Where in the world are we?

Americans are notorious for their deficits in the area of geography. We are trying to change that reputation at St. Paul’s Academy. We want our students to know not only about their own state and country but also about the rest of the world. One way we give our kids an extra boost is by hosting Passport Club.

Passport Club is not really a “club” but an all-inclusive activity for our students to hone their geography skills. Students start with the continents, oceans, and deserts in 1st grade, and then the program adds 5-10 new countries per year so by the end of 4th grade students will know 195 of the world’s current independent nations.

Americans may not be famous for their geography skills but at St. Paul’s our kids are getting accolades for their attempts to change that!

CSG

We have an organization at our school that has just been rebranded. What use to be the Chapel Guild is now the Chapel Service Guild (or CSG if you prefer acronyms. PALS ladies I’m talking to you!)

What does the Chapel Service Guild do? They assist with Chapel events and put together a service project for each grade at our school. Today Kindergarten launched our service initiative by creating and then delivering apple baskets to our neighbors around the school. Neighbors, if you are reading this, thank you for throwing our balls back over the playground fence. We love being your neighbor and loved meeting so many of you today!

As students grow in ability so does the complexity of their CSG project. By 8th grade our students create a meal, and serve it at the Lighthouse Mission. St. Paul’s Academy values service to others. In this age of abundance it is an important skill to teach our children.

Parents, if you are interested in helping our school grow in service please consider joining the CSG. As Chaplain Matt once said, “Our students learn best when they’re doing things, when their whole body, mind, and spirit is engaged.“

Conflict?

There is no school anywhere in which students don’t have conflicts. Any place where children are gathered the same themes emerge: sharing is hard, agreeing on what game you are playing is sometimes difficult and figuring out who goes first in a game is next to impossible. But with conflict there is also opportunity.

Our students learn how to deal with conflict in a way that allows both parties the opportunity to discuss an issue and come out with a solution. This is not a skill learned overnight but one that we continue to teach, reinforce, and practice all year.

This week we had an assembly that taught our students the skills needed to handle any problem. Our teachers pretended to be students having conflicts and then showed the students ways to solve them. We often call this, “giving an I-message,” or finding a “win-win solution.”

Sometimes parents assume that because we encourage our students to first talk out problems at recess that this means a duty or teacher never intervenes. This is absolutely not the case. We teach kids that there is a difference between small problems (like who goes first in a game) and big problems that need a big person (aka a teacher or duty person) to solve it.

In the younger grades teachers or duty people are involved with every problem. Teachers either act as facilitators, guiding the students’ discussion about small problems in a calm and collected way, or they solve the conflict because it is more than the typical recess dispute and needs a larger intervention.

Once students reach 3rd grade an amazing transformation starts to unfold. Anyone who has observed our 3rd/4th grade recess can testify that yes, students still experience conflict but the difference is that they no longer need a teacher to solve the “small” problems. You see students having a discussion, voicing their opinions, and agreeing on a solution. It may take a while to teach students the skills needed to address conflicts, but in the end what was once a conflict is now an opportunity to learn and grow.