February 3, 2022
from Dr. Bill Hudson, Head of School
As I walked to my post at the front entrance of the school Tuesday morning, the sound of jazz being played on the piano drew me into the band room where I happened upon the zero-hour jazz band class. The exceptional talent of the students and the beauty of the music they were creating together was a moment of pure joy for me as well as a moment of gratitude to work in a school that truly values music education.
Without denigrating the mastery of musical skill and ability, many of the students were unaware of other learning was taking place in the band room. While I am most certainly not a musician, I do know that that the unique interplay of harmony, rhythmic invention, scale, extended chords, and syncopation all speak to the complexity of jazz. In addition to musical ability, jazz also requires and fosters a number of valuable lifelong skills, including creativity, improvisation, collaboration, interdependency, problem-solving, risk-taking, humility, ideation, integrating and synthesizing information quickly, critical thinking, and navigating complexity.
For several years I taught a master’s level class at the University of St. Thomas on the foundations of American education. As a history buff, I loved studying the evolution of education in the United States and the various reforms instituted over the years. Rather than static, the idea of school has always been in a continual state of change. Educational reform has been the norm for education in response to the needs of students and society. However, our current system, created in response to the industrial revolution, is much the same as it was in the early 1900s.
I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the future of education, particularly now as we begin to emerge from the pandemic and begin the shift from the information age to what author Daniel Pink calls the conceptual age. While the industrial age focused on results and the information age focused on data, facts, and technology, the conceptual age will depend on high-touch skills like empathy and high-concept skills such as the capacity to detect patterns and opportunities, combining different or unconnected ideas together. With information readily accessible and computers able to analyze it, our future depends on the ability to harness curiosity and creativity to create novel solutions to pressing challenges in our world. As educational reformer John Dewey said, “If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.”
If you have been by the Makerspace recently, there’s no doubt that you’ve seen the quaint treehouses that are spread across the hallway for all to enjoy! This project was a second grade collaboration with Mr. Braafladt in the Makerspace. Though this was only the first time that students participated in this project, it seems as if another MPA tradition has begun as the children, teachers, and other community members passing by appreciate the end result–and had so much fun in the making!
The inspiration for this fun activity began in November with a project called the Nature Walk. To prepare, the second grade students read many nature-centric stories and completed a plethora of great writing pieces to sharpen their observational and sensational skills for the world outside of the classroom. The Nature Walk took place on our campus and children were tasked with observing, analyzing, being present with their surroundings, and picking up objects that could be included for building the Treehouses. After the Nature Walk portion of the second grade unit, the classes read, “Everything You Need for a Treehouse” by Carter Higgins. This book includes gorgeous images along with a lively description of all the essential elements of a treehouse, from wood and rope, to rafters and ladders. This descriptive picture book perfectly “captures the universal timelessness of treehouses and celebrates all the creativity and adventure they spark.”
Before the eager students could get started with building in the Makerspace, it was crucial that they learned and understood the steps within the Design Thinking Process: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. The children worked with a partner to collaborate—another important aspect emphasized in this project—and design a structure that is stable, had a way to get up and down, had a some type of roof to protect, walls to hold up the canopy, and incorporated nature elements collected from their exploratory walk. Three building sessions took place in the Makerspace where they started with a sketch of both a birds eye view and an eye level drawing, and then began building from there. After completing their amazing constructions, the students were asked to write a descriptive piece about them, and why they had specific features, how they managed to build it, and how they collaborated with their team.
Do you have room to spare? Space in your heart for another family member? A desire to expand your family’s perspective of the world? MPA is seeking host families for international students for the 2025-26 school year!
from Dr. Bill Hudson, Head of School
To say the least, parenting young children has presented many new challenges throughout the last two years. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in fewer opportunities for children to interact with their peers and develop independence. As students ages three to five prepare to attend PreK or kindergarten at MPA, many parents have questions and concerns about their child’s social and emotional readiness during this challenging time.
How many years have you been at MPA?
from Dr. Bill Hudson, Head of School
The MPA Parents Association invites you to Connecting for Understanding: An Open Dialogue about Neurodiversity.
January Walks with Dogs
If you are familiar with MPA, then you are probably also familiar with the AnnMarie Thomas Makerspace. Electrifying in its concept and its form, this area of the school houses the intersection of creativity and innovation. The Makerspace is the physical manifestation of MPA’s long-standing belief that learning should be hands-on, experiential, and joyful.
One of the most memorable projects to occur in the Makerspace this year is still adorning the outer windows of the room, prompting those who pass by to pause and share a smile that is reflecting back at them. The activity was informally and aptly named “making faces,” because that is precisely what Lower School students did. Essentially, they observed, looking for faces out in the world. And under Keith’s model, the idea was to use all of the donated, found, and collected materials at the students’ disposal in the Makerspace to create a face out of everyday objects themselves. Keith has friends at the Exploratorium in San Francisco that have been doing a similar activity that inspired this one.