Upper School Retreat ‘09 Faculty Letter

August 1, 2009

Greetings Colleagues,

I am writing to update you on retreat planning and to ask for some help.  As you know, the executive function capacities of our students arose as an academic concern in our 9^th grade study skills discussions and as an emotional concern in our Upper School advisor meetings.  We asked if that capacity is under assault from the emerging technologies, what emotional and academic cost is being paid by our students if it is, and what we can do to strengthen that important capacity and to counteract forces that tend to undermine it.  The retreat, informed by the summer reading and by our experiences, is a chance for us to better understand executive function, what strengthens and diminishes it, and what we can do to enhance it.  The potential positive and negative impacts of emerging technologies are of special interest to our consideration.

The retreat will take place in the arts center on Tuesday, September 1, which is the second day of meetings.  It will begin with a light breakfast from 7:30 to 8:00 followed by an ice-breaking activity.  We will then have two sessions focused on the book, Brain Rules, before yielding the floor to Chris Kaufman, the lead psychologist for the Portland Public School System and a specialist on executive function.  After participating in the earlier sessions, he will focus his session on executive function in light of our summer reading and the kinds of comments you have made throughout the morning.  After that session, we will break for lunch.

In addition to some time for digital and live sharing, the afternoon will feature a debate between two giants in our field, Emily Graham and Phuc Tran.  While they are now working on the specific focus and format of their discourse, the statement they are debating is as follows: Given the digitally saturated lives of young people today, schools would serve them best by becoming digital free zones of learning, working explicitly to counterbalance the effects of such an upbringing.   I leave you to speculate on who is taking which position.

Here is where I am asking for your help. The first session in the morning after the ice breaker will consist of faculty led small group discussions of different chapters.  If you found a chapter particularly compelling and would be willing and interested to facilitate a discussion on it, please email me back before August 17^th.  Let me know what chapter you are interested in and what your proposed discussion topic might be.

We will use the Good Teaching Blog during and after the retreat.  I have attached a copy of this letter as a post.  You might want to remind yourself how to access the blog before the retreat.  You can find The Good Teaching Blog at http://goodteaching.wordpress.com/.

I am enjoying my summer but also look forward to rejoining my colleagues in the excellent work we do together.  I hope you feel the same.

Take care,

Lowell