our school

From the Head

January 2012

Dear Parents and Friends of The Advent School,

Happy New Year! As we head into the second semester of our 50th Anniversary year, we have much to anticipate. Science and Engineering are both on our collective minds, as we forge ahead with a new June summer program in concert with the MIT D-Lab, host a day in March with scientist and Advent dad, Dr. David Van Vactor, Professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School, and develop our Engineering curricula for students at all grade levels.

In a recent publication, Engineering in K-12 Education: Understanding the Status and Improving the Prospects (The National Academies Press), the authors write, “Almost no attention has been paid – at least on the national level – to the issue of engineering (the “E” in STEM) education in grades K-12.” Advent has made a commitment to jump-start Engineering studies in Fifth Grade and teach it at every grade level by 2013. The authors go on to say that “in reality in most elementary and secondary schools, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) are taught with little or no connection among them. Students learn mathematics in one classroom, science in another, and technology and engineering – if they learn them at all – in yet another classroom.”

This week I sat in on a Science class for Fourth Graders, taught by our new Science teacher, Claudine Kavanagh, who comes to Advent from the Museum of Science. One of her first questions to the group was, “How can we make a connection between our Science studies and the Fourth Grade Theme of Ancient Civilizations?” Here are some of the students’ responses when asked why they are learning about ancient cultures:

• “We want to learn what happened back then – how they became successful”.
• “A lot of civilizations came together to form what we are today, and it’s important for us to learn about that.”
“It’s amazing how they made all this technology – without the technology we have today, The Aztec calendar is one example.”

Ms. Kavanagh guided children’s thinking until together they decided to investigate how pyramids were made in Ancient Egypt, where they might find modern pyramids today, and how and with what tools pyramids were and are constructed. (“One thing scientists do is ask ‘How’ questions,” she noted. ) Children eagerly suggested building a model and presenting their research findings within their Science study.

Science doesn’t stand alone at Advent. For example, First Graders study the Amazon Rainforest as part of their Theme, Interdependence: Understanding Vital Relationships among Living Things on Earth; Third Graders focus on Concepts of Independence and Freedom: Studies of Leadership in Historic America and Beyond – while concurrently learning about the formation of the earth, tectonic plate movement, continent and island formation, – the very ground upon which we stand.

As educators and explorers in our own right, we are pushing the envelope further so that every child at Advent will be exploring the design process – because we want to make sure that all students learn to design and redesign. In order to experience the process real engineers go through, we have begun to teach a sequence of skills:

Define the problem
Generate solutions
Draw and create representations – including 3-dimensional models
Experiment with and test solutions while incorporating feedback
Revise ideas – or redesign

We’ve learned much from our initial exploration of Engineering curricula, and we are truly at the beginning of its development. It is often said that scientists ask questions about the world around them and engineers modify the world to adapt to existing needs. At Advent we are both scientists and engineers – we are forever asking questions, and we continue to transform our educational programs to meet the growing needs of children thinking for the future.

Sincerely,