Where Is the Candy?

            Where is candy on the food pyramid? As you probably know, it’s not even on the chart. In spite of recent statewide discussions regarding whether candy can be considered food, doctors and dentists everywhere agree that candy is not good for our children. Too much sugar has been shown to be a contributor to child obesity, linked to childhood behavioral problems including an inability to focus, a contributing factor to childhood diabetes, and connected with dental decay. A recent study even found a link between childhood consumption of candy and adult criminal behavior (http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1927347,00.html). You probably have experienced situations in which you’ve seen sugar’s effects on your child or other children: the jitters or a lessening of the ability to concentrate, and/or the crash that comes when the burst of energy wears off.

            Our recent celebration of Valentine’s Day, a holiday when candy is romanticized and seen by some as a birthright, presented challenges to adults who are faced with helping children make responsible decisions about what they consume. This is true even though candy had no role to play in the origins of Valentine’s Day, though love and notes did. St. Valentine was martyred in the early days of Christianity for performing the marriage ceremony for lovers. He received notes from the lovers he married, and even wrote his own love notes to the daughter of his jailer. At school, we celebrated Valentine’s Day with cards to our friends and with beautifully decorated lockers in the spirit of love notes from parents to their children.

            Throughout the day, as every day, candy was avoided. By resisting the temptation to pass along an unhealthy tradition instituted by candy manufacturers, parents demonstrated to their children their love and concern. By not including candy in the locker decorations, parents helped their own children and others avoid the temptation to plunder the works of art that the lockers had become. The day was a very special one for the students, with the excitement of entering a school full of Valentine’s Day artwork designed especially for them by their parents, sharing their and their teachers’ creative red and pink clothing options, and passing cards to friends and big/little sisters/brothers. Candy didn’t seem to be missed at all!

            We continue to look for ways to encourage children to eat healthy snacks and meals. These efforts are explicit in direct classroom lessons as, for instance, the Navajos had a recent guest speaker on dental health: Shelley Parsons from Pine Grove Dental. They are also implicit, as faculty and staff model eating healthy meals and snacks when they dine with the children. With school meals, we strive to provide a nutritious lunch with fruit rather than candy as a sweet element. And, as our Valentine’s Day celebrations reminded us, we help parents respond to their children’s media-fueled desires for candy by banning it from the school. Society will do its best to encourage children to eat unhealthily, but as parents and the school work together we can be successful in resisting that push and in keeping our children healthy.

Tradition and Change

            As Whiteman Primary prepares for a new SMART board, we find ourselves sorting through materials that have been in place long enough to have a fuzzy patina of dust, as well as those that have been added much more recently. Faculty have found treasures that have escaped their notice (e.g., a Denver Post newspaper from 1963 about the Kennedy assassination), as well as some materials that are no longer useful (e.g., a Betamax video that had somehow managed to hide away with the VCR tapes). Taking a close look at the things we give precious space to in a cozy school like ours and determining whether we truly hold those things dear is a valuable exercise.

            As we get ready to install the SMART board, we are reminded of how technology can enhance learning opportunities for students while reducing the clutter of maintaining paper copies of lessons, pictures, and other materials. A lesson on an interactive whiteboard allows the teacher to scan and consolidate text and images that once had to be stored on paper in files, often becoming dog-eared, faded, and useless over time. Once stored in an interactive lesson, these materials remain clean and fresh to be reused over many years. Internet resources such as video clips can be seamlessly inserted into the interactive lesson, avoiding the need for physical video storage and eliminating time for transitions from paper to video in the classroom. Lessons can be saved from year to year and tweaked electronically to meet the needs of each rising class, reducing the need for filing cabinets full of old lesson plans. Students can have access to SMART board lessons after they have taken place, providing wonderful review opportunities. As an interactive whiteboard, the SMART board bridges the gap from concrete to representational thinking, as students are able to move “materials” represented on the screen (whiteboard) in much the same way they have been able to move concrete materials on their desks. This means that, at least for older students, the need for storage of concrete manipulatives is reduced.

            Not only does the SMART board help with storing information and materials and with teaching lessons, but it also provides a means for students to personalize their own whiteboard presentations. Students will be able to leave their own proud marks for later reference and as a means of passing down what they have learned and experienced to future classes.

            Technology doesn’t always make things easier or neater. We find this each day as we sit down to our computers and see the amount of email that has accumulated since last we checked. However, there are some technological advances that make education both more exciting and efficient, and the interactive whiteboard is one of those. The school is grateful to David and Gina Zedeck for their donation of a SMART board as a seed for future donations of additional boards for our other classrooms. We look forward to hearing your ideas and viewpoints during our demonstration event once the board is installed and operational. Watch for details in the coming weeks and months.

Math for All

Recently, an old friend, colleague, and philanthropist from New York, who is funding a new urban independent school for disadvantaged children, asked me to advise her about an appropriate math program. She plans to have the school be a showcase for mathematics education, especially for children who don’t have the advantage of rich mathematical experiences at home with their families. My first thoughts were about whether a stellar math program is different in that context than it is in a context which, like ours, includes significant parent support. We want all of our children, whether they are from rural or urban settings, advantaged or disadvantaged backgrounds, or fall along other continuums, to be productive contributors and leaders in the 21^st century world they will encounter after school. The skills emerging adults will need to be successful members of our increasingly global society won’t be different because of their backgrounds.

            So what are those essential mathematical skills, and how are they best taught? Over the first five years of math instruction (K-4), the two most important emphases of a mathematics program are (1) basic computation skills in all four operations, including automaticity with math facts, and (2) an underlying conceptual understanding of how numbers are put together. Using these two things together, a student can figure out how to do most everything else. The first provides the skills so that children don’t need to spend precious intellectual energy on these basics as they are trying to learn the more difficult applications of them. The latter is essential to mathematical reasoning. These two things should be learned at the same time, since they give the child a reason (#2) for learning the “boring stuff” (#1). Learning in context is always better than learning in a vacuum, as it provides a structure for students to hang their new knowledge upon. Many programs focus only on basic computational skills, supposing that children can’t start thinking about mathematics before they know how to compute, and these programs do a disservice to children. The students may become great computers, but they have missed the opportunity to make critical connections during the developmental period when their brains are most malleable.

If students have had a strong program that integrates these two aspects of math education during the early years, they will be able to move to a more traditional program (pre-algebra, algebra, geometry, etc.) in the Upper Primary or Middle School years. This upper level math program should focus on applications. Again, learning without context is less efficient, not to mention less interesting. Just as in the Lower Primary program, conceptual understanding is essential. We certainly encounter students who need to learn procedurally, but the goal is always to move them from applying procedures to applying their minds.

Regardless of their backgrounds, as our students leave school to become members of adult society, they will need to do just that – apply their minds. We cannot know what specific procedures they might need for the jobs of the future. But we can arm our students with the ability to figure out what procedures are needed, based upon an underlying conceptual knowledge and skills base. We give our children a gift as we help them build that base – we give society a gift as we send our strong young mathematicians out into the world.