Seattle / Tacoma Schools and Yellowstone National Park

Aloha from Yellowstone National Park. Before I get to the description of what we are doing now, I'd like to share a few things with you about two schools that we visited in Seattle and one school in Tacoma. For those of you who are only interested in Yellowstone, jump down the page a bit.
In Seattle we visited Northwest School and Seattle Academy of the Arts and Sciences. Northwest School is a small urban 6th - 12th grade school located in one building on the edge of downtown Seattle. It has 467 students (130 in the middle school) that includes 45 international boarding students that dorm a block away from the school. One of the school's primary missions is to integrate their international students with their domestic students. Because they occupy only one building, there is a lot of integration between their high school and middle school students in a peer mentoring style. For example, as part of their environmental program, the high school students mentor the younger students in keeping their building clean by collectively spending 20-minutes three times a week helping up-keep their building. It seems to really give the students a sense of ownership to the building. One of the founders of the school believed that students wouldn't care about their extended environment until they cared about their immediate environment. An impressive aspect to Northwest School is that they include art as a core subject requiring students to attend art twice a day. They feel art helps to support their students with learning differences. Northwest School seems to give their teachers a lot of leeway in the area of technology. Teachers choose whatever technology that they deem necessary for their curriculum and their subject matter. The school supports their initiatives very well. There are a few computer labs throughout the school (i.e. library) with smart boards in a few classrooms. The assistant head of the school notices that teachers with technology integrated in their classrooms are more engaged in their own learning thus making their classes more engaging for their students. Teachers choose their technology rather that being forced to use it.

Seattle Academy of the Arts and Sciences located a few blocks from Northwest School in urban Seattle is also a 6th – 12th grade school with 600 students. Their campus is split with the middle school and high school buildings 2 blocks from each other. The buildings that that make up Seattle Academy are buildings that began with a different purpose as these have been purchased from local businesses (i.e one of the buildings is a former Cadillac dealership). They seem to convert these buildings to suit their classroom and office needs as best as they can. Teaming is a very strong part of their middle school whereas the high school has more of a departmental approach. Like Northwest School, art (many forms of art) seems to be a very important part of their curriculum as everywhere you look there is art on display or a listing of scheduled performances. Part of their school's mission is to 'build a culture of performance'. Seattle Academy is an impressive college prep school that makes it a goal to include students with learning differences into their admission process. Anywhere from 15-20% of the students admitted have a known learning difference. They seem to have a terrific support system for these students as they attend a learning support class each day. Seattle Academy has admittedly scaled back their middle school advisory program. Their philosophy seems to be that the most important aspect is to develop a one-to-one advisor/advisee relationship rather than to implement a set advisory program. It is left up to each teacher how to develop that relationship.
Tucked away in a suburb of Tacoma (University Place), there is a wonderful little school called Charles Wright Academy (CWA). There is a stark difference between their campus compared to Northwest and Seattle Academies. CWA is on a gorgeous piece of land with their buildings spread out amongst trees with large amounts of green space. CWA's 6th – 8th middle school has about 170 students (50 in 6th and 60 in both the 7th and 8th grades) organized into three or four smaller pods (or teams) at each grade level. They have 18 students per class and 10-12 in their advisories. Their advisory program seems to be a fairly set program so that all students at a grade level have a common experience. Their advisory topics differ slightly from year to year to fit the needs of their current students. Typically their topics include: drugs and alcohol, harassment, honesty and integrity, and internet etiquette. My Punahou colleagues probably see some similarities with Punahou's advisory topics. I visited 3 science classes while at CWA one each at the 4th, 7th, and 8th grade levels. It's been a long time since I've been in an elementary school science classroom. Here I saw a very dynamic young teacher (2nd year) who is doing a fabulous job. He's the only science teacher at the elementary level, so he sees most if not all of the elementary students each week. The 4th grade science class (55-min long) accompanied by their regular teacher, included a variety of activities including a 20-question quiz game, a very interactive discussion of states of matter, a brief discussion of atoms and elements, and an experiment with what he called slime (other teachers have called it 'ooblek) that shows characteristics of both liquids and solids. A very impressive class to say the least! The middle school science curriculum seems reversed compared to Punahou's 7th and 8th curriculum. CWA has the life sciences in the 7th (emphasis on botany and humans) and physical sciences in the 8th. CWA chose this curriculum sequence because they didn't want their students to have a biological science in consecutive years, as students take biology class their 9th grade year. There are very few computers in the middle school classrooms but they did have a fairly nice computer lab. They seem to use technology a lot to help support their students with learning differences. They use speech-to-text applications and a program called WIN that reads to kids. I'm not at all familiar with the WIN program. Might be worth someone at Punahou taking a look at sometime. All in all, CWA is a very impressive school that I could easily see myself teaching at, but there is very high teacher retention with few openings. One of my highlights of the visit was on a personal note. One of their PE teachers is a Punahou graduate (I think in 1988) that I helped coach in XC and track, Meredith Hansen. What a nice reunion!



Now that all the 'school stuff' has been taken care of on this blog entry, I can describe to you our Yellowstone National Park experience. We drove from western Washington to West Yellowstone, Montana in two (very long) days, camping overnight in a very small oasis-like town of Glenn's Ferry, where they were having a town celebration and their local high school homecoming all in the same weekend. We were very lucky getting a campsite! Early the next day we drove to West Yellowstone, Montana. After a short rest in a motel room we drove into the west entrance of the park. After a few stops to see the wildlife we made a bee-line to Old Faithful. I can certainly tell you that Old Faithful is still a faithful geyser and still as impressive as I remembered when I visited Yellowstone as a kid. Watching it erupt as the sun was setting was very memorable for CC and I. Too bad we had to share it with several hundred people. The next day in the park was even more memorable for us. We made several stops to see bison, elk, bighorn sheep, coyotes, and deer (sadly no bear sightings) some very close to the car, as the accompanying pictures show. We also made numerous stops to see VERY clear hot springs, boiling mud pots, steam vents, and a couple of very impressive waterfalls. Unfortunately, there was a large forest fire in the park that created quite a bit of smoke. It's very sad to see a devastating fire in a very beautiful place. On our way back out of the west side of the park we were stopped by a park ranger that informed us that the fire had unexpectedly jumped the road, was spreading quickly and that the road was now closed. To get back to our hotel, we had to drive 250 miles out of our way to exit the north entrance to the park and drive back down south to West Yellowstone. We didn't get back to our hotel until about 9pm. It disrupted our cycling plans for that afternoon, but without the detour, we wouldn’t have seen Mammoth Hot Springs and a lot of wide life. I guess I could think of a lot worse things than an extra 7-hour drive.





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