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SRV 1929 to 2009
December
80 Years Ago
Space was a problem in the first year, so the staff and parents decided an additional building was needed. Mister's "You can do it yourself " credo was reflected back to him by the "Oldest Group" (third and fourth graders), who insisted that they could build it! They did so, and they called it the "Mushroom" because of the way it sprung up from the ground. When the school moved to its current location in 1934, the Mushroom was dismantled and reconstructed here. It was redubbed the "Chip" (short for chip off the old block), and still stands today – it's the upper level of the library.
December 2009
In their newsletters this month, all of the teachers have written about teaching mathematics in their programs. So I read through a number of old communications to SRV parents from the months of December in the 1930's and early 1940's to look for pieces about math. Interestingly, while these early teachers wrote at length and in great detail about the many wonderful special projects and integrated curricula they were working on in language arts, social studies and science, they wrote very little about math. They referred to math briefly, along with spelling and penmanship, as the "tool skills" – the basics that children needed to master. The teaching they described was very traditional, including math fact drills, workbooks and timed tests.
Now curious, I went back to Grace Rotzel's book about SRV, to see what she had to say about it. On page 19, she included a speech that she had given to parents in 1934 to inspire them to keep the school going in the face of a financial crisis.
One word will sum up the principles that underlie The School in Rose Valley. That word is integrity. I am not using it in any negative sense of goodness, but in the original meaning of the word. An integer is a whole number, or complete entity. Integrity is the state of being whole. A whole child has poise, sincerity, alertness and physical vigor. Lacking these, he lacks integrity. …
It would be a very limited curriculum indeed that had the three R's as its sole aim. The three R's are tools to be mastered, but they are means and not ends. When and where they should be acquired must depend upon the child's needs. It would be as silly to say that school exists to teach the three R's as that man exists to make money. …We have to [teach the learning tools], but education is a great deal more than that. It is living and experiencing and stretching mind and body and spirit.
At this point it might be well for me to say that the three R's are taught, that regular standard achievement tests are given, and that our children test satisfactorily in comparison with those in other schools. We plan, however, that the first three years of school life, granted that children are entered at [age] four, shall be freely active, and that books shall be left for the most part until the seven–year–old year.
This is what having integrity as a foundation does in the matter of division of time in our curriculum. Not only shop, but cooking, clay modeling, painting, rhythms, piano playing, singing, all are very important in a well–rounded school life. They are not extras but basic needs.
A little later Grace referred to nine "fundamental conceptions that every child should get early in life," one of which was "a fundamental conception of number."
Children use yardsticks and rulers, ounces and pounds, quarts and pecks before they learn that six and six are twelve. They use fractions, multiply and divide, and only after they have learned what numbers mean do they begin to treat them abstractly.
I find it very interesting that these incredibly adventurous and progressive educators understood the necessity of instilling in children a deep conceptual sense of number at an early age, yet seem to have approached direct mathematics instruction in the later years as something that required only memorization, drill and testing.
Middle Circle students use math to make maps as part of their campus mapping project.
Fortunately for us and our children, research in the past few decades has proven the importance and efficacy of a more progressive approach to learning fundamental math concepts and skills. In an article "Effective Teaching for the Development of Skill and Conceptual Understanding of Number: What is Most Effective?" authors James Hiebert and Douglas A. Grouws discuss the current research on the efficacy of particular teaching methods in helping students develop conceptual understanding in math. "Two features of instruction emerge from the literature as especially likely to help students develop conceptual understanding of the mathematics topic they are studying: attending explicitly to connections among facts, procedures, and ideas; and encouraging students to wrestle with the important mathematical ideas in an intentional and conscious way."
Making connections – What I love best about mathematics are the elegant relationships and connections between different operations, applications and ideas. It never ceases to delight me that four rows of six cubes each can be seen as six rows of four cubes, which can be re–arranged in multiple rectangular arrays of 24 cubes, the area of which can be calculated by multiplying the base by the height, all of which can be arranged on a multiplication table to remember that both 3 x 8 and 4 x 6 equal 24. Engaging children in exploring concepts with different materials and operations, noticing patterns and relationships, and sharing their observations and thinking, helps them integrate and internalize the concepts. "It's just like when we measured how big the room is by counting the rows of floor tiles!" They begin to make the connections themselves, and to access one idea to help them tackle new ones, mastering increasingly complex concepts.
Wrestling with ideas – One of the toughest concepts for children to truly grasp in the elementary years is place value, or what the individual digits represent when they are in different places in a number (10's, 10th's, etc.). Children begin to learn about it in the primary years, but most don't really get it until they are in the Oldest Group, when it is connected with decimals and exponents. In the mean time they have mastered the algorithms for the operations, including regrouping quantities from one place to another. The work that leads them to get what they're doing and why, happens when they "wrestle" with the various manipulatives and operations they use, and gradually become able to make the leap to thinking of quantities as abstract concepts. In the OG they are able to regroup using different bases and number systems, because they can see that each digit stands for something real (in the case of our system, the ten fingers on our hands), as well as to understand the abstract concept (the powers of ten).
SRV's math curriculum engages children in actively making connections and wrestling with ideas. For the past decade or so we have been using the Investigations program plus a variety of supplementary materials to teach the curriculum. This year the Kindergarten and Primary Circle teachers have begun to use the Everyday Mathematics program, which does the same thing but in ways that are a little more systematic and easier for teachers to implement. We will be rolling out the Everyday Mathematics program in the older groups, as well, in the years to come. We are lucky to have excellent research–based programs now to teach math in such progressive ways.
For me, going back this fall and reading materials from SRV's past has been stimulating, challenging and comforting. There are more ways in which things at SRV are the same than different.
Among the differences, some of what the founders were able to do then is out of reach to us now. For example, there's no way we can get away with allowing the third and fourth graders to build their classroom anymore!
Then, I have been pleased but not surprised to notice ways in which we have grown since the school's founding, not only in having better facilities, but in the overall quality of some aspects of the program. Technological revolutions, discoveries in brain science, and advances in teaching pedagogies are helping us develop even better ways of enacting many of the principles that Grace and others articulated eighty years ago and that we are still perfecting here at SRV today.
December 1940
(excerpted from weekly teacher progress reports)
Group V (10's and 11's) – Pat Beatts
Arithmetic – Mental arithmetic is no longer a great problem to any of the group, and also, during the week we had a review period of the four main processes which seemed to indicate that addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are still understood by all, though one or two of the weaker tens will need further harking back to these matters.
Group III (6's and 7's) – Grace Rotzel and Lucy Stephens
Number: I made three new sets of number combination games (sevens, eights and nines) to be played as a card game either alone or in a group. The next step is to make the subtraction games that correspond to these.
Anti–climax Department: Donald came in and said in hollow tones and in a very subdued manner, "There is a bowel movement in our hut." There was much discussion of what to do about it. At recess Lucy suggested that they get a trowel and a piece of paper and remove it. Harriet said she isn't going inside. Schuyler: "You're a sissy. You are afraid of the poop." Amanda: "I don't want to, but I'll help you take it out." It turned out to be a rotten apple.
Twelve Turnings
As part of our 80 year celebration, we'll also be revisiting the nature writing of SRV founder Grace Rotzel.
In December the shortening daylight and sharpening cold are reminders that winter is frugal with sunlight, and time outdoors will need planning. But sunlight is not everything. There is planet–and–star light. One of the special privileges of December is to watch Venus become more sparkling and radiant each evening until its highest brilliance is reached on the twenty–third.
Late in the month, when Venus is bright enough to light the woods path, Sirius, the star forty times as large as our sun, will begin to rise in the east at nine o'clock. A clear moonless night offers good hunting for constellations and can take the imagination back to those early astronomers, the Magi.
On a sunny day the gardener will look over the apple and cherry trees for the eggs of the tent caterpillar. Those hard little circlets on the ends of twigs reflect the sunlight and are easy to see when the leaves are gone. Removal now will save effort later. Before the ground is frozen the evergreens that had such a dry summer must be given a long soaking. The grapevines are to be trimmed and the roses mulched. Trimming the yew, holly, spruce and pine can be given ceremonial significance as these branches will be used for holiday decorations.
The camera enthusiast will do well to study the individuality of trees in their winter aspect. The limbs and trunk of a sycamore with its patches of brown contrasting with the white inner blotches can make an attractive study against the sky. The rough, loose bark of a hickory with its angular limbs, the highlights on a satiny birch, or a smooth silvery beech, the twisted knarled trunk of an apple tree, the horizontal planes of a white pine, the fluid sculptured look of an old white cedar– all can be pictures that will add to knowledge of photography as well as of trees.
Plan to spend at least part of the holidays outdoors.
Grace Rotzel – 1957
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