From the Director’s Chair December 2007
Posted by usnl in : November 2007 Edition, From the Director's Chair , trackback“We all tell stories. The kinds of stories we tell about the past help determine the way we behave in the present and how we orient ourselves to the future. It’s one of the ways we identify who we are, who I am and who all my groups are — by telling stories.”
Lorene Cary
Author of Black Ice, The Price of a Child, and Free! Great Escapes from Slavery on the Underground Railroad
My grandmother was a great storyteller, and I truly cherish the time we spent together before she died about 10 years ago. My first plane ride by myself was to see Momma Stone. She carted her three Yankee grandchildren all over rural Tennessee to small towns with names like Sugar Tree and to the cemeteries in these towns so that we could “meet our relatives,” as she liked to say. Every Christmas, we made gallons and gallons of eggnog and took it to the soup kitchen where we all cooked and served Christmas lunch to the homeless of Nashville. She taught me so much about forgiveness and unconditional love when I was getting divorced and, later, when she had terminal cancer. While I still miss her terribly, especially at Christmas, I know that what she taught me through our family stories significantly shaped who I am today.
As we move into this holiday season, I find myself thinking about family, service and the time to devote to both. At a recent faculty meeting, the Upper School faculty had a lively, poignant discussion about the possibility of a no-homework holiday over winter break. While we all agreed quickly that we want to spend time with our own families, thoughtful perspectives were also shared about what we might do to help keep “kids’ heads in school.” Teachers reflected on what research says about lengthy school vacations and student retention of what has been taught. After much discussion, it was the sense of the Upper School faculty that any assigned winter break homework would be short assignments to remind students about what they are studying in each class; no larger than a nightly assignment, taking about 20–30 minutes at most to complete. Ideally, students might complete these assignments a day or two before returning to school on Jan. 2 so that they can refocus on the concepts they have been studying in various classes. Students who have chosen to be in AP courses, however, should expect longer assignments in those courses; this is necessary to maintain the pace of the AP curriculum so that these students will be well prepared for their AP exams in mid-May.
While this might not be the total no-homework holiday that some of us had hoped for, it is a start: two full weeks to spend time with our families, to reconnect with old friends, to catch up on our sleep, and, most importantly, to hear each others’ stories. And so I share with each of you the joy and peace of this holiday season and hope our time away from Penn Charter is a time to care for others and ourselves.
Beth Glascott
Director of Upper School