School Name

Dean of Teaching and Learning Joanna McDonough walks us through a recent learning opportunity for faculty in her latest Deans' Den Blog post:

During the faculty’s first day back from Spring Break on March 26, Brooks School’s teachers had a chance to learn from one another.

Dean of Faculty Tim Benson and I asked a few colleagues to present something exciting that they are doing in their class and connect it to our school-wide competencies: communication, creativity and innovation, critical thinking, problem solving and analysis, collaboration, learning agency and social justice responsibility. Teachers broke into four groups that each rotated among classrooms in the academic building every 30 minutes to hear from, and workshop with, their colleagues.

First up for my group was Director of Theater Meghan Hill (above on left). The theater teacher led a handful of us in a collaborative, circuit-building exercise that highlighted all of our school competencies. Hill had her colleagues laughing and playing along, learning about each other along the way. 

Our next stop was Director of Computer Science Craig Gorton’s classroom (above). He took us through a coding sequence that I admit had us puzzled at times! Critical thinking and problem solving were at the heart of the lesson and we needed a bit of creativity, too, to get the computer to draw what we wanted.

After a short stroll upstairs to Science Teacher Leo Lafond’s class space (below), we continued our learning with a mini-seminar on teaching students study skills. He shared some best practices for student reflections in the Manage One’s Learning (MOL) skill — within the Learning Agency competency — for his chemistry classes.

Lafond was part of a project team a few years ago that developed our current all-school MOL rubric that is utilized across academic disciplines in all classes. He shared with us ways he helps students “learn how they learn best.” 

Our final stop was with History Teacher Laila McCain, presenting for her session in a classroom nearby. McCain (below on left), who also serves as an admission counselor at Brooks, shared her Top 10 activities from the AP United States Government course she teaches. She gave examples of activities she utilizes in that course to help students think critically, including her personal favorite: the “SCOTUS debates, cases, discussions and dilemmas” project.

Her presentation ended with a four-corners exercise that got members of our group up, moving and discussing issues with one another. 

This internal professional development time was a great way to begin the final stretch of the spring together. I am always so impressed with the way my colleagues intentionally plan and execute lessons to promote student learning, critical thinking and reflection. I was thrilled that we all had the opportunity to learn from one another and I know I’ll be incorporating a few things from this day into my own classes!

Dean of Teaching and Learning Joanna McDonough sums up this year's first Winter Term event in a new Deans' Den Blog. 

Yesterday, we hosted the Winter Term Fair! Students had the chance to talk with teachers about the 31 courses available this January during our annual, three-week, one-topic course of study program. 

Students heard about the abilities to build their own kiln in "Raku", travel to Portugal in "Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained," and learn the ins and outs of all things Brooks in "Brooks History and Documentary Film."

They moved from table to table and room to room, learning about all the immersive experiences for 2025. I could hear students asking, "Where’s 'Leading a Legacy? Where’s 'Science Olympiad? I want to learn more about these new courses." Others shared that they are so excited that popular, and long-running, classes including "Car Wars" and "The Great Outdoors" are back again this year.

Course selection is rolled out in two phases this year. Courses with significant overnight travel are in the first round of course selection (click on each title below to see an album of photos from the course's activities last year):

• Fair Winds and Following Seas 
• El Camino
• Haunted Hotel
• France: Through the Eyes of Immigrants
• Guardians of the Sea
• Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained
• Italian Art and Culture
• Art as Activism
• Shredding 101
• Mindfulness 

See photo albums from last year's Winter Term classes!

Students will submit their course requests through their advisors before September 24. Rosters for courses in Round 1 will be set by October 1.

Round 2 course selection begins the same day, October 1, and includes the remaining 21 courses.

It was a great hour yesterday, bringing the course catalog to life, with much buzz about all the creative and immersive options available this year. 

Students were still talking about it well into the evening. Some residents of Gardner House shared that they learned so much more about the courses by going to the fair and talking with the teachers.

We can’t wait for Winter Term 2025! 

Director of Student Affairs Ingrid Knowles fills us in on the kickoff of student activities in a new Deans' Den Blog.

It sure does feel good to be back together! This year we welcomed back some student leaders to engage in some training to help our school year start out strong. 

Our dorm prefects spent time with their dorm heads to align their visions and values for their dorm. 

These teams of adults and students work tirelessly to engage in our residential life community. It was inspiring to hear their hopes for the year and to learn more about how they plan on engaging their dorm communities. 

While our dorm prefects were in session, all other leaders (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Prefects; Day Student Mentors; and School Prefects) met with Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Reverend Terri Ofori and Assistant Director of Student Affairs Erik Krahn to develop their leadership mission statements and values. 

Our student leaders ran great events over the weekend to help welcome our new Brooksians home.

They put together a great field day under the lights. There was a ton of energy and it was evident that our House Cup teams are taking shape. Let the competition begin!

To close out the student leader welcome, our School Prefects helped run an ice cream social on Sunday in our student center.

It was wonderful to see students gathering on our 2020 quad. We are looking forward to a great 2024-2025 school year!

 

Dean of Academic Affairs Currie Joya Huntington shares a look at some new-school-year preparation in the latest Deans' Den Blog.

Alongside schools across the United States, the faculty and staff at Brooks spent the last two weeks of August enthusiastically preparing for students to arrive. Teachers prepared classrooms, discussed pedagogy, met in dorm teams, and thought about what awaited us in the year ahead.

A highlight of the week was a morning-long workshop with Eric Hudson, a leading thinker and writer in the field of generative artificial intelligence in education.

Having spent much of his career teaching English at independent schools, Hudson is an expert at bringing humanity into the versions of generative AI that have entered the mainstream in the last two years.

As with any new technology, there are pros and cons — and while there are many situations in which Brooks teachers may reasonably want to keep AI tools out of student work, it’s also important for us to recognize that this is an “arrival” technology. We don’t have a choice about whether AI will impact our lives. It’s here, and we’ll all encounter it in some way!

Hudson encouraged the faculty to think about how AI can help students and teachers in ways that augment human capacity. In other words: Rather than thinking about how AI automates human work, let’s think about how we can leverage and partner with AI tools to help us go further than we ever could without it.

Image credit: Erik Brynjolfsson, shared conceptually with Brooks by Eric Hudson.

Teachers spread out in the science center and the classroom building, working in small groups to develop AI-engaged assignments, plan ways that students could use AI as a tutoring partner, workshop lesson planning ideas with AI as a thought partner, and generally plumb the depths of the various generative AI platforms to see what might be possible.

There are technical limits, ethical concerns, and a significant environmental impact to consider. There are ongoing questions about how AI fits into our core value of integrity, and more specifically, the core importance of academic integrity. And, amid the questions and concerns, there is much to be learned from working with this technology.

Now more than ever, Brooks School is ready for a present and a future in which AI literacy is a central piece of the information literacy puzzle. We are excited to see what this year holds and how technical developments will continue to shape our program.
 

Hello from Dean of Teaching and Learning Joanna McDonough, with Dean of Faculty Tim Benson, the first contributors to Brooks School's Deans' Den Blog for the 2024 - 2025 school year.

We are thrilled to welcome our new faculty to campus this week as we begin to get the 2024-2025 school year started! This week began with a two-day, competency-based education (CBE) workshop.

Three returning teachers and two new teachers joined me to learn about CBE at Brooks School and build assessments and rubrics in a collaborative and reflective workshop experience.

We choose one school-wide competency each year to be our curricular focus across academic departments. The all-school, Manage One’s Learning (MOL) skill, under the Learning Agency competency introduced last year, includes elements of meaningful engagement, preparation for class and self-advocacy and communication. This MOL skill is reported for each class at each marking period and in most cases counts for up to 10 percent of a student's grade. Students are able to understand and reflect upon how they are learning throughout their courses.

For the 2024-2025 school year, teachers across all academic departments will be focusing on further defining and building assessments that support the Social Justice Responsibility (SJR) competency. Each department will determine specific skills that support SJR and work to incorporate those skills into student assessments. Focus groups, for students and for faculty, will guide this work throughout the year.

The rest of our new faculty get started on Wednesday and Thursday this week with new faculty orientation before our full faculty reconvenes from August 27 through August 29 to prepare to welcome students on campus and start our academic year. It’s almost time!

Welcome to the 2024-2025 school year!