Academic Developments

Yesterday was a productive day for the teachers at TAS. We began with working out the schedule for the fall term and started looking at some significant problems with the way we approach academics. The question is always: are we challenging our students enough? The answer is always mixed.
It is easy to provide a glib answer. We try to meet our students at least halfway. Some of them are excellent students who have recently left a very stressful school environment. Of these, the younger ones tend to get a little complacent. More mature students find their way and work diligently on the work they deeply care about, and are good sports about the stuff they don't particularly like.
Other students have very patchy academic skills and on top of this, have highly disrupted family lives and emotional development. Few of these kids see hard work as an escape, of course. With them we are always swimming against the tide.
One thing we are considering is replacing the trimester with the semester. It would give teachers a little more time to get into subjects, and might open up other opportunities as well. One possibility is to institute a three week period after Christmas break dedicated to intensive projects like theater and film, music, the winter fundraiser, and writing workshops.

The semester meets another important need. More and more of our students are going to college. Colleges find our transcripts and the multitude of classes coded therein to be difficult to follow. Semesters would simplify this. We would sacrifice some variety, but there would be ways of building variety and student choice into the courses themselves.
The Science and Mathematics curricula seem to be working out well. Our English and Social Studies curricula need to be streamlined and pointed in a clearer direction. Hopefully the fall term will see the beginnings of the Contemplative Education program coming into focus, with retreats and meditation training, as well as stress reduction classes. One wonderful idea was suggested by Jen Fusco-Perry, TAS' therapist: a storytelling class. Learning how to tell one's own story.
The importance of this is something I will follow up on later. It fits perfectly into the larger frame of self-awareness and self-development.