Art and Innovation

As the 21st century unfolds, we have come to embrace the reality that workers of the future will need fluency in four domains that cross disciplinary boundaries.  These are the oft-cited "Four Cs" of critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. It's not a stretch for the average layperson to understand the first three as desirable outcomes of a good education, but creativity is often viewed as little more than enrichment; a nice bonus.  The reality, however, is that the ability to create - new solutions to complex new problems, even new content itself - has become an essential outcome of a sound education.

Arts classes and arts experiences certainly contribute to the development of creativity. But art and music class are not sufficient.  In order to fully actualize the development of creativity as a thinking skill, the strategies we implement in our arts programs cannot be limited to the visual arts studio or the music classroom. Full immersion in the arts and a broad integration of arts education across disciplines is necessary.

At its most basic level, art is about creating something out of nothing.  We most readily associate this with the creation of an image on a blank canvas or an opera on an empty stage, but the same creativity that artists call upon is required to design an engineering solution or start a business.  Math is not enough.  Science is not enough.  This is the reason that we place a co-equal value on our arts programs at St. Robert.  In other words, when we integrate arts and content, the art is not there to merely to support the attainment of something else.  It has stand-alone goals of equal importance.

Arts education is not only essential for those who will "become" artists in the sense of adding aesthetic value to the world on a professional level.  Today's reality is that in order to have unlimited access to doors of opportunity, the future workplace demands that our graduates are able to engage fluently in ideation, innovation, and creation.

Keen observation.  Focused critique.  Composition - of words or music or a painting. These skills transcend the boundaries of the art studio and have become the currency of a contemporary education.  This is why we invest over $125,000 a year in arts education and why we enhance those courses with integration of the arts into core academic content.  It's also why we provide rich immersion experiences like today's Opera for the Young, enjoyed by our kindergarten and elementary students, and the fifth grade Junior Docent Project, which launched this week.

Second trimester report cards will be coming home in just two weeks.  Be sure to help your children analyze their developing skills in art and music classes along with the academic core.  Be intentional about guiding them to value - and to grow - the eye and mind and heart of an artist.  A successful future depends on it.

Your servant is listening

With the approach of a "red day" on our school calendar, the attention of our students and families invariably aims toward how to maximize the gift and blessing of a day off. When two days off are scheduled, we often see a virtual frenzy of anticipation.  It's a thrill I still remember from my own days parenting school age children.  Breaking routine for a day or two in the middle of a bleak winter can do wonders to restore and energize the spirit - or maybe it's just the indulgent pleasure of stepping away from our routines and work for what seems to be an unexplained reason.  It's not a holiday or a holy day. It's just, well, a day off - or so it seems.

Sometimes, students or parents inquire as to the reason for this unexpected pleasure. Though no curiosity surfaced this week, I nonetheless want you know that the faculty and I have spent the past two days immersed in some rich experiences that will make us better teachers and better people.  On Thursday, our entire staff participated in our first ever faculty service day.  Especially in this Year of Mercy, we felt it was important to "walk the talk," modeling the gift - and riches - of service to others.  We divided into four groups, offering corporal and spiritual works of mercy to the poor, to intellectually and/or physically disabled disabled clients, and to the elderly.   We worked at the clothing distribution site at St. Hyacinth's Parish; at St. Anne's Intergenerational Care Center; and at Independence First.   We even offered a return of service to the Urban Ecology Center that enriches us so much.  Though our goal was to give without seeking anything in return, we took away renewed spirits of gratitude and hearts formed a little more in the likeness of Christ.

Today, we  joined together with the faculties of all the schools in our "deanery" (the nine Catholic elementary schools in the North Shore and Ozaukee County) for our third annual peer-to-peer learning day designed to break open the seismic shifts in our literacy standards.  We focused on the reading shifts in 2014; on writing in 2015; and, this year, took on the speaking and listening standards.  It was an energizing day of both theoretical and practical learning.  As I sit here at my desk at 5:00 on a Friday afternoon, there are at least two teachers in the building with me, working with enthusiasm to incorporate some of today's take-aways into next week's lessons.  We worked hard today, but also forged a bigger professional learning community and gained renewed enthusiasm for our work and a deeper appreciation for the quality of our school.  Something invested, something gained.

I feel a certain confidence that when teachers and students reunite on Monday, we will bring together a sense of renewal, whether born of respite or a different kind of work. With gratitude and enthusiasm for our mission, our minds and hearts will be ready to take on the challenges just around the bend.  To what will we be called?  Speak Lord, your servant is listening (1 Samuel, 3:10).

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

The breath of life

Our celebration of Catholic Schools Week included moments of reflection, gratitude, prayer, and inspiration.  We took a walk back in history, had an opportunity to be generous and several chances to express creativity.  We enjoyed some friendly competition and a healthy dose of silliness and celebration.  We will follow all of this on Monday with a little extra celebration as we mark the 100th school day in our 100th birthday year.  Many will celebrate Mardi Gras on Tuesday.  Then, on Wednesday, we will radically shift our focus as we begin the 40 days journey of Lent.

Some quiet ritual will be surely be a welcome shift and provide restorative balance. These contrasts also highlight the challenges our children face in living their faith amidst the noisy realities of contemporary life.  It can be difficult even for adults to right-order our days when there is so much on the agenda; when Lent calls us to a rich interior life and the Padre Serra basketball tournament calls us to a pep rally;  when our Holy Father calls us to corporal and spiritual works of mercy and we can scarcely find the time to eat dinner with our own families.   This would be a great weekend to carve out a little time to think about how we can teach our children to live their faith in the busy, gritty, noisy, messy real world.  It's the only way we can hope to feed their souls and keep the faith secure for another generation.

Some years ago, I participated in a workshop in which the presenter demonstrated the challenge and the solution to fitting God into our impossibly-busy lives.  Using natural elements like sand and stone and water, she gradually filled a jar with items representing our everyday responsibilities.  The jar was filled to the top before she came to the last item - a smooth white stone intended to represent God.  There was no room.  This did, indeed, look a lot like real life.   Then she emptied the jar and started again.  This time, the God-stone went in first.  Remarkably, all the other items fit easily around it.  I will never forget this powerful reminder that when we right-order our days, God will always fit.  It doesn't work when he waits in line as an after-thought, a leftover, a wish.  He has to be first.  Always.  And first takes planning.  It takes intentionality.  It takes commitment.

Can you commit to five minutes of prayer or scripture reading in the morning or before bed?  How about a simple prayer that reconnects you to God throughout the day?  We'll be learning some of these short "connector prayers" during our school Lenten journey. Using these consciously during moments of work and play can be a powerful way to shift your orientation back into proper balance.  The Jesus prayer is a good place to start.  Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.  Inhale the Spirit of God.  Exhale your sins and failings.  Jesus.  Mercy.  Let it become part of your breathing and it can weave God into your day in a way that becomes an easy fit and a powerful force.

May this Lenten season bring you a healthy rhythm, a peaceful contentment, a solid connection to your life source.

Prayer, pancakes, and St. Robert pride!

If you've been anywhere near a St. Robert School student or teacher in the past few days, you know that we are at fever pitch preparing for our big celebration of Catholic Schools Week.  The building is an explosion of color and creativity.  The halls are shiny and bright and filled with evidence of rigorous, relevant learning.  And, this year, more than ever before, the reason for the celebration seems more acutely understood.  One hundred years of Catholic education in these very rooms is a pretty powerful idea even for a first grader.

Please set aside a couple of hours on Sunday to celebrate this great gift.  Our Catholic Schools Week Kick-off Mass is at 8:30 a.m. in the church, followed by our annual Pancake Breakfast and school Open House until 12:30.  We've invited company and hope that you have, too.

See our product.  Visit with teachers and friends.  Feel the energy.  Spread the enthusiasm.  St. Robert School.  One hundred years and going strong!

Message from the Archbishop

Coffee and curriculum

Thanks to everyone who braved the brutal cold on Tuesday morning to participate in a conversation on our science curriculum. Together with science teachers Chris Stefaniak and Jeff Kierzek, we looked at the overall structure of the Next Generation Science Standards and examined the shifts they have brought to science education generally, and to your children's classroom experiences specifically.

Included below are the high points of our discussion - minus the contributions of parents, which were these:

• Your kids love the hands-on, investigative nature of science
• Parents appreciate the new emphasis on engineering practices
• Computer coding is an essential language of the future and merits our serious exploration
• Statistics is an important mathematical skill required for deep investigations in science
• We should explore the possibility of offering an after-school science enrichment club (e.g., FIRST Lego League, Future Cities, Science Olympiad).

NEXT GENERATION SCIENCE STANDARDS

____________________________________________________________

THE FRAMEWORK

Science and engineering Practices

• Science involves formulation of a question that can be answered through investigation
• Engineering involves formulation of a problem that can be solved through design

Crosscutting Concepts

• Apply across all domains of science (e.g., cause and effect, patterns, stability and change, structure and function)
• Explicitly taught

Disciplinary Core Ideas

• Less content (the most important/enduring aspects of science such as life science or earth science)
• Studied deeply

THE SHIFTS

1. K-12 science education should reflect the interconnected nature of science as it is practiced and experienced in the real world

2. The Next Generation Science Standards are student performance expectations – NOT curriculum

3. The science concepts in the NGSS build coherently from K–12

4. The NGSS focus on deeper understanding of content as well as application of content

5. Science and engineering are integrated in the NGSS from K–12

6. The NGSS are designed to prepare students for college, career, and citizenship

7. The NGSS and Common Core State Standards (English Language Arts and Mathematics) are aligned

Look here for more information on the standards that drive our science curriculum.

An intellectual diet

As a closet student of the neurosciences, I've always devoured information on brain development, in general, and the intellect, specifically.  The field has long understood that activity and experiences are drivers of neural development, but I don't think the development of intelligence is as widely understood.  We could write a dissertation on just what intelligence even is, in fact.  But if we think about it very simply as the purposeful application of thinking skills, we can begin to see that it is something distinct from academic knowledge, and, moreover, that it is not an automatic byproduct of that knowledge.  In other words, knowledge is power only when it is actually applied - and learning to do that is a skill in and of itself.

Intelligence is manifested differently in different domains, but it is essentially an active brain function that involves the construction of knowledge, the manipulation of information to solve problems, and the creation of new ideas and solutions.  Intelligence is dynamic and ever-evolving, but the foundation for its capacity is laid very early in life. Despite that it is always a work in progress, science is showing us that we have critical opportunities and windows of time to most powerfully influence its development.  Some important take-aways are these:

• Genes provide the blueprint for brain development, but it is the outside world that influences both its physical structure and the way it functions
• Early experiences and environmental influences determine how genes are expressed and even whether some are ever expressed at all (i.e, the brain is uniquely organized in response to experiences)
• The brain is "plastic" and will continue to organize and develop throughout the lifespan (albeit more slowly with advancing years)
• The three most powerful sources of stimulation to a growing brain are movement, nutrition, and relational interactions

So, how can we take advantage of this knowledge to maximize our children's intellectual potential? Scientific evidence across disciplines leads us to some broad conclusions about how a child's diet of activity and experiences shapes the physical brain and contributes - or interferes - with developing intelligence.  As you organize family life in 2016, consider these opportunities to positively impact your child's developing intellect.

Provide a diet rich in:

1. Natural whole foods
2. Language shared in conversation with adults and literature read aloud and discussed
3. Daily unstructured time for child-directed play
4. Daily time for processing and relaxing
5. Purposeful movement
6. Sensory experiences
7. Opportunities to explore the natural world - deeply 
8. Love, Hope and encouragement
9. Ritual and routine
10. Faith and prayer

Limit "calories" from:

1. Sugary treats and processed foods 
2. Adult-directed play and activities
3. Schedule-packed days
4. Car seat time
5. Virtual experiences
6. Screen time (TV, video games, computers, mobile devices)

DNA isn't destiny.  The choices we make can change our genes and those of our kids. Let's be intentional about filling their childhoods with healthful offerings and limiting developmental toxins. It's the best shot we can give them at intellectual power - and mental and emotional health.

Begin again

With the turn of the page to a new calendar year, we all seem to turn our attention - at least momentarily -  to ways to achieve better versions of ourselves.  Most often, we think in terms of lifestyle changes that will improve our physical or financial health. Sometimes intellectual or emotional wellness are the goal.  And once in awhile we might even resolve to improve our spiritual lives.

Wisdom culled from Pope Francis's words throughout the past year suggests simple changes of habit that have the power to shape us into better people.  Why not push this goal to the front of the line? You might be surprised at how all the other areas of wellness will fall into place!  As one of our teachers remarked: "many times the most significant changes are those that are small, sincere, intentional and practiced daily."

See this unconventional list of New Year's resolutions for some ideas.  Why not adopt just one and see the power that a little change can make - when it's the right change.

Happy New Year!