Waterford News Feed

Waterford School Announces Membership in Cum Laude Society

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:20:00 GMT

Sandy, Utah (PRWeb) – 16 January, 2012 — The Waterford School is pleased to announce its charter membership in the Cum Laude Society. Waterford is currently the only school in Utah to have this distinction.

Beginning with the Class of 2012, the school will select a group of students each year to be inducted into Cum Laude. These students will be recognized for their academic achievements across all disciplines.

“Waterford has a long tradition of commitment to the ideals of liberal arts education. One of those ideals, is academic excellence: true and deep achievement in a broad range of disciplines. This is a wonderful opportunity to recognize our finest scholars with a distinction that will carry weight at a national level,” said Dr. Brandon Bennett, Waterford Academic Dean.

Paula Getz Interview

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:16:00 GMT

Paula Getz, one of this year’s Educator Prize winners, teaches Class V, and this year heads up the Lower School Robotics program. Paula has been teaching at Waterford since 2001, after a brief stint working on the development of a grammar program at the Waterford Institute. She hails from Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania. Recently, we caught up with Paula, to talk about her philosophy of teaching, her experiences teaching in the inner city, and sea-kayaking in Alaska. Following are excerpts from the interview.

So what was your own experience of fifth grade like? Was it wonderful, and you wanted to recreate it for others, or was it horrific, and you wanted to fix it?
I had a pretty dry teacher, named Mrs. Snyder. She was very strict; she wasn’t much of a role model at all. I looked forward to Science, which was much more hands-on, and had a lot more variety; it was a big change from Homeroom.

January 2012 Photo Highlights

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:41:00 GMT

A selection of recent images from the Waterford community:

Grandparents’ Day is always fun. Photo: Andrea Reynolds

Reconnecting

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:38:00 GMT

By Nancy Heuston, Head of School

On Monday the 26th of December, we held our Alumni Holiday Dinner in the Concert Hall Gallery. As in past years, our returning students are as we remember them, and so much more. I suppose that is to be expected; I know it is to be relished.

Our delight is in reconnecting beyond the screen image and the abbreviated message. Meeting new spouses and children now out of arms and taller, hearing about completed degrees and professional training, peering ahead into their hopes for the future is the best part of the evening. To spend time with these fine adults is a gift.

Our graduates are interesting people. Their resumes are impressive — with Brandon working towards his PhD at MIT, Andrea running a business with her husband Jason, and Mika a lecturer in Sweden. Conversations reveal that they are as we remember them — persons of great curiosity and energy, and a desire to give back.

2011 Educator Prize Winners

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:38:00 GMT

The Waterford Educator Prize was created in 1995 to honor members of the Faculty for the quality of their teaching and for their professional contributions to their colleagues and the School. Faculty and Staff submit nominations in the Fall, and the winners are announced in December. Each receives a monetary gift toward the pursuit of an interest or a dream that is important to that individual. The winners are asked to speak at the April All Schools Faculty Meeting, reflecting on their teaching — how they came to it, how they keep it vital, and insights they have acquired along the way.

Congratulations to the 2011 winners, named below. We have included for each a snippet from the tribute by Head of School Nancy Heuston.

Paula Getz: “Generous among her grade-mates and colleagues, witty and quick, never one to draw attention to herself or her accomplishments, Paula is a trusted member of our faculty and an articulate spokesman for the School she calls hers.”

Andrew Cole: “Scrupulous in his attention to each student and to every question, his classroom is a place where young scientists develop tools to probe and to explore.”

Greg Miles: “He cares deeply that every part runs smoothly, so that the School’s resources can be tightly focused on every child learning, every day.”

Grades, Grades, Grades

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:37:00 GMT

By Marcel Gauthier, Assistant Head of School

Grades.

Students worry about achieving them. Teachers worry about delivering them. And parents worry about receiving them. They account for more of our collective anxiety than probably anything else at Waterford.

And for good reason. A grade is a quantitative symbol of what a student has achieved. It is born at the intersection of a teacher’s expectations and the actual performance of the class as a whole. Whether we like it or not, a grade tells us where we stand. No wonder we lose sleep.

Which raises a question: given the accompanying anxiety, why do we grade?

November 2011 Photo Highlights

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:14:00 GMT

A selection of recent images from the Waterford community:

Pajama Day! Photo: Andrea Reynolds

Mary Powers Interview

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 20:38:00 GMT

Here’s a special treat: a visit with our whip-smart, one-of-a-kind English Department Chair (we found her huddled behind a pile of essays).

Mary Powers grew up in New York, mostly in White Plains, a Westchester county suburb. She lived in a 3-generation household, with her parents and maternal grandparents, and attended, as she describes it, “the ominously named Our Lady of Sorrows.” At 15, her family moved to Utah and she did her last 2 years of high school at Judge. She says that she arrived here as a punk rocker, with mini-skirt and combat boots, listening to the Clash, while her peers were listening to Marshall Tucker and Pure Prairie League… After high school, Mary ran back east to Harvard, and earned Bachelor’s degrees in English and American Literature and Language — and — Psychology and Social Relations. This was, as she says, quite possibly the longest if not the most prestigious degree that institution could award.

What kind of work did you do before you came to Waterford?
I worked in residential treatment, then got an M.S.S.W. at Columbia University School of Social Work, and an M.Ed. in Special Education from Bank Street College. I kept doing clinical practice in residential treatment, mostly with teenaged girls, then moved out here with 3 boys under the age of 5 and didn’t work for money for a while.

The Wonder of Thanksgiving

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 20:49:00 GMT

By Nancy Heuston, Head of School

As the November days shorten and the mountains lighten with snow, we anticipate with pleasure the holidays just ahead.

As I consider the holiday traditions that have accumulated in our family, I remember from whence they came. Our Thanksgiving dinner replicates to a surprising degree the dinners that I pulled my chair up to when I was a child — first, at the children’s table (which was always decorated far more colorfully than the adults’) and finally at the Big Table, with my father at the head, carving the turkey.

As important as the traditional menu was the coming together. We dressed up and minded our manners. Parents and grandparents conversed and inevitably the talk turned to reminiscences. The stories never changed, nor did the arms that reached out to hold me tight. Predictably my grandfather fell asleep in the wing chair, thus christening it as ‘Pop’s Chair’. Oblivious to the St. Bernard in the kitchen clearing the countertops of food left too near the edge, three generations settled in by the fire in the great stone fireplace, listening to family tales of times past.

Questions: Significant and Revealing

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:04:00 GMT

By Deanna Williams, Lower Schools Director

This year I was able to visit the Musee des Arts et Métiers in Paris, France. This museum houses the Foucault pendulum, a simple device conceived as an experiment to demonstrate the rotation of the earth. This giant pendulum, swinging forward and marking time, reminded me of our own school year and how quickly time escapes all of us. The colorful display of leaves and the peppering of white snow upon the mountaintops speak to all; school is in full swing and the beginning has been steady, true, and marked with confidence from teachers, students, and parents alike.

We delight in the rigor of the Waterford day. The intellectual engagement that requires a learner to stretch beyond their comfort zone is an activity that we promote and desire for all of our students. Students need to think, exert effort, and persist to be successful. Our Waterford students need both rigor and complexity in their learning. Bloom’s Taxonomy is a tool that educators use to consider rigor when developing questions or designing learning tasks. At the higher end of this taxonomy are questions that require of students more sophisticated thinking. Trigger words that might be used in questioning activities are: compare/contrast, analyze, deduce, imagine, elaborate, hypothesize, and generate.