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Notes From Our Newsletters
Meridian Musings – Excerpt 1
There have been recent articles in the Boston Globe and elsewhere about efforts to increase young people's participation in elections. One proposal has been to give teenagers the vote in political elections and to count their votes as a fraction of an adult vote. These proposals, though well meaning, seem to me to miss the point. Participation in a democracy does not begin or end with voting. Voting arises from the feeling that one has an informed opinion worth expressing and, even more importantly, from the belief that individuals can make a difference in the life of our communities and nation. What can a school do to help nurture this belief? Here are ways that Meridian addresses this aspect of its mission:
Curricularly - Meridian's curriculum begins with a recognition that current political and social events are not only of interest and relevance to teenagers, they are central to deepening students' thinking about decision-making in a pluralistic society. Most high schools avoid discussing current events because they are considered too controversial. However, if teens are going to vote, then they need to be able to ask questions about, read about, and reflect on the most important political decisions. Uninformed voting is no path to a more engaged electorate. For example, high school students should be grappling with the implications of their beliefs concerning the war in Iraq. Is the war just? What criteria affect such a determination? Does eliminating a repressive regime balance the costs of the war? Do any differences between actual and stated motives matter if the result is desirable? Without such discussions, we miss the opportunity to build a commitment to thoughtful, knowledgeable voting.
A focus on current issues has the additional benefit of strengthening students' interest in studying history. How can we weigh resolutions to a problem without an understanding of the decisions that brought us to this juncture? Are there policies that have served people well in the past? How can we use past experiences to help us evaluate the likely success of a politician's proposal? Rather than start an historical survey at the beginning of some era, students with a goal of understanding their own time can work backwards to uncover the origins of a current social or political trend.
The life of the school - Of course, it is possible that a young student is more concerned with personal rather than global matters. As we strive to develop a global perspective, we can provide more concrete experiences that will help them when they are older teens and more interested in looking outward. Meridian students have important roles caring for the school and setting the standards of behavior that they will strive to meet. The students are not presented with a student handbook, they create and update it themselves, weighing the sometimes conflicting goals of personal rights and responsibility to a community. These discussions are explored in parallel with studies of the U.S. constitution and the ways that different cultures think about freedoms and the common good. When students are responsible for creating the rules, they are much more likely to follow and support them and to feel such a commitment as adults.
Participation in the community - Meridian students engage in internships and community projects that further their appreciation of their own abilities to work with and serve others. These projects will be integrated into the daily curriculum through teachers' plans and in response to student initiatives. For example, as part of their Mathematics, Science, and Technology course, middle school students combine topics from geometry, physics, and art to the design of an original invention. Their invention is created to meet the need of an actual client (a family member, neighbor, or other local person or group) whom the students will interview. Each inventing group will have a real audience that will care about their work and provide feedback on the effectiveness of their solution.
Meridian is a member of the Coalition of Essential Schools (www.essentialschools.org). The coalition has as a core principle the belief that students learn by doing. Our children will become involved citizens as adults if we start them on that road now by practicing citizenship in meaningful ways.
Meridian Musings – Excerpt 2
Just the other evening, Public Television's Frontline aired a program on The Teenage Brain. It should be a promotional video for our school. The program demonstrated research showing how the typical early morning high school schedule hinders the learning of teenagers. It then discussed one reason why many school systems ignore this research despite the dramatic improvement that an 8:30 AM start time has on class interactions and student recall of ideas: a later day would interfere with after-school activities. Administrators explained that after-school activities were important because they were the part of school that many students enjoyed and benefited from the most. Meridian's mission addresses these conflicts perfectly. Why are after-school activities so powerful? Because through plays, newspapers, sports teams, and other clubs, students get to develop leadership skills, to work on projects that have meaningful outcomes and genuine audiences, to apply their academic skills in novel ways, to identify and solve problems that interest them, and to fail and try again without risk. Meridian's regular classes incorporate all of these features precisely because they lead to memorable investigations that support and stimulate life-long learning.
Meridian Musings – Excerpt 3
Learning That Lasts
What was the topic of your favorite multiple choice test in high school?
Which lectures stand out in your memory?
How many of your tenth grade final exams could you pass today?
Do these questions strike you as absurd? Too often, schools aim at short-term targets. Meridian’s faculty and students are building a school where learning is not only engaging from day to day, but endures and flourishes in the future. We achieve this longevity with approaches that recently prompted parents to write:
“I like all that is going on this year. I'm jealous and would like to be a Meridian student also.”
“Wow! My son couldn't get this at a traditional school. Thanks!”
Meridian has joined with local parents, teachers, and organizations to create learning that our students will remember, be guided by, and apply in the years ahead. We support learning that lasts in many ways that are informed by research on when our minds work most effectively:
Connections – Our brains are natural connection-makers. They look for similarities and relationships among ideas. The stronger those connections, the more they are mastered and the more readily they are reawakened later on. Meridian students build those connections as they explore literature and history in a single interdisciplinary Humanities class. They study the mathematics that is needed for their science studies as it is needed. This month they have been using trigonometry to measure the heights of trees that they are researching at Arnold Arboretum.
Authentic tasks and audiences – Motivation is essential to good learning. The oft-asked question, “When am I going to need this?” is a plea for relevance and personal meaning. Meridian students want to do their work well because their major projects are complex tasks with a real audience for the outcome. In their Media and Journalism class, they are currently producing their second issue of The Prime Meridian, a newspaper for middle school students. The writers and editors know that hundreds of their peers will be reading their efforts and that they must work diligently to refine their writing.
Variety – Our brains also respond to novelty (thus the teenage tendency to ignore nagging). Meridian’s schedule changes each week to serve the needs of the work going on in each class. If we have a visitor to our community service class to share his work at the Aids Action Committee or there is a whole-school celebration of the Día de los Artistas Muertos during which students present the life and work of a favorite deceased artist, the schedule is changed to support that activity. Each week is different and the students know adventures lie ahead. I am sure that they will all remember what they learned about the radio industry from their recent morning spent interviewing the on-air personalities and behind-the-scenes technical and business staff at JAMN 94.5.
Emotion – Traditional schooling ignores the evidence that exhaustion, stress, and fear all inhibit memory. Meridian classes celebrate the joy of learning, embrace each student’s intellectual passions, and respond to and promote inquisitiveness, all of which lead to learning that is both memorable and that inspires additional investigations. One of our students recently told me that when his friends from other schools asked what Meridian was like, he replied, “It’s just fun learning!”
Many prospective families ask us about the standardized tests that students must take for college. Because Meridian’s classes are designed to make sure that students are lifelong learners and because we incorporate traditional methods in our classes for the types of learning that they develop effectively, Meridian students are well-prepared for these cumulative challenges. Since our students are strong problem-solvers with a desire to learn more, we know that they will be truly prepared for the opportunities that college and adult life provide.
Meridian Musings – Excerpt 4
Doing Science
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. - Antoine de St. Exupery
Science is a vast and ever-expanding quest for origins, principals, and connections. At Meridian, we want our students to be life-long learners yearning to understand and participate in that wondrous enterprise.
In all of our courses, Meridian welcomes its students into the disciplines as junior researchers who ask original questions and discover new knowledge. Within our science classes, students carry out both field and laboratory research and they are aided in these efforts by their teachers who love integrating all areas of science and by university researchers who have partnered with Meridian to share with our students the excitement and purposes of research.
Here are some snapshots of research at Meridian:
Genomics Elective - Half of our eighth and ninth graders have signed up for an extra science class for which they will carry out state-of-the-art research in genomics. This incredible opportunity was developed in collaboration with the ARRAYS (Advancing Real Research Among Young Scientists) Project run by Professor David R. Walt at Tufts University. Our students are learning biochemistry, cell biology, and computer programming so that they can analyze the genetic and cellular workings of a bacterium that they obtain from an environment of their choosing. During their work they will visit labs and have access to Tufts researchers including Meridian parent and computer scientist Carla Brodley and her students.
In our middle school class Doing Research in Mathematics and Science, students worked with Mike Gagnon from the Forest Watch program at the University of New Hampshire to learn how to study the effects of pollution on the Eastern White Pine. Students joined their data with reports from schools around New England to better understand environmental trends.
Cortina McCurry
Students learn from practicing researchers about carrying out experiments. Cortina McCurry, an MIT researcher in brain and cognitive sciences spent a morning describing her work and answering students' questions about how brains work. Cortina joined our students for lunch and later in the year will host a group of visiting Meridian students at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT.
Underwater Robots - Combining engineering and physics, students in Marine Science are building and modifying their own remotely operated research vessels for viewing and obtaining samples from rivers and the ocean to depths of 50 feet. Our teachers are getting advanced training with the Sea Perch program at MIT to incorporate these devices into our classes.
To be good researchers, students must have hands-on experience working with their subject matter and using scientific equipment. But, what about gathering the wood? They also need a base of knowledge upon which to draw. While we cannot teach our students all of the information that they will need to know -- a remarkable amount of what we now teach in our biology classes was not even known when I majored in biology in college -- what we can do is provide a foundation and skills that will make our students able and interested in learning. Skills and content are important, and they are best learned in the context of complex tasks that require them and provide ample practice in their use. As students carry out research, they not only learn to do science, they learn the nuts and bolts of scientific literacy in a way that is memorable and purposeful.
Meridian Academy students know that their curiosity will be embraced and that they will get to undertake real science research every year.