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From the Middle School Director

Reprints from the Bearometer

  • Time To Tinker

    Elizabeth Hastings, Middle School Director

    May/June 2013
    Two weeks into summer, the dreaded words inevitably are voiced, “Mom, I’m bored!” As much as we try to program our children’s lives with excitement, improvement and entertainment, summer vacation is just a long time. But the annual declaration of boredom is not an event to be feared, but rather the perfect opportunity to unleash the children to create their own excitement, improvement and entertainment. Let them tinker.

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  • Bridging Troubled Waters

    Elizabeth Hastings, Middle School Director

    April/May 2013
    “I just want my child to be happy!” Despite the bum rap that has often been hung on hedonism, it seems we have always sought happiness as a goal for our children and ourselves. Our Declaration of Independence enshrined the “pursuit of happiness” as an unalienable right, and although the means may vary, even politicians of all parties pay lip service to that end. And who wouldn’t want a “state of well-being characterized by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy” (Merriam-Webster) for their child or themselves.

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  • Taking a Risk

    Elizabeth Aurand Hastings, Middle School Director

    January/February 2013
    On January 7th, the Blake Middle School embarked on an adventure called J-Term. For the week, students were placed in the driver’s seat and took us on a roller coaster ride along the path of Challenge-Based Learning. On Monday, students were gathered as a community to receive their challenge. The video can be viewed HERE. With this call to action around reducing a risky behavior, students gathered in multi-aged teams to define, discover and design an action of change.

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  • Are You Up to the Challenge?

    Elizabeth Hastings, Middle School Director

    November/December 2012
    This January, instead of starting the new year where we left off in December, the Middle School will be participating in J-term, a week-long problem solving adventure. Using the Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) model, our middle schoolers will embark on a journey of collaboration, problem solving, discovery, and action. They will all be asked to think critically about an issue, using questioning techniques to develop understandings. The goal for the week is to have students identify and solve challenges in a way that involves not only information gathering, but inspires them to take action and reflect on the process.

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  • A Different Way of Asking

    Elizabeth Aurand Hastings, Middle School Director

    October/November 2012
    Questioning is one of the most powerful tools parents can use to help their children to be academically and socially successful. And one of the most effective types of questions to use are metacognitive questions. These magic little questions promote the process of a student’s thinking about thinking. Earlier this month, I attended a conference where Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair, a clinical psychologist and school consultant, reminded me about the importance of metacognitive questioning as a useful teaching technique. She also mentioned this tool as being a wonderful way for parents to help their children be successful.

    So, what does this different way of asking sound like?

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  • Chance of a Lifetime

    Elizabeth Hastings, Middle School Director

    September/October 2012
    It is the beginning of a new school year, and the excitement, curiosity and anxiety of new and returning students are enlivening. The MPAC entry is strewn with backpacks, and the air squirms and sings with the lively greeting of old friends and the brave wariness of newcomers carefully scanning the unfamiliar territory. The faculty and administration too share all these emotions as we note the slight swagger in the step of a returning, often taller, veteran, or the wide-eyed look, and cautious steps, of almost all the freshly scrubbed, lovingly encouraged sixth graders.

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  • Eat, Drive and Be Merry

    Elizabeth Hastings, Middle School Director

    May/June 2012
    If there is one thing that middle schoolers like to do it is communicate. They are aficionados at almost every means of communication. Tweens/Teens constantly talk face to face in classes, hallways and public places. They shout encouragement to each other on the playing field. They text or scribble secrets and plans into their cell phones or on scraps of paper. They talk endlessly on iChat, in video game networks, through vlogs; anywhere that someone might look or listen. With all this constant verbiage, I find it most amazing that the number one concern I seem to hear from parents is that “my child doesn’t talk with me any more.” It seems that the chatterbox elementary student they once had has now become a sulking, “you don’t understand me” teen, even though he or she is still an overflowing repository of rhetoric to his or her peers. Although this social disconnect is developmentally normal in adolescent-parent interactions, and it’s tempting for the parent just to wait it out, I’ve never been able to take that kind of passive approach. My motto is: Eat, drive and be merry.

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  • The Final Stretch

    Jay Dean, Middle School Assistant Director

    April/May 2012
    I was on the Track & Field team in high school and was middle distance runner. I mostly ran the 400 and 800, but during one meet, I was asked to run the mile and it was the toughest experience I had on that team. Figuring out the right kind of pace for each of the four laps around the track can be tricky. The last lap, especially, can be the biggest challenge. I had been used to building up to a full-on sprint much more quickly in the shorter races, but in the mile on this particular day, I expended too much energy in the early laps and had nothing left for the final lap. My legs turned to rubber and I ended up falling from a first- to a fourth-place finish. I have since developed a love of long-distance running, but my first experience with the mile in high school helped me understand a few things about race strategy.

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  • Living With Kindness

    Elizabeth Hastings, Middle School Director

    February/March 2012
    Aldous Huxley, who knew a thing or two about brave new worlds, gave the following prescription for life transformation: “People often ask me what is the most effective technique for transforming their life. It is a little embarrassing that after years and years of research and experimentation, I have to say that the best answer is-just be a little kinder.” Kindness has its roots in respect so it is no accident that one of Blake’s core values is “Respect – We care for and respect each other and ourselves.

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  • Lost and Found

    Elizabeth Hastings, Middle School Director

    January/February 2012
    Jackets, a mitten, water bottles, a pair of glasses, textbooks, a student planner, last night’s or possibly last month’s homework -- all of them crucial items -- forgotten, misplaced, neglected. Often it seems, so is most of life in middle school. As a parent, confronted by these constantly disappearing items or activities, you may find yourself labeling your child “forgetful”, “lazy” or as I so gently put it “soul draining”, while secretly fearing that this shortcoming is a serious reflection on your student’s developmental abilities. But I have good news, there really is a natural and normal reason for it. This phenomenon of forgetfulness is actually due to the timing of the development of the prefrontal cortex that attends to “executive functioning” skills. Now, if you are blessed with one of those children who were born gifted in the executive functioning world, the rest of us don’t want to hear how you cannot stop getting your child to color-code the world. The reality of the age is that disarray and lack of forward thinking are the norm in a middle school aged child.

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