on math built our students’ confidence when learning about negative numbers and basic algebra problems.

Perimeter and area were introduced. Students used blocks to build houses and fences and then measured perimeter with rulers. They learned what measures of area represent and then measured the classroom using 12x12 squares.

All students came up with review questions that they presented to the rest of the class. They reviewed their composition notebooks to come up their question. After everyone had a chance to work on each question, the person who presented the question retaught everyone the original concept.

Finally, ask an MCS student about their Sudoku strategy. They enjoy the idea that Sudoku is a “work out” for their brains. 

Science

In science we studied chemistry in more depth.  We challenged students to think like chemical engineers and helped design a product using the least amount of chemicals possible.  All science study involved the care and accuracy needed for practices of data collection.  Other highlights:

Learning about food preservation and how chemicals can be used to preserve foods. Solubility and how it can change under different temperatures.
Mount Sutro area history and ecosystem – connected to their study of the SF Watershed ecosystem in the Presidio and beach.
The camera obscura and how it works. 

Students began their individual SPARK project by identifying their leading interest and providing an explanation of why they found the topic fascinating. Students then participated in a ‘walkabout’ (sharing and discussing each chosen SPARK topic), for peer feedback on the chosen topics.  Students positively challenged each other to “dig deeper and find what you are searching for.”  Key topics that led to deeper discussion were:

• Intuition: what is intuition, how it works and what it tells us.
  
• Your brain in a creative state vs. an execution state  - it can’t truly do both well at the same time – so we stayed in our creative, thought dumping space.

Each student discovered some of their personal common themes that showed throughout the class. Some examples of this were: being with others; discovering something new; movement; safety, comfort and happiness. These personal themes will often drive decision making in the choices they make in life. What's your personal theme?

Students identified key images and symbols to represent their SPARK choice of topic and created story boards containing notes and the concepts of motivation, inspiration, and excitement and what drives their curiosity. This drove discussions about motivation and inspiration. 
Students worked on identifying and locating experts and resources for the chosen SPARK topic.

By planning their SPARK experiences, students practiced bridging bigger picture thoughts and breaking them down into specific critical details they believe would be required for the project to be successful.

Students sent out letters to experts such as Gordon Ramsey, top chef for grilling; astronauts Don Pettit and Jeffrey A. Hoffman, for weightlessness in space; The jabbawockeezs for Hip Hop Dancing and Diana Reiss, a physiologist expert specializing in behavior and communication with dolphins.

Next students independently created interview questions to communicate with potential contacts. This challenged students to ‘think forward’ and plan, working on executive functioning skills. 

SPARK was closed with a Circle of Gratitude dialogue. Students delivered one thank to another and the receiver practiced mirroring back what they heard. This technique is taken from Imago therapy. The focus of the classroom exercise is to practice taking in and holding on to positive information that’s delivered from another individual. 

In April and May we focused on topics of anxiety and depression. The goal of the discussion was to help normalize any of these feelings that they may have and to provide them with a vocabulary to discuss them with friends, family and teachers. We discussed the concept of "fight or flight" and the physiological changes that occur in the body when we feel a real or perceived threat from the world. In hopes of providing the students with tools to combat feelings of anxiety or depression, our MFT Intern explained and shared coping strategies, such as deep breathing, mindfulness and various physical exercises. 

Two weeks were shared in SEL on resilience and our ability to understand it as the gift of bouncing back after a loss or failure.   Resilience is fostered by understanding and embracing learning differences, rather than perceiving learning differences as a deficit.   Students are considering their learning differences in the frame of the gifts that might come from them. We are working today to change the thinking away from “I am _____” to “I have ____” which is helping them reformulate identities. 


Two weeks were also shared on emotional regulation so that students have the chance to learn to tolerate uncomfortable feelings without causing distraction in class. The prompt for slowing down and being more thoughtful is Never Pet Tiny Crabs During Recess:

• Notice
  
• Pause 
  
• Think Twice
  
• Calm Down
  
• Reflect
  

We discussed how change is a fact of life which allows for growth and development. From the natural world (seeds to plants and caterpillars to butterflies) to a more relevant example of school (new teachers every year, new classmates, new settings), we opened a discussion for students to process their feelings about change and transition. Students were introduced to the 5 stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, and acceptance) in order to help normalize whatever feelings they have around the changes in their lives.