Scratch Day 2013 @ MIT

On Saturday, May 18, I attended the annual Scratch Day at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge.  The event was divided into 6 areas: imagine, hack, share, make, discuss, and reflect.  In the imagine area, children, parents, and teachers were introduced to the Scratch programming language, learning the basics and being exposed to the new features of Scratch 2.0, which was released on May 9.  In the hack area, people sat at computers and tinkered with the software, in a hands-on show-and-tell.  In the share area, 15 students stood up on a stage and showed off some of their projects.  One project that was shared was an interactive carnival.  In the make area, there was a makey-makey obstacle course, a 2.0 bubble project, and a collaborative add-yourself-to-the-aquarium project.  In the discuss area, members of the ScratchEd team met with educators and parents, discussing Scratch 2.0 in the elementary classroom as well as in after school settings.  Lastly, in the reflect area, scratchers shared both what they love about scratch and why they keep coming back in order to help MIT improve the software.  Common themes were making games and animations, using one's imagination, and the flexibility of the program.  Scratch users posted comments on the wall answering questions such as: what do you do when you get stuck programming?  Individuals were also interviewed by members of the scratch team.

Most importantly, I introduced my daughter to scratch, and we created our first project together.  She is interested in creating her own "TV series."  She has been asking me non-stop since the event whether she can play with scratch at home.

-Megan Haddadi

inRESONANCE training conference (May 1 - 3)

I have just returned from a three day training conference (May 1 - 3), hosted by inRESONANCE, the provider of our admissions, enrollment and registrar database products.  The training was tailored mostly for administrators who need to understand and use their Keystone, Generations and Portal products.  Like most training conferences, you have to pick and choose what you will attend, while wishing that you could be in three places at once.  I decided to focus on the Keystone product and then attended the more advanced developer classes.  I was impressed with how thorough and client centric the lessons were.  The technical classes were only moderately technical but valuable in that they demonstrated more advanced solutions applicable to real reporting questions.  I highly recommend this training for anyone who is looking for a thorough hands on introduction with moderately advanced training to help you address your evolving reporting needs. 

-Michael Hawkins

Witnessing in Action: Developing and Sustaining White Affinity Groups

On Friday, April 26th, 2013, fellow Lower School teacher Maria Barton and I attended AISNE's "Witnessing in Action: Developing and Sustaining White Affinity Groups" workshop led by Shelley Tochluk, author of "Witnessing Whiteness" at the Phillips Exeter School.  Maria and I are both members of the BB&N Lower School's diversity steering committee this year, as our faculty reads Shelly's book.

At the workshop we heard from both Shelly and Jason David.  Shelly is "the author of Witnessing Whiteness: The Need to Talk abut Race and How to Do It, a book about why race remains an essential issue, how race affects people's daily lives and interactions, and practical steps we can take to serve racial justice. Shelly's experiences with UCLA's NCAA Division-1 All-American Track and Field 4X400 meter relay team and her elementary and middle school, inner city teaching experiences shaped her personal dedication to confront issues of race. An educator, with a background in psychology, Shelly Tochluk spent ten years as a researcher, counselor, and teacher in California's public schools. She received her Ph.D. in Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute in 2005 where she investigated how white racial identity impacts friendship relationships. She now trains teachers to work with Los Angeles' diverse school population as Chair of the Education Department at Mount St. Mary's College." Jason David is "a co-founder of the Alliance for White Anti-Racists Everywhere - Los Angeles (AWARE-LA), a white anti-racist organization that provides resources and community space for consciousness-raising, alliance-building, and movement-building. As a facilitator of monthly dialogues through AWARE-LA, he has helped to carefully construct and navigate discussions on numerous topics related to race and whiteness. He is also a high school teacher at Wildwood School in Los Angeles."

As a group of independent school teachers and administrators interested in promoting anti-racism, we discussed the development of white affinity groups at our respective schools.  "White affinity groups focus on dialogue and support the development of healthy racial identity and effective anti-racist practices, both essential for building relationships across race. This session [began] by reviewing the model of Witnessing Whiteness, a foundational approach to developing white anti-racist identity that involves building knowledge, skills, capacity, and community."  We also looked at our individual schools and considered what steps we would need to take to create support groups on our own campuses and thought about potential setbacks, particularly resistance from various community members.  We even had an opportunity to practice dialogue around resistance, as these skills need to be practiced again and again to be mastered.  We left the gathering with workshop agendas created by AWARE-LA to support the creation of white anti-racist groups and their subsequent dialogue on the development of a white anti-racist identity and practice.

-Megan Haddadi