Seattle / Lakeside School

Aloha from Seattle, Washington. Other than our one night camping on the southern Oregon coast, the good weather seems to be following us wherever we go. While in Seattle, it has been cool in the mornings and warm in the afternoons. Today it is supposed to get up to the mid-80's!

Since my last entry, we soaked in Bagby Hot Spring SE of Portland, we spent time with some wonderful college friends of mine on Whidbey Island, visited Lakeside School, and after a car window mishap spend some time with a high school friend of Carolynn's and a Punahou alum friend of mine.
Our Bagby Hot Springs visit involved a 70-mile drive from Portland through a curvy country road lined with pine trees along side the Clackamas River. To get to the hot springs we walked for about 45-minutes on a well-groomed trail that led us to a wooden structure that had several individualized soaking rooms and several outdoor community tubs. The soaking rooms were very rustic with carved out wooden tubs that filled with hot water from a hot spring just outside of the structure. Buckets of cold water pumped up from the river below had to be added to the tubs so that the water temperature was cooled enough to be tolerated. Bagby Hot Springs, although on Mt. Hood National Park land, is supported by a volunteer group that maintains the trail and the hot tub facilities. Both CC and I felt absolutely wonderful on the drive back to Portland.


The next day, we said goodbye to our friend Douglas Tsoi in Portland and drove through Seattle to Whidbey Island. To get to the Island, we had to take a short ferry ride (about 15 mins.) to a small town called Clinton, where we stayed with college friends of mine, Mark and Joan Miller. It was terrific to see them again as I've only seen them once since college graduation. Poor CC had to sit through conversations reminiscing about the 'good ole college' days. Mark and Joan have a fabulous house on the water facing the mainland of Washington. I would be remiss in not mentioning their two dogs, Bentley and Bella that both CC and I fell in love with. Both of their dogs are pure-bred Vizslas. Very handsome, and playful dogs! After a Sunday bike ride on the island, we boarded the ferry once again and drove back to Seattle where we are currently staying in a hotel near the Space Needle.


Yesterday we had the pleasure of visiting Lakeside School on the north side of Seattle. For my Punahou colleagues, the Principal and assistant head of the upper school is Than Healy. Than is a Punahou graduate (1987) and son of the long time principal of the Academy at Punahou, Win Healy. I met with Anne Stavney and Michael Nachbar of the middle school for about an hour and half, while Carolynn met with Camilla Calkins who heads up the 'Brain and Learning Lab'. Here are some highlights of what I learned:
1. Lakeside Middle School had 257 students in their 5-8 grade middle school, class size of 16, and an advisory with 8 students. The grade sizes increase from 32 in the 5th grade to 80 in the 8th grade. Each grade level is the equivalent to what we call a team with smaller groups called pods (a team within a team). Each of the pods gets reshuffled four times a year. Something that smaller schools can easily do, but difficult at large schools like Punahou.
2. They fully integrate their curriculum mostly in the 5th grade in English/History and Math/Science, where their classes are heavily project based. Most of the 7th and 8th grade teachers teach their subject matter at both grade levels in sort of a looping concept.
3. Lakeside has a one-to-one laptop program in both the 7th and 8th grade using PC's … can anyone figure out why they are PC's rather than Macs at Lakeside? Occasionally they have some of the same laptop issues related to kids not understanding the difference between computers as a learning tool vs. a gaming toy.
4. Their faculty attend a grade level meeting (which, because of their small size is akin to our team meetings) once a week. In addition, they have a combined 7th and 8th grade meeting once a month.
5. Their advisories meet everyday from 8:15 – 8:30 (their school day is from 8:15 until 3:05) with a longer "community meeting" once a week. Their advisories seem to be on a set 'curriculum','so that each student has a common experience at each grade level. I will know more about what they do when the curriculum is sent to me.
6. Lakeside Middle School seems to have two electronic systems to help track and support their students. They have an internal database that they call 'student review.' It is a "check in" system to support the kids that have the greatest need. This is very similar to our weekly progress reports/homework checks that we put struggling students on. The difference being that Lakeside's system is a common system between grade levels while Punahou's system differs a little bit from supervisor to supervisor. The other system that Lakeside has is what they call a 'Transition Report." This report is written by each advisor for each of their advisees at the end of the year. It is a short narrative report (in addition to report cards) that includes: three adjectives that best describes the student, what are some of their challenges, where have they shown the most growth, what are some effective ways to support them at the next grade level. This electronic document follows them from one grade level to the next. Each teacher does this with each of their eight advisees, so it doesn’t seem too much of an additional burden along with grades. These narratives not only help the teachers at the next grade level, but also helps the administrators to group kids together with the best possible match to an advisor at the next grade level.
7. The 7th grade has a very interesting component to a 'Life Skills' class that they all take. In this component, they specifically teach kids about the adolescent brain and how it operates so that they can better understand themselves and their own particular learning styles (and/or differences).
8. As part of the 5th grade science experience, the school finds someone in the Lakeside community (a teacher on leave, a wife of a teacher, alum, parent, etc.) who has a two to three month old baby. Each Friday this volunteer visits the class with her baby where students learn about the growth and development of a baby throughout their year in science.
9. The 7th and 8th grade science curriculum consists of an introduction to biology and the human body systems in the 7th grade and earth science / physical science in the 8th grade. It's interesting to see that this is sort of the opposite at Punahou. Both Lakeside and Punahou use their own sequencing for their own (good) reasons.
10. All classrooms, as you might expect, have a smart board as a front centerpiece, and from what I saw, they are used daily. In science, they use several computer / internet based applications to display on the smart boards including 'Seismic Eruptions' and 'Atomic Microscope', both of which are downloadable programs. I've briefly checked on the 'Atomic Microscope' online to find that there is a cost to it. I haven't had a chance to check out the 'Seismic Eruptions' program yet. Maybe some of my science colleagues may be interested in doing a search.
11. Lakeside has a 'Brain and Learning Lab' facility. This facility supports students who need additional academic, time management, organizational and executive function skills. This lab seems to be a critical supportive piece that particularly helps to support kids with attention issues.


All in all, Lakeside is a very impressive small independent school that has a sound middle school mission followed by a rigorous academic high school …. Like a small Punahou School. The tour of the high school showed that the campus is much like Punahou in that it has a 'small college' feel to it. Sorry if the Lakeside School piece of this blog got a little long and wordy.
Today, we had an opportunity to walk (our car had to go in to the Honda dealer to fix a broken window …. a story that I won't bore you with) around exploring Seattle. We spend most of the day at Pike's Place down on the water. It was an amazingly clear day with views of the entire downtown area, Mt. Rainer, the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges. We wandered around all the shops, street performers, and fish / produce booths for most of the day. CC seemed to be intrigued by visiting the original Starbucks, which was crowded beyond belief. In the evening we visited with friend and Punahou alum, Heaton Wrenn. Heaton has been working with a local bank and truly seems to enjoy living in the Seattle area. Like many of us who like to show our visitors around Honolulu, Heaton takes this kind of tour to the highest level. He drove us around like a personal tour director to several suburbs around Seattle. They included quick visits to Skyline, Eastside Catholic, and Eastside high schools. We ended up on the west side of downtown Seattle at a Pizza place for dinner. The view of the downtown area was spectacular!


Tomorrow will be a particularly busy day. Check out of the hotel, walk to two schools for visitations (Northwest School and Seattle Academy), pick up our car, back to hotel to get our bags, to the bike store to pick up our bikes, and a drive to Olympia. Aloha for now!