Prior to joining the Launch team a few years ago, my understanding of giftedness was full of negative biases. ‘Gifted’ was a term used by talk-y parents to describe the inflated successes of their children, usually in the domains of reading and writing (i.e. ‘Jeffrey began reading chapter books at 18 months! Our son is PROFOUNDLY gifted.’).

Simultaneously, ‘gifted’ denoted a distinct class of people that was smarter and better than me. I assumed that you were simply born gifted – intelligence was encoded in your DNA – and there was nothing that ordinary folks (i.e. Matt Steiner) could do to join the smarty party.

Is this what gifted students look like to you? Is this what gifted learning looks like? Here, Wise students gather for a class experiment.

Through recent conversations with teachers and administrators at Stephen S. Wise Temple Elementary School (Wise Elementary), I’ve learned that giftedness isn’t just about innate intellectual ability or IQ. ‘Gifted’ is also an adjective that describes complex STYLES of thinking that children and adults can develop over time. It is this understanding – giftedness as a habit of mind rather than an intrinsic trait – that takes center-stage in this week’s edition of Elementary Schools that Change Lives.

Wait. Wise Elementary is now a school for ‘gifted children’? What happened to my favorite Reformed Jewish neighborhood school?

Reader, do not fret. Wise Elementary is STILL your favorite Jewish neighborhood school. In conversations with the Director of Admissions, Beth Behar, you’ll still hear words like ‘community-centered’, ‘progressive,’ ‘faith-based,’ and ‘developmental.’

However, thanks to the efforts of Wise Elementary’s Head of School, Tami Weiser, and Director of Curriculum, Karen Anderson, the school is transforming into a space for deeper, more creative inquiry. At the crux of this transformation is a partnership with USC’s Rossier School of Education.

Alright, so these are clearly students at Wise’s Early Childhood Center. But these kids perfectly symbolize the ‘comfy’, nurturing environment Wise families have come to love.

What is the USC Partnership?

In 2011, Wise Elementary formalized a partnership with Dr. Sandra Kaplan, a professor of clinical education at USC. In Dr. Kaplan’s research, she has uncovered the cognitive processes that underlie critical and creative thought among gifted learners. Although these processes may come more naturally to gifted folks, Dr. Kaplan believes that children of all intellectual levels can be taught to think with ‘depth and complexity.’ Consequently, she has developed a system of tools that Wise Elementary teachers can use in the classroom to foster deeper thought.

How does the USC Partnership change lives?

This is where I get excited. As I mentioned earlier, the notion that sophisticated thinking can be taught to ALL students is revolutionary. The majority of elementary schools – private and public – that I have visited in Los Angeles tend to separate students into ability groups. These groupings typically determine the rigor and nature of the assignments that students complete until they graduate.

While struggling students are set aside to remediate academic deficits, students who have mastered the fundamentals are encouraged to be creative, explore, and exercise their brains with more challenging material. (I should note that the opposite often occurs too. Students with advanced intellectual abilities are made to keep pace with a curriculum that slows them down.)

At Wise Elementary, teachers have been trained to differentiate their instruction without sacrificing rigor. Students can still receive remediation in math and reading, while also learning the advanced thinking styles that define gifted education.

So what does differentiated/gifted education look like at Wise Elementary?

I know what’s on your mind. Words like ‘differentiation’ and ‘cognitive processes’ sound really scientific and confusing. What does it mean to think with ‘depth and complexity? What is critical thinking?

Students are encouraged to ask and define different styles of questioning: including ‘factual,’ ‘analytical,’ and ‘evaluative.’

For Wise Elementary, critical thinking has a clear definition: ‘contemplating details, trends, patterns, and perspectives, and the great unanswered questions of our times.’ Let’s apply this definition of critical thinking to a much beloved elementary school project – researching the California Missions.

While learning about the San Juan Capistrano Mission, a Wise Elementary student may focus on the details that make the mission unique. She focuses on the populations that lived on the mission, its administrative structure, rules, physical architecture, and its relationship with the surrounding community.

Going a step deeper, the student compares these details with the attributes of other missions. She begins to notice patterns in the appearance and function of multiple missions across the state. The student’s knowledge of the mission takes on a new dimension when she is asked to write diary entries from the perspectives of different social groups on the mission. She must think like a disciplinarian to write from the vantage points of padres, farmers, skilled workers, and Spanish soldiers. Ultimately, this leads the student to unanswerable questions that tugs at her sense of justice – was it right for Spanish missionaries to evangelize the native people of California? Are evangelism and colonialism ethical?

Clearly, not all 9 or 10 year-olds can participate in discussions of moral philosophy. However, what makes Wise Elementary’s curriculum unique is the creative latitude it offers each student. The depth of a student’s inquiry hinges on her individual interest level.

6th grade students are given visual prompts to think critically about the abstract concept of ‘social class.’

To cite the California Missions project, some students may stop at the details and patterns phases of research. Consequently, these students choose to write travel brochures of the missions, build 3D models, or create other detail-oriented projects. However, if another student decides that she is more interested in the unanswerable questions surfaced by her research, she is encouraged to create an independent study project that has greater depth. For example, she may write a screenplay about the oppression of Spanish colonists and a fictional uprising that follows.

In spite of differences in their intellectual complexity, the mission projects are individually presented to the class and are highlighted for their unique contributions to classroom learning. All students benefit from learning about one another’s creations.

What does the USC Partnership say about the ethos of Wise Elementary?

Full-disclosure, I’ve always had the warm fuzzies for this school. When I attended a tiny private elementary school in the valley, our notoriously terrible sports teams competed with Wise Elementary. We lost year after year, but in spite of these sore memories, I can’t help but remember the uncanny kindness of the Wise Elementary players. They apologized if they played too roughly, picked us up when we stumbled, and swiftly re-adjusted our sports goggles/mouth guards when they fell out of place.

Flash forward twenty-something years, and the school still maintains the same commitment to creating students with ‘inquisitive minds, caring hearts, and kind souls’ (the school’s mission statement!). However, now the school has truly upped its ante with the hard work of Dr. Kaplan, Karen Anderson, and Tami Weiser. In spite of being everyone’s favorite Jewish neighborhood school, Wise Elementary has become an educational and intellectual leader among peer institutions in Los Angeles. Well done…errr…Mazel tov!

Yours Truly,

Matt

As a native Angeleno, I believe I am hardwired to both value beauty and be suspicious of it (we all know that these things often serve as compensation or camouflage). So it was with a strange mixture of wonder and skepticism that I first judged St. Matthew’s.

See what I mean? St. Matthew’s is gorgeous.

There had to be a catch to the school’s good looks. Perhaps the academics fell short; or maybe classes were SO rigorous that students were developing anxiety disorders. If the academics were fine, then the parent community had to be full of odd ducks. I had an endless supply of imagined scenarios, each wilder than the last.

After spending multiple hours on-campus and chatting with faculty, staff, and students, I learned that all of my assumptions were wrong (Yes, I was being a total Judge Judy). In fact, I’ve chosen St. Matthew’s as my first installment of Elementary Schools that Change Lives (ESCL), because the school veers so dramatically from my preconceptions about ‘traditional, faith-based’ schools.

As I mentioned in my introduction to ESCL, the goal of this blog series is to discern a school’s ethos – its values – from a single, extraordinary feature of its program. I am particularly interested in revealing elements of a school that will surprise my readers and inspire them to learn more.

In this week’s edition of ESCL, I will be talking about the Lucas Family Fellowship, a faculty scholarship that radically changes both students’ AND teachers’ lives at St. Matthew’s. Ready? Here we go!

What is the Lucas Family Fellowship?

The Lucas Family Fellowship was established to support life-long learning through summer travel, community service and/or course work by faculty members. The hope is that by financing professional development abroad, St. Matthew’s will inspire its teachers to create more dynamic curricula and classroom activities.

Before writing this post, I had the pleasure of interviewing two St. Matthew’s teachers who were recently awarded the fellowship: Rachel Gaunt, a 4th grade teacher, and Kate Sauerhoff, a 7th grade Life Science teacher.

Rachel was able to travel to the ruins of Greece with the assistance of LFF. She had studied and taught Greek mythology for years prior to the trip, and was finally afforded the opportunity to see and touch the remnants of the ancient world herself.

Rachel captures the grandeur of the Parthenon.

Kate, a brand new teacher when she was awarded the fellowship in 2010, flew to the Hawaiian Islands to study volcanoes. During our conversation, she regaled me with vivid stories of waterfalls, black and green sand beaches (Yes, green sand!), tsunamis, and famous volcanic eruptions.

How does LFF ‘change lives?’

Rachel and company on top of the Acropolis!

As you can imagine, LFF immediately affects the lives of its recipients – TEACHERS. When asked about the most ‘transformative’ moment of her trip to Greece, Rachel explained:

‘Standing on top of the Acropolis was the most incredible experience for me. I had been interested in ancient Greece since my IB courses in high school, and suddenly I found myself standing on this quintessential, historic monument…I will never forget the gorgeous blue of the sea and sky that day.’

And the spoils of the experience aren’t just enjoyed by the teachers. They are distilled into incredible projects for students that make a St. Matthew’s education truly extraordinary. For example, Rachel uses photos and video footage of her time in Greece to create a student film project called ‘Dig into History: Ancient Greece.’ Students utilize the green screen in the school’s tech lab to create faux-documentaries of their ‘travels’ to Greece. The documentaries also incorporate Greek mythology and literature to create a truly interdisciplinary learning experience.

Kate at high altitudes…with her volcano-friends.

Similarly, Kate’s life science classes incorporate visuals and physical records of her travels. Whether it be photos of her hike through Kilauea National Park or a chunk of lava rock found on the roadside, Kate’s firsthand accounts and souvenirs make education TANGIBLE for students. They have the opportunity to live vicariously through their teacher, and abstract scientific concepts are made REAL and imbued with personal meaning.

What does LFF say about the ethos of St. Matthew’s?

In my conversations with Kate and Rachel, there was an undercurrent of trust and gratitude for their school. For both teachers, LFF is a concrete representation of some of St. Matthew’s core values: the importance of life-long learning and the necessity of teacher development.

In elementary school in particular, teachers play the complex roles of educators, in loco parents, and role models. For St. Matthew’s, LFF is a tool that allows teachers to become better, more invigorated stewards of young learners. I can’t think of a single elementary or secondary school – apart from major universities and graduate institutions – that invests this much in their faculty.

Kate hiking through the Hawaiian forests!

In addition to rewarding life-long learners, LFF shows students that it is awesome to be intellectually curious. During my chat with Kate, she mentioned:

‘We want to show our students that learning is cool; being smart is cool. By pushing teachers to be comfortable with their growing edge – constantly holding themselves to a higher standard – St. Matthew’s is encouraging the same behavior among students.’

By putting into practice the values of life-long learning, hands-on inquiry, and curiosity, LFF helps St. Matthew’s cultivate a community of energized learners.

And to bring us back to my initial thoughts – it is clear that some schools CAN have style and substance, beauty and brains. I may have to reevaluate some of my LA-inspired skepticism.

For more information about St. Matthew’s Parish School, please check out their website. It’s definitely worth your consideration if you’re in the process of applying to independent elementary schools.

Yours Truly,

Matt

To borrow the words from one of my favorite professors and social scientists, Richard Shweder, a school’s ethos – its curriculum, culture and community – is composed of what the ‘[institution] finds to be true, good, and beautiful.’ These truths and goods take multiple forms, vary in their subtlety, and may directly compete with one another.

For example, an elementary school with an expansive edible garden and potent solar energy source clearly values the ‘good’ of environmental sustainability. Another school, with an ethnically diverse student body and a broad socioeconomic spectrum upholds the ‘good’ of educational access and equity.

Sometimes, however, a school’s ethos can be obscured or lost. During the elementary school admissions process, parents may have difficulty discerning the goods that each school embodies.

On one hand, an unclear ethos may result from ambiguous communication on the part of the school. A school rep may feel pressured to appeal to every parent’s needs, and consequently, the ethos is expressed in an undefined way. To illustrate my point, here is an extreme example of a muddled ethos:

We are an incredibly creative, progressive school…BUT we are also traditional and instill specific religious values…HOWEVER, we are a renaissance school that is driven by student inquiry…BUT we have unwavering academic standards and a top-down classroom structure…AND we strongly believe in equity and economic diversity…BUT the cost of our new theater building eclipses our annual financial aid budget…AND of course we have a one-to-one iPad program!

On the other hand, parents who are first-time applicants may not know how to properly ask about a school’s ethos and may have trouble identifying it. They may also be unclear about the ethos of their own family and the goods they hope to cultivate in their children.

As you can imagine, this often leads to further confusion during what is already a complicated application process.

Elementary Schools that Change Lives (ESCL): A Blog Series

In an effort to throw light on the unique educational programs of independent elementary schools in Los Angeles, I’ve decided to create a blog series: Elementary Schools that Change Lives (ESCL). This blog series will showcase a singular feature of each school that truly reflects its individual ethos.

I encourage you to use this blog series as a frame of reference – a compass needle that may guide you to explore your school options in greater detail. I think you will be surprised by what you read here. Many schools incorporate goods that you may not expect!

Of course, this blog is just one step in the process of getting to know the schools we’ll feature. Attending annual admissions fairs, open houses, and tours will offer you the most complete understanding of a school’s identity. I also recommend that you check out Beyond the Brochure, a private elementary school admissions blog by my friend and colleague, Christina Simon, and the Private School Lady, an online admissions guide created by my good friend, Mia Johnstone.

On a final note, I want to acknowledge that no school fits into a single category. It’s tempting to label schools with jargon like: traditional, progressive, developmental, spiritual, parochial, academic, etc. In reality, many schools espouse goods that seem contradictory in theory, but actually harmonize nicely in practice.

The complexities of a school’s ethos cannot be fully comprehended by a quick conversation at an admissions fair nor a glance at an informational brochure. Hopefully, this series will lend a helping hand to parents as they navigate the vast independent elementary school landscape in Los Angeles.

Sincerely,

Matt Steiner, Director
Launch Education Group, Los Angeles

But don’t toss out those No. 2 pencils just yet. As the online version of the ACT is piloted at schools across the country, the paper-and-pencil version will still be available to those who prefer the traditional format. “We don’t want to measure a student’s computer skills or fears,” said Jon Erickson, president of ACT’s Education Division. “We will probably have the option for students to choose paper and pencil, as well. But all the anecdotal evidence is that students prefer the computer.”

Anecdotal evidence also suggests that the road to a computer-based ACT could be a roulette bumpy one, which is another reason ACT is taking its time to implement digital testing. Several states, including Indiana, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and, most recently, Kentucky, have encountered glitches in their online testing systems. A number of ancillary issues also need to be addressed, like whether students will be allowed to use their own devices for testing.

About 1.7 million students took the ACT in 2012, and that number is expected to rise in the coming years. As long as the paper version of the test is an option, students preparing for the ACT should evaluate the potential risks of both formats (e.g., connectivity issues vs. misbubbling answers), as well as their comfort level with computers, when deciding which version to take.

A couple weeks ago, I had coffee with Hayden Lee, an academic life coach who specializes in motivating troubled learners. Hayden’s coaching philosophy harmonizes nicely with what we call the Why of Education – a student’s ability to derive personal meaning and fulfillment from school. In Hayden’s post, he identifies the importance of fulfillment at all levels of education and shares concrete strategies for helping students discover what fulfills them. 

Mindset And Direction

There are a plethora of degrees that young adults can strive for after graduating high school. AA. BA. BS. MA. MBA. PhD. JD. MD. …and the list of acronyms can go on. After millions of American high school students recently earned their diplomas, they, as well as their parents, may wonder what the secret of success is for the uncharted waters that lie ahead. Many will go to college, and many will choose other options. No matter what choices they make for their immediate future, there is no magic formula that will guarantee success for these young adults.

However, having a PPF degree may be the first step to ensuring a bright and fulfilling future. So, what is a PPF? Well, it’s not really a degree, but it is something that teens can work on while still in high school. Okay, it’s not a degree at all. In fact, I made it up. It stands for Purpose, Passion, and Fulfillment. PPF is a mindset and perspective that we should encourage our youth to be aware of in order to experience the most enrichment, satisfaction, and fulfillment in their lives.

The Quest For Satisfaction

Research shows – as well as motivation specialist Daniel H. Pink in his book Drive - that we feel our best when we do something that we believe in, do well, and perform for a cause greater than ourselves. I call this phenomenon ‘Purpose and Intrinsic Motivation.’

Intrinsic Motivation is being motivated to do something because the action itself is the reward. “I want to do this because I enjoy the challenge.” This is the type of motivation that brings us the most fulfillment. On the other hand, Conditional Motivation is doing something for the sake of an external benefit or reward. There is an “if-then” clause. “If I get good grades, then I will get into a good college.” Unfortunately, most young adults operate under the Conditional model, and it is certainly less sustainable and less fulfilling in the long-term than the Intrinsic model.

However, the trick is instilling Intrinsic Motivation in teens in areas that they find boring or not applicable to their lives. For example, it may seem impossible to get a teenager to focus on Trigonometry when he appears to have an allergic reaction to the thought of mathematics! However, let’s say that part of this teen’s Purpose involves wanting to inspire his younger brother and others to be able to overcome challenges. In fact, that Purpose may be so important to him that he has named one of his Values, the “Challenges Value.” So, on his next Trig assignment, he shifts his perspective just a bit and asks himself, “Am I honoring my Challenges Value?” He decides to focus just a bit more, not because all of a sudden he has a new love for math, but because he is able to find Purpose and Intrinsic Motivation in an area of his life where it wasn’t blatantly apparent.

For some teenagers, it may be simple to think about their Purpose. For others, it may evoke a blank stare. One great way to start thinking about Purpose is asking, “What do you love to do and why do you love doing it?” I call this Passion. Digging deeper into the aforementioned question can unlock some empowering truths for many young adults. One of my students answered that he loved playing the saxophone and could not imagine a week going by without playing music. He had not realized how important music was to him and he described the conversation as “eye-opening.” It is crucial for young adults to identify their passions and for parents to help nurture those passions. After all, it is in our passions where Intrinsic Motivation comes naturally… the action of doing the things that we love to do is a reward in itself.

When Purpose and Passion are there, then Fulfillment comes along with that. It is important that young adults learn at an early age what truly brings them the most meaning to their lives, and they can base their future actions and decisions on whether or not they are honoring the Values and Purpose that they had defined for themselves. Inviting young adults to continually build the life skills of consciously working towards their Purpose, nurturing their Passions, and seeking Fulfillment in what they do is a solid foundation on which the next generation can build upon to leave their legacy.

About Hayden Lee

Hayden Lee is a certified Academic Life Coach for teens, TEDx speaker for youth, and a cum laude graduate from UC San Diego with degrees in Psychology, Theatre, and a minor in European Studies. He became a certified Academic Life Coach to help teens empower themselves with the self-awareness and life skills to cope with the stress, anxiety, and competition of school in order to get the most success, fulfillment and purpose in their academic and personal lives.