We have been reading Alan Gratz’s Refugee (Scholastic, 2017) together since mid-November, and expect it to wrap up this month. There are days we read and then I shut the book for a moment to discuss both the details of the story and the history behind it, and there are days I shut the book […]
Author: Diane Webber
In the Loop
Writing Our Blog by Jasper Blog writing is a process of writing/typing what we do on a mostly daily basis. We make a blog so that people reading it can understand what goes on in our classroom. In all of Miquon, it is only the kids in our classroom doing this. We do a lot […]
The Power of Partnership
Partnership is a key ingredient of what distinguishes life at Miquon from many other schools. One central partner relationship is between families and teachers. Another is between teaching partners within classrooms and across grade band teams. Classroom teachers and specialists partner around curriculum year-round and during conference weeks especially. The partnership I am focusing on […]
We’re Baaack…
…as of this past Wednesday, September 4th! We are happy to see one another, to get to the work of creating our new systems (and adjusting them later, as necessary), and to begin imagining what the year holds in store for all of us. Taking a first day of school group picture has become a […]
The Big Trip of Spring, 2019!
The big trip is a trip toward the end of the year that the 5th/6th pay for with the pizza money we made throughout the year. Instead of adults planning the big trip, the kids plan it! The group makes agreements on where to go and then we break into planning groups. Our groups were: where […]
Why Teach About Colonization and Decolonization?
by Sarah Yanuck June, 2019 One day when I was in high school, I stood by the photocopier with my advisor, Jamie. I may have been working as his teacher’s assistant at the time, or maybe I was just hanging around while he prepared for the following day’s classes. As we stood there, I lamented […]
In the Loop
Pollyanna by Kemper Pollyanna is a gift exchange that takes place right before winter break. it is a tradition to celebrate it in Diane and Sarah’s ⅚ class. This is how Pollyanna works: everybody picks a name out of a hat and they can not tell anybody that name. (That person is their Pollyanna.) We […]
Lifting Veils
How do spaces held sacred by a community reflect and communicate the world view and values of the people for whom the space is sacred? This is the question at the root of our work this winter, and as our exploration continues, we will invite the group to reflect directly on that question and post […]
In the Loop
While this is being published in early January, 2019, in fact it is the last post of 2018 from our group. Enjoy! We look forward to reconvening next week. Blog Process by Tessa Every month, Diane and Sarah’s group brainstorms topics that are new on the whiteboard, and then we each get a topic to […]
In the Loop
The Woodmere Art Museum Field Trip – by Alison The Monday before Halloween, our class went on a field trip to the Woodmere Art Museum in Chestnut Hill to look at Victorian death ceremony themed, decorated, styrofoam cakes. Yeah, I’m not kidding. Dark. Well, it actually wasn’t very dark at all. The cakes […]