Articles/Links

Summary Researchers and policy makers from Great Britain visited WMS as part of a US study tour to discover what we were doing in the areas of prevention and intervention, specifically anti-bullying.

Author Louise Morpeth

Citation Prevention Action 12 May 2009

School principals in the US have as much autonomy as their counterparts in the UK but their choice of in-class prevention programs is restricted to those proven to work.

In the UK, freedom of choice has given some obscure and dubious inventions a foothold in the curriculum. In the US – and in Washington state – only the 11 that have made the Blueprints for Violence Prevention approved list can qualify.

Among them is The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, developed by Dan Olweus in Bergen, Norway, 25 years ago in the aftermath of three suicides and a national campaign, and now an international brand. In the US, implementation has touched almost every State since impressive trial results in Philadelphia and South Carolina in the mid-1900s.

So what of the progress of school “systems change” on the ground in Seattle?

Summary Charter schools run by the Harlem Children's Zone in New York City show promising results in eliminating the black-white academic gap, according to a Harvard researcher.

Author David Brooks

Citation New York Times, May 7, 2009 Op-Ed

Link http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/opinion/08brooks.html

The fight against poverty produces great programs but disappointing results. You go visit an inner-city school, job-training program or community youth center and you meet incredible people doing wonderful things. Then you look at the results from the serious evaluations and you find that these inspiring places are only producing incremental gains.

That’s why I was startled when I received an e-mail message from Roland Fryer, a meticulous Harvard economist. It included this sentence: “The attached study has changed my life as a scientist.”

Fryer and his colleague Will Dobbie have just finished a rigorous assessment of the charter schools operated by the Harlem Children’s Zone. They compared students in these schools to students in New York City as a whole and to comparable students who entered the lottery to get into the Harlem Children’s Zone schools, but weren’t selected.

They found that the Harlem Children’s Zone schools produced “enormous” gains. The typical student entered the charter middle school, Promise Academy, in sixth grade and scored in the 39th percentile among New York City students in math. By the eighth grade, the typical student in the school was in the 74th percentile. The typical student entered the school scoring in the 39th percentile in English Language Arts (verbal ability). By eighth grade, the typical student was in the 53rd percentile.

Summary Seven or eight years ago, studies offered mixed results on the question of whether exercise can boost brain function in children and adolescents. Experts are beginning to contend, however, that the case is getting stronger.

“There’s sort of no question about it now,” said Dr. John J. Ratey, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “The exercise itself doesn’t make you smarter, but it puts the brain of the learners in the optimal position for them to learn.”

Author Debra Viadero

Citation Education Week, Volume 27, Issue 23

Link http://schoolsforchildreninc.org/blog/_archives/2008/2/14/3523472.html

Case Grows Stronger for Physical Activity’s Link to Improved Brain Function

At 7:45 a.m. each weekday, while most of his peers at Naperville Central High School in Naperville, Ill., are sitting in class and groggy with sleep, 15-year-old Matt Bray is running sprints, jumping rope, lifting weights, and engaging in other activities, all aimed at getting his heart pumping.

This early-morning exercise class is about more than getting in shape, though. A small but growing number of experts and educators suggest that Mr. Bray is priming his brain for learning at the same time he’s sculpting his biceps.

“It’s been actually raising my grades a little bit higher,” Mr. Bray, a freshman, said of the class, which he has been taking since September. “Now I’m getting A’s and B’s on average,” he said. “In junior high, I was getting B’s and C’s.”

Seven or eight years ago, studies offered mixed results on the question of whether exercise can boost brain function in children and adolescents. Experts are beginning to contend, however, that the case is getting stronger.

“There’s sort of no question about it now,” said Dr. John J. Ratey, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “The exercise itself doesn’t make you smarter, but it puts the brain of the learners in the optimal position for them to learn.”

Summary Much of what we learn about social life...we learn in school...School is set up for one kind of learning, but when it comes to emotional matters, the assumption has always been that these are instincts we have to develop for ourselves.

Today, however, a number of educators and psychologists are arguing that, actually, we don't. What they call "social and emotional knowledge" - the ability to read other people, manage our own emotions, and thereby master social situations - ...can be taught...Psychologists are designing curricula that aim, step by step, to build up students' emotional knowledge...

Author Drake Bennett

Citation Boston Globe, April 5, 2009

Link http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/04/05/the_other_kind_of_smart/

For most of us, what we were taught in school and what we remember from our school years are two different things. We sat through uncountable hours of lessons about denominators and organelles, about precipitates and dangling participles, about Boo Radley and Shays’ Rebellion, and yet the memories that sneak up on us today are more likely to be the humiliations suffered on the school bus or the awkward moments from a pubertal romance, the triumph of a deftly parried insult or the sheltering solidarity we felt in a now long-dispersed clique.

Much of what we learn about social life, in other words, we learn in school. The learning process is a fumbling and painful one, administered not by teachers but through schoolyard intrigues and emotional outbursts. And in this part of our education, we are largely on our own. While some people - Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one, Ronald Reagan another - seem born with a gift for emotional perception, the rest of us muddle through as we can. School is set up for one kind of learning, but when it comes to emotional matters, the assumption has always been that these are instincts we have to develop for ourselves.

Today, however, a number of educators and psychologists are arguing that, actually, we don’t. What they call “social and emotional knowledge” - the ability to read other people, manage our own emotions, and thereby master social situations - doesn’t have to be imparted solely through the cut and thrust of lived life. It can be taught, they say, just like trigonometry or French grammar. Psychologists are designing curricula that aim, step by step, to build up students’ emotional knowledge: a typical teaching unit might include a role-playing exercise, or a set of diagrams breaking down the components of different facial expressions, or, in older children, a discussion of the subtle differences between disgust and contempt.

And while the basic idea that school should help refine social skills is not a new one, the proponents of social and emotional literacy programs are armed and emboldened by promising new findings that suggest just how teachable these skills are. With a little training, studies show, grade-schoolers can dramatically improve how accurately they read emotions in others’ faces, how well they head off impending tantrums - even how empathetic they are toward classmates.

Summary Growing up poor isn't merely hard on kids. It might also be bad for their brains. A long-term study of cognitive development in lower- and middle-class students found strong links between childhood poverty, physiological stress and adult memory.

Author Brandon Keim

Citation Wired Magazine March 30, 2009

Link http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/poordevelopment.html

Growing up poor isn’t merely hard on kids. It might also be bad for their brains. A long-term study of cognitive development in lower- and middle-class students found strong links between childhood poverty, physiological stress and adult memory.

The findings support a neurobiological hypothesis for why impoverished children consistently fare worse than their middle-class counterparts in school, and eventually in life.

“Chronically elevated physiological stress is a plausible model for how poverty could get into the brain and eventually interfere with achievement,” wrote Cornell University child-development researchers Gary Evans and Michelle Schamberg in a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Summary A short history of WMS, starting in 1906! The file has some nice pictures and other info not in the text below.

Author Unknown

Citation Building for Learning, Seattle Public School Histories, 1862–2000

File WMS-History.pdf

Few schools can look back in their history and find a grade school,a junior high school, and a high school. In fact, at its inception in 1906 as Franklin School, Washington had a dual purpose.

An impressive old-world style building opened in the 1906–07 school year as Franklin School, named for Benjamin Franklin, the American statesman and inventor. Not only did it house 316 students in grades 1–8, it also held the High School Annex, which moved to Franklin from Summit School. In 1907–08, the main school on Broadway was renamed Washington High School, so the upper-grades program at Franklin was renamed the Washington High School Annex. When the high school was renamed Broadway in 1908–09, the program at Franklin became Franklin High School. With the increase in Seattle’s high school enrollment, the elementary program was closed at Franklin, and the school operated solely as a high school from 1909–12.