The Silent Treatment: A Day in the Life of a Student in ‘No Excuses’ Land

[HiPointDem]

28. Let's compare:

Just to be clear, let's compare what students in the primary grades at sidwell do to what these kids do:

Here's a class at this school:

7:45 am Mr. Amaral escorts Carolina along with the rest of BU 5 silently to their homeroom/advisory. Carolina proceeds to her pre-assigned desk. Mr. Amaral gives a non-verbal cue for Carolina’s group to move to the back cubbies to get organized, and signals with his other hand that they have one minute to complete their cubby tasks. Carolina silently stands up and brings her backpack to her cubby, unzips it, and removes all of her binders.... and Carolina finished her cubby tasks in less than 60 seconds....

She begins reading her DEAR book, as the other students work for their minute time blocks to get their cubby work done. Mr. Amaral calls, “1-2-3 Eyes on me!” The class responds in unison, “1-2-3 Eyes on you!” and then proceeds to close their DEAR books and place them on the left corner of their desks.

Mr. Amaral uses the last few minutes of class to review the main objective for the lesson, give feedback to the class using DREAM Points, remind scholars to copy HW, and provide direction for transition. Mr. Amaral says, “Scholars, yesterday you transitioned to Reading in 38 seconds. Your challenge now is to transition in 35 seconds. I am waiting for 100% eye contact.Good. Go.” Scholars quickly and silently switch out binders from their rubber bands around their desk legs. Carolina and her peers absolutely enjoy being timed for tasks and being challenged to beat their best times.

Now sidwell:



Hey, the kids are standing around talking to each other...without a teacher directing them, not in line...

For more than 25 years, Lower School students have developed and written their own monthly Queries for consideration of the community. These questions reflect issues and concerns relevant to their own lives: friendship, fairness, peace, understanding, nature and environmental issues, celebrations, differences, conflict resolution, service, and the world around them. The following are examples for community consideration:

“How do we keep greed from growing in an ‘I want everything’ world?”
First Grade

“Do you have the courage to stand up to your friends when they are not being fair and just to others?”
Second Grade

“How can we learn to see and appreciate the beauty of everyday things around us?”
Third Grade

“In this new year, how can we make peace in our world, resist peer pressure, and not hurt others?”
Fourth Grade

Community service plays an important role in the Lower School experience...For several decades students have brought a vegetable to school on Wednesdays to help create soup for Martha’s Table, a Washington, D.C., soup kitchen. For this project two classes work side by side, often younger children paired with older children, and chop the donated vegetables...

Many other service activities are woven into the fabric of children’s lives at Lower School such as fourth graders sharing their love of books by becoming reading buddies with younger students at a D.C. public school, collecting nuts and seeds for reforestation of native trees, and working on environmental clean-ups of the Anacostia River. Opportunities for service within our own school community often include a day of planting bulbs and flowers, learning to compost soup vegetable cuttings, and helping sort campus recycling materials. Nurturing a sense of responsibility and care, as well as developing the habit of helping, grows from these acts of service.


Sounds to me like Obama's girls have class discussions and writing activities about issues, get to do meaningful activities, don't have to be silent unless mouthing a script, and don't spend their entire school day doing rote timed activities.

http://www.sidwell.edu/lower_school/academics/index.aspx