Watershed School

Congratulations, Graduates!

wombat — Tue, 21 May 2013 20:41:16 +0000

The Watershed School graduation ceremony takes place Friday, May 24th, 9:30 am, at the Red Lion Inn.

The Watershed Theater Troupe presents “OUR TOWN” by Thornton Wilder

wombat — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:18:25 +0000

Please join us for a great show.

When: April 19th, 8 to 10 pm

Where: AAPA Theater (The Magic Playhouse)
5311 Western Ave., Suite D, Boulder
(same location as last year’s show)

Tickets are $5 and can be purchased online (click button below) or at the door.

Boulder Expedition 2013 – Come on, get happy!

wombat — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 18:33:15 +0000

Come celebrate International Day of Happiness at this year’s Boulder Expedition fundraiser on March 20 at the Boulder Theater. We’ll be screening the award-winning film, “Project Happiness” including a Q&A session with the filmmaker Randy Taran afterward. The film follows three groups of high school students from three continents as they pursue the question of what creates everlasting happiness. Come and learn through discussion, film and art about how schools can foster well-being, joy and compassion, resulting in better relationships and increased achievement. We have a fun night planned featuring Watershed School student artwork, an awesome raffle and much more! PURCHASE TICKETS

State of the School Fall 2013

Liz — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:01:59 +0000

Longevity

Next year is Watershed School’s 10th year of operation, and this year marks the first time that students who began with the first middle school class will be graduating high school. We will soon be seeing some of our graduates finishing college and entering the work world. These milestones are true measures of a school’s success, and as we begin to collect data from our alumni, we will have even more information about how an interdisciplinary high school experience impacts one’s next steps into the work world.

Last year was a stellar year in many ways. Our new building allowed us to improve our image in the community; we used the momentum to design and implement a marketing strategy that increased our presence in the community and allowed us to strengthen our position as Boulder’s school. Our campaign set us apart from the competition’s standard use of the term academic excellence.

Staff

Our professional development plan last year emphasized writing across the curriculum. All teachers (including art, spanish, math and science) were encouraged to develop and implement a writing program using the 6 Traits of Writing as a guide. Chris Carithers, Dean of Faculty, led workshops throughout the year that facilitated teachers in examining their practice. In addition to workshops on teaching writing, we created an internal peer review system whereby teachers critiqued one another’s practice as teachers. This was designed to allow more consistent feedback throughout the year and to develop school-wide norms around drop-in observations, feedback and professional conversations about the practices of teaching. This year we are focusing on improving our practice through in-class observations and video analysis of teaching episodes. Each teacher has a peer coach to work with, as well as a small group of teachers that observe and give feedback on specific aspects of teaching.

Head of School

One of my goals last year was to get to know our parents. I intentionally spent more time chatting with parents in the parking lot, greeting them when they came into the school and attending meetings that concerned their children. About mid-way through the year I realized how fortunate we are to have such a fascinating group of individuals who make up the parent body. This year’s parent council is working on creating a stronger network among those individuals. Our parents’ involvement with the school is an important part of creating a positive school environment.

In order to be a better ambassador for the school, I wanted more first hand experiences with the students. I participated in day trips with students and then went to San Diego with the middle school Makin Waves Expedition as a way to better understand the field experience component of our program. What I learned was that our teachers have a high standard of safety and care for each student when they are away from campus, and that the experiences students engage in while off-campus are compelling. I also had a great time getting to know the kids better as the atmosphere is more informal when on trips, so kids share more of themselves.

Administration

Financially, the school is stable. We have a great finance committee, a good business manager, and a thorough process for setting the budget. As long as our enrollment continues to grow, we will be in good shape. We hope to reach the magic number of 100 students by 2015, which will mean full enrollment at all grade levels. This year we have 72 students, with a larger high school than middle school. Next year we will be recruiting for 6th and 7th grades in particular, with some room at other grade levels.

Our development plan is evolving. We put on two big effort events last year that raised a total of about $50K. I recently led the staff through an evaluation process of the events and we realized that we have quite a few “feel good” events, but that the amount of effort and staff time it takes to pull off the fundraisers is high. The Boulder Expedition is a tradition for the school but does not net that much money considering the effort it takes. We are currently evaluating the pros and cons of large and small events, the effort and the gains that each one takes, and determining our plan for this year. We have a new Development Director, Brittny Wilson, and she will be instrumental in helping us reach our goal of $250,000.

I know that is a lot of money! A prospective parent recently asked how we set our tuition. I explained that there is a difference between a product school and a process school. A product school invests in producing a student who has high test scores. That is a less expensive model of education to deliver as the type of learning focuses more on memorization that on deep engagement with concepts. A process school focuses on the learning process and requires field experiences, a larger teaching staff, and an array of support staff. Watershed School is a process school. We strive to engage students in the best process of learning, and we have a unique pedagogy to accomplish that. As we look at the cost of salaries, vehicles, and field experiences, not to mention equipment, it’s easy to see why our tuition is higher than a school that focuses on delivering a standard, rote based curriculum. We rely on our fundraising dollars to supplement our income. In fact, it costs about 25% more than the price of tuition to create the Watershed School program. That is why we ask every parent to contribute what they can to our fundraising efforts. Watershed School families are the direct beneficiary of those efforts.

Board of Trustees

The board of trustees is a strong group of committed individuals, some parents and some not. Several of the board members will be coming to the end of their terms this year and next, and we are recruiting individuals who have board and management experience to replace them. The governance committee is going through a process of analyzing the expertise on the board and determining what qualities would round out the and strengthen the group.

Last year, the staff spent quite a bit of time working with the board to jointly understand the mission and vision of the school, and then to understand how the staff was marketing that vision to the community in the form of our educational program. The board responded well to the process of refining the vision through substantive conversations about the mission and vision of the school.

Current Year

In my first year as Head of School, I was able to accomplish a variety of goals. My underlying premise was that we could maintain stability due to the number of returning staff and the commitment to the survival of the school by all employees, along with a solid educational program. There were points in the preceding year where the school’s viability was in doubt due to low enrollment. That doubt no longer exists. One goal that we accomplished that will have a huge ripple effect in the coming years is being named candidates for accreditation in the ACIS; the accreditation process will begin this summer. Accreditation involves self-study, a source of information to share with the larger community. Achieving candidacy status was a good accomplishment in a year marked by growth and optimism.

This year’s goals revolve around stability. We spent an enormous amount of energy last year settling into a new building, re-branding our school, and increasing our visibility in the community. This year we are applying our own philosophy to go deeper, to institutionalize some of our practices and to improve our efforts to recruit and retain students. We need your help. This year, we would like more students to join our school in order to meet our budget goals. Consider hosting a gathering at your home to invite prospective parents to learn more about our school. Invite your friends and neighbors to join Mishel Gantz, our admissions director, during our information sessions where we talk about the program to families. Like us on facebook!

We also want to keep our families happy and to re-enroll all students next year. Let us know how we are doing. Let’s all plan on celebrating Ten Years Together with an even stronger student body next year!

Sincerely,
Liz Meador, PhD
Head of School

Understanding thinking: A new approach to student learning

Liz — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 21:38:29 +0000

If the goal of learning is to understand, then where does thinking fit into the mix? For the past ten or fifteen years, educators have been focusing their practice on the idea of understanding, thanks in part to the work of Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe who co-authored Understanding by Design in 1998. I remember being in graduate school and thinking that this finally captured what progressive educators were trying to accomplish in curriculum design, that is, to make sure that students really understood a topic or idea. Wiggins and McTighe wrote about Backwards by Design, referring to curriculum design that started with a focus on enduring understandings that would emerge when a teacher posed essential questions, questions that would frame a course, pose dilemmas, and lead to an uncovering of important topics by students.

At Watershed School, teachers spend hours determining questions that are large enough to expose a variety of ideas and incongruities, and then plan projects that students will engage in as they work on understanding the interdisciplinary nature of the answers to such large questions. As we hone this work, we wonder, are students thinking deeply, critically, and complexly? What might evidence of such thinking look like?

As a staff we decided to read Making Thinking Visible (Ritchhart, Church and Morrison, 2011), because we thought that it would not only help us to unpack thinking, but also to strategically plan for and assess student thinking. In this text, the authors argue that there are eight features of thinking that are integral to understanding. In their words, these are: 1) Observing closely and describing what is there; 2) Building explanations and interpretations; 3) Reasoning with evidence; 4) Making connections; 5) Considering different viewpoints and perspectives; 6) Capturing the heart and forming conclusions; 7) Wondering and asking questions; and 8) Uncovering complexity and going below the surface of things.

Our first step during each school year is to enforce the notion that Watershed School is a place where thinking is valued. Students use reflection journals during their orientation trips, which can include a backpacking trip with a small group or a high ropes course with an entire class or a foray into service through the all school clean-up of a native plant restoration site. Whatever the project or vehicle, reflection is the tool to gain insight. We believe that thinking deeply about a topic in the ways described in the book Making Thinking Visible is the best approach to learning.

For more information about the Making Thinking Visible Project, go to http://pzweb.harvard.edu/vt/VisibleThinking_html_files/VisibleThinking1.html

The Future is here: Expeditionary Learning at Watershed School

Liz — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:46:59 +0000

Schools all over the country are riding the wave that began at Harvard University as an attempt to break the mold of traditional school by applying Outward Bound principles to schooling. Denver was one of the first sites to host expeditionary learning in schools, and as young graduate students at CU Boulder, Jason Berv and I were exposed to the early thinking and research on the curriculum and philosophy around experiential education. Our colleagues at CU formed an evaluation team to look closely at the Outward Bound philosophy and pedagogy, and I developed a community based teacher education program, along with Dan Liston, Phil diStefano and George Stranahan, that incorporated the Outward Bound pedagogies and experiential education philosophy (The Roaring Fork Teacher Education Project).

Central to Outward Bound and Expeditionary Learning is the concept of community and at Watershed School the personal values that make a healthy community are identified as Integrity, Craftsmanship and Expeditionary Behavior, also known as ICE. While those values are central all year long, during the last term of the school year, May Term, those values are highlighted with a group trip to deepen the academic content of the expedition. This year’s May Terms were Makin’ Waves, with a trip to San Diego to explore ocean ecology and art as activism; Spirit of Creativity, with a trip to San Francisco to study creativity and inventions; Passages, with a trip to New Orleans to examine the lingering effects of Hurricane Katrina on families in poverty; and Language Immersion in Guatemala, with an intensive home stay and study at a Guatemala language school.

Students on school trips cooperate, communicate, and step out of their comfort zones. This enriches their learning and their personal growth as time, space and personal relationships are reorganized in settings that require high expectations for acting with character, curiosity and citizenship. I participated in the Makin Waves trip, and can provide the following anecdote.

“Our project for the day was to plant native Mule Fat at the San Elijo Lagoon. We began with a tour of the marsh with naturalists who were passionate about the birds, fish and plants that made up the vibrant ecosystem. Middle school students stood quietly as the docent pointed out an egret eating a small fish, then jumped off the boardwalk with trowels in hand to dig holes for Mule Fat plants. At the end of the day, the docents and Forest Service personnel commented that they had never had a more curious, observant group at the lagoon. That same comment was made after we boarded a Scripps Institute of Ocenaography research vessel, took surf lessons, and explored tide pools with biologists. Students were proud of their group dynamics and held each other to high standards of respectful behavior in their various settings.”

The final piece of May Term is the action component- The Makin Waves students collected single use plastics and made sculptures of sea animals out of them. They spent two days at local Patagonia, REI and Whole Foods stores exhibiting their art and asking the people who stopped, Do you care about the ocean? Do you want to know why we care about the ocean, even though we live in Colorado? Do you know how single use plastics hurt sea animals? Their expertise was clear and concise, and once again the evidence that experiential education results in deep learning was obvious.

Needless to say, going along on the Makin Waves adventure with 13 middle school students, camping at the beach, and getting to know the students’ interests on a personal level was the highlight of my first year as Head of School!

Why Have School on MLK Day?

Liz — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 02:41:21 +0000

We believe that it is a great honor to come together as a community of learners to celebrate the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Today we will march with others in Boulder who are asking thoughtful questions about how to create a more inclusive and equitable community. As a school that promotes deep learning and critical thinking about meaningful topics, we believe that having a day together is the best way to honor Dr. King. The link below is a wonderful explanation of the importance of MLK Day.

MLK Day – a legacy of service and kindness to others

Google Apps for Education

Liz — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 13:58:56 +0000

I spent the day at Google in Boulder last week with educators from all around Colorado. We explored Google’s Chromebook and Google Aps for Education in small groups. It is remarkable that large school districts are beginning to see the benefits of Google Aps including calendars, documents, sites, and forms.

Watershed School has been using Google Aps for several years now. One of the ways we use Google is to create e-portfolios using sites for each of our students. We have a template that incorporates a home page, a blog, and a file box that students use to store their work. The blog is used as a tool for student reflections, and the home page is a place where students can describe their learning experiences and interests.

Students present their portfolios in middle school at student led conferences and in high school at 10th and 12th grade to show they are ready to mvoe on to the next level of their education.

Here is a sample of a student portfolio.

https://sites.google.com/a/watershedschool.org/mikes-draft-portfolio/Home

Technology does alot to promote learning skills, including reading, writing, and thinking, not to mention getting kids ready for college and work. At Watershed School, where each student uses a laptop everyday, technology is integrated into students daily lives. We have been the fortunate recipient of funding from the Compton Foundation designated for computers and software in our school. From the ability to share documents among students and teachers, to the use of video production to demontrate learning, technology is a hallmark of a Watershed School education.

There are some great websites for parents to peruse that explore the lines between use and overuse of such things as computers, cell phones, and social networking sites. www.lorigetz.com is a good one.

For more on this topic, here is a Facebook posting from last year (http://www.facebook.com/#!/notes/watershed-school/safety-security-and-ethics-of-internet-use-posted-by-liz/176770129000011)

My visit to Google reminded me of the innovation that exists at Watershed School, especially when the Google Teacher Trainers expressed their accolades for the outstanding use of Google Aps for Education by our teachers and students.

B-Curious… because creativity is not an accident!

Use your imagination!

Liz — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 13:09:03 +0000

One of my favorite educational philosphers is Maxine Greene. Maxine has dedicated her life to the arts in education, and making sure that children are wide-awake to art. She believes that the creative spark is within us all and that schools have a responsibility to cultivate creativity. She challenges educators to move beyond the empty space and make education about something, about the lives of those we teach.

http://www.maxinegreene.org/about_maxine_greene.html

In her book, A Light in Dark Times, she evokes the social imagination as an antidote to cynisism and hopelessness. She says, “Social imagination involves looking at the world as if it could be otherwise” (Greene, 1998, p.157).

At Watershed School in Boulder, Colorado, we are constantly looking at the world and imagining what could be. After all, that is what a 21st century education aspires to. Through reading, reflecting, critical thinking, inquiry and dialogue, students begin to have the freedom to formulate new ideas.

This fall, the middle school is asking, How does water shape the world around us? Their site shows the ongoing investigation into this essential question.

https://sites.google.com/a/watershedschool.org/source-to-sea/

B-Curious… because creativity is not an accident!

Reflections on Learning

Liz — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:30:34 +0000

The idea of deep learning as opposed to surface learning has been promoted as an outcome of engaging learning experiences. One key feature of deep learning is critical thinking, a higher level of reflective thinking. Research shows that institutional culture along with assessment methods influence student engagement as well as the approach to learning that students use.At Watershed School students present their learning to the community in a variety of ways and receive feedback that supports a deeper engagement with the topic.

At the end of each term, students engage in Presentations of Learning (POLs). These POLs are a form of assessment, similar to an oral defense. Each student develops their ideas about the essential question that they have been immersed in over the term and creates an oral presentation that is delivered to teachers, peers, family and community members. During the last two weeks of the term the school turns into an individualized workshop where students and teachers are meeting in small groups to hone the thinking that goes into the presentation. The standards are high for students to process and synthesize information that they have spent weeks learning about. Studies show that “students who engage in this deep level of thinking are more intrinsically motivated and curious to seek and make meaning from their learning” (Phan 2011, p. 286).

Once the rigorous individual POLs are completed, faculty assess students’ performances based on the level of conceptual understanding that has been demonstrated. In a thoughtful and high stakes discussion, faculty decide if the student has completed a 360 degree approach to defending their ideas about the topic. Those that fall short must go through the revision process, and present again.Following POLs, the entire student body presents their learning during the Festival of the Arts and Intellectual Reflection, otherwise known as FAIR. Far more involved than a science fair model, FAIR incorporates a collaborative team-based approach to presenting learning as groups of students deliver art, movies, one-act plays, mini-lectures, and other performances that represent their learning.

The potency of this type of reflective thinking has been well researched by educational psychologists. In fact, the ability to synthesize information analytically suggests the use of cognitive reflection which provides individuals with hindsight that avoids the misinterpretation of information, known in the education world as misconceptions. A well known video highlights graduates from Harvard University who have misconceptions about how seasons change. Perhaps if they had gone to Watershed School they would be able to think critically about their ideas. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0wk4qG2mIg This year’s FAIR takes place on December 10, 2011. We invite you to attend to see what this innovative assessment of learning at the middle and high school levels entails.

Phan, H. (2011). Deep processing strategies and critical thinking: Developmental trajectories using latent growth analyses. The Journal of Educational Research, 104:283-294.