An AFTER picture - a student tends to the canteloupe and tomatoes.

Wow!  What a difference a few days make.  Upon return from our long weekend, our organic garden has grown by leaps and bounds.  I took a group of students outside today to help stake up the tomatoes.  I thought I would share a few before and after photos to highlight the growth.

The students were excited to see silk on the corn, flowers on the tomatoes, and our first yellow squash growing.  More importantly, they expressed anticipation of actually eating all of it.

Click to go to our EARLIER POSTS from the garden and see more photos.

A class of PK students prepare the planter box for our spring plantings.

Now that the spring weather is settling in, I am reminded, and still amazed, at how much our students love to work (and play) in our outdoor grove.

We have a lot of activity going on in our grove.  We are in the process of installing a sensory path and an edible garden and we also have many new plantings all around.  One of our classes is monitoring rain fail, another is doing planting experiments with root plants, herbs and vegetables, and others are testing flowers.

The soaking beans begin to sprout.

Our greenhouse is full of sprouting flowers and veggies, our planter boxes have young plants in them, and our outdoor grove is undergoing a transformation into a sensory trail and an edible garden.  It is wonderful to watch.

But what is more amazing is how our students are so engaged with all of it.  They enjoy watching the progress of their plantings from seeds, to sprouts, to full-size plants.

Two-year old students put in the plants for one of the sensory garden elements in our outdoor grove.

Naturally, as shown in the first photo (above), the students love digging in the dirt.  They also equally love learning about the life cycle of plants, what conditions makes them grow, or not, and how they can create the best conditions for growth.

Students work on turning over the compost in our bin.

The teachers then use the planting of the flowers and vegetables as a lesson to how we can take care of ourselves, each other and our surrounding environment.

I look forward to watching the work of our students as their flowers, herbs and vegetables grow and blossom.  Of course, I also hope to eat some of it too!

Enjoy the photos below.

For my photographer friends, I apologize that the photos are really not photo quality.  I took them all on my cell phone…gag.   Nonetheless, I still find it visually interesting.

Enjoy the photos!

Two students draw upside, using the underside of a table.

HOW DO YOU LIKE TO DRAW?

That simple question turned into a fun activity for students in Ms Katie’s and Ms. Shonda’s Early Preschool class at our school.  Students identified ways they liked to draw and took turns experiencing all the different methods.  They then voted by placing their picture underneath their favorite way to draw.  You can see by the chart (photo below) that they preferred drawing while upside down.

Enjoy the photos below.

The "clean" tomato soup

Students in Ms. Sue’s Pre-K class conducted a science experiment recently.  They used cotton swabs to go around their room to collect germs.  Then they placed the soiled swabs into a plate of tomato soup to “infect” the soup with the collected germs.

After five days, a mold developed in the soup.  As scientists do, they recorded their observations by drawing what they saw in the moldy soup.

The photos below show the process of learning for the students.  They swabbed, they infected, they waited and then they observed.

Ms. Tanya's class marches in a musical parade at the "Carnival"

I had the pleasure of observing Ms. Tanya’s music class this week.  While I was in there, she was teaching a group of Early Preschool students music.  They are in the middle of their Carnival unit.  So during the class, they marched in a parade, played a game of ball toss, and “rode” on a merry-go-round.

We are so fortunate to have such a strong strands program for our students.  In addition to music, Ms. Tanya also teaches them art, fine arts, dramatic play, eco-friends (a science curriculum) and healthy fit (health and physical fitness).  Our students attend these strands everyday as part of the school day.

Enjoy the video below.

Reading Center

I tried a little experiment today.  I visited a Pre-K classroom with my cellphone camera and took 30 seconds to capture what was going on in the classroom.  You can see the photos below.  I was quite pleased to see all the different learning activities going on at the same time.

There was vibrant activity in each of the classroom’s learning centers.  Another of the observations that I could not adequately capture in 30 seconds with my camera was the independent nature of the children’s work.  The teacher was fully engaged with the students, but the students were clearly leading their learning.  It was amazing to watch, even for 30 seconds.

During this time, I observed students reading along with a book in the reading center, students creating a police station in the block center, students working in the computer center, one making lego creations, a student dressing up in dramatic play, one student self-selecting a new center and another completing a writing project in the writing center.  The photos below represent this.

And all of it was done in 30 seconds.

I enjoyed it so much, I think I will make it a routine to do so in all of the classes here.  I think it will be insightful for the students, teachers and families of our school.

My favorite line is the following: “That the single biggest predictor of high academic achievement and high ACT scores is reading to children. “

Years ago I started a small campaign in a small community geared toward reading to children.  It was in 1999 and I called it R2K (yes, a knock-off to the Y2K bug hype).  The R2K stood for Read to Kids.  I tried to shared statistics about the cons of television versus the pros of reading to children.  Since you probably have never heard of it, you can infer how successful my initiative was!

I hope you enjoy the blog as much as I and the parent who sent it to me did.

No, this is not a blog entry about DESSERT FUN, it is about our students’ study of the desert biome.  As part of our summer program, EcoAdventures, students have spent the past two weeks studying about the desert.  Below are some photos of their work.  Enjoy!

1. “One would be people.
2. Two would be people.
3. Three would be people.
4. Four would be people.
5. And five would be people.”

As you know, our school is growing.  As a result, we are going through the process of looking for the best and the brightest teachers to grow with us.

And it is not an easy task!

Because our standards and expectations are so high and our program is so unique, it takes a very talented and unique teacher for our students and our school.  In the past month, we have received hundreds of resumes to review from all over the country.  We are honored to have so much interest from folks wanting to be a part of our school.  While that is a blessing, it is also a curse.  It does take a lot of our time, both Sarah (our Education Manager) and I, to review the incoming resumes and decide who should go forward in the selection process.

I would estimate that about 20% of the applicants move forward to the next phase which is a screening interview.  While I was doing my doctoral research at the University of Georgia, one of the professors I worked with published a study on hiring the right people.  Unfortunately, he found that even the best predictor of whether an employee would be a good fit for your organization was only correct about 21% of the time.  Starting with 100 applicants and by merging those two numbers, the 20% of applicants that move forward and the best predictor of a good fit being about 21%, that brings us to about 4 applicants out of 100 that are likely to be a good fit.

We cannot and will not settle for mediocre or average.  We must have exceptional talent.  For that reason, we have adopted the approach that Collins outlines in his book: “When in doubt, don’t hire and keep looking.”  As we rapidly grow and the pressure to hire staff to meet the demands of our incoming families increases, this approach can be quite scary!

The corollary to that is that we may need to limit our growth based upon our ability to find enough of the right people.  In a business sense, this corollary is equally scary.  No business would ever want to turn away customers, especially in today’s economy.  Naturally, we want every customer possible.

I am thrilled to report that our efforts and patience are paying off.  We have a lot of talent in our pipeline and are getting ready to bring on board a few more wonderfully talented teachers.  We anticipate our hiring to continue through the fall with our commensurate growth.

The pressure will continue to be on our leadership team to continually attract, hire and retain the right people.   After all, people make all the difference…the right people that is!