ISW Hires New Faculty!
The Independent School of Winchester is very pleased to announce that we have hired Michelle Warner for the 2015-16 school year. Michelle’s responsibilities will include teaching humanities, math, art, and science. Michelle graduated from Oregon State University with a BA in Art History and a minor in Visual Art, and she earned an MAT in Elementary Education at Lewis and Clark College. She also holds a Virginia teaching certificate. Michelle brings a wealth of experience as an educator to ISW—including stints in Head Start, a charter school, and an English language program in South Korea. For the past three years, Michelle has taught second grade locally. She is thrilled to be making the move to ISW and is particularly excited about working in a progressive school. Michelle and her husband live in Winchester with their two children.
Welcome to ISW, Michelle!
What ISW and organic food have in common
“The problem with conformity in education is that people aren’t standardized to begin with.” Ken Robinson
As parents, we all try to provide the very best for our children—from health care to spiritual/moral training, from food to education. Fast food chicken nuggets? We all know they are mass-produced as cheaply as possible in a few central locations. They are intended for everyone and for no one in particular. High quality ingredients aren’t used; non-food additives are used to extend shelf-life. It’s pretty clearly not about making good, healthy food. It’s about creating a standardized product that will make money, regardless of the long term consequences for the consumer. While the occasional nugget probably won’t kill anyone, most parents would agree that their children’s diets should lean heavily toward fresh, locally sourced, organic-if-possible ingredients.
When it comes to education, however, not everyone realizes that most American schools have ceded control of both standards and testing to giant, for-profit corporations. The curriculum they generate is intended for everyone and for no one in particular. Like the production of the nugget, the process of developing curriculum and tests is about reducing costs and increasing profits. Multiple-choice tests are not used because they test anything well but because they make automated grading easy and cheap. And they dominate the school year—despite the best efforts of talented and committed teachers everywhere. No wonder so many students can’t wait to be done with their education.
The good news is that, as is true with food, you do have an alternative—right here in Winchester.
A really strong independent school education is more like a meal locally sourced from organic foods. At ISW, we are working to develop a very particular set of skills at each grade level, but the way we help students develop those skills is different every year, depending on the students we have in front of us. We have a group of children who love horses? Let’s read Misty of Chincoteague and go visit Assateague Island. We are studying Italy with our Kindergartners? Let’s go to a local Italian dance studio and perhaps an Italian restaurant, where we are allowed behind-the-scenes. Our high school students are reading about world current events and they ask if they can do a newscast? Why not? Our Algebra I students are working on slope. What if they build birdhouses to see how/why slope matters in the real world? Our teachers are wonderful "education chefs"!
At ISW, our content is co-created with students, teachers, and parents as partners, and the experiential component is locally sourced. On a daily basis, we talk with students about what approaches excite them, what tidbit did they hear in the news last night that relates to what we are studying, what places would they like to visit, what topic fascinates them and might be worth spending a few more days studying. In our monthly parent/teacher teaching team meetings, we talk about what’s coming up in the curriculum, and parents routinely contribute resources (friends, new locations, projects) that tie to the curriculum in the form of field trips and speakers. At ISW, the education process is truly organic, and as you might expect, our students find the process of education both exciting and supremely satisfying.
ISW was founded so that families in our region would have choices. And we work very hard to make the choice of an independent school affordable to a wide range of families. If you are interested in learning more about our organic approach to education, call us at 540-877-5552 or email us at info@iswva.org.
For the record, I attended public schools from first grade through graduate school, and my mother taught in public schools for more than 40 years. Public education as a concept has my 100% support. Corporate takeovers do not.
Claire McDonald, PhD
Head of School
Looking for a high school program? Check us out!
ISW opened our high school this year with a small number of full-time 9th graders and a significant number of students who are with us part-time—performing in our Select Program (which produced Around the World in Five Plays in the Fall, and is currently producing Schoolhouse Rock Live!, Jr), participating on our secondary Destination Imagination Team (which made it to State Finals), exploring Shakespeare after school, and enjoying our Open Mic Nights. These programs and successes are made possible by our amazing teachers—all with at least five years teaching experience, many with ten or more. What unifies our students, teachers, and parents is a shared vision—a progressive high school where students get a strong academic foundation, pursue their passions, develop their creativity, and produce a portfolio of real, meaningful work in collaboration with master teachers.
We are very excited to develop and expand the program further next year, with the addition of 10th grade.
If you are considering options for high school, consider HS at ISW. Our program is tailor-made for:
- Our own students, of course!
- Serious students who have attended other middle schools and are ready for challenging and exciting work in a relaxed atmosphere.
- Students who have been homeschooled through Middle School and who are ready for a small, formal school setting.
- Students who would like to attend school part-time and homeschool part-time.
- Talented students who are highly creative and looking for individualized opportunities.
- Students who have already identified a passion or gift (a dancer, a musician, an athlete) that would be better supported in a small, flexible environment.
We would love to talk to you about the options for 2015-16—both full-time and part-time. If you are a rising 9th or 10th grade student for whom ISW may be a good fit or you are the parent of a potential HS at ISW student, email us at info@iswva.org or call us at 540-877-5552 for a tour.
ISW Pilots New Approach to Spanish
- Learning should be fun and engaging
- Story is a powerful way to capture and keep student interest
- Communication is the key to success in school and in future professional endeavors
- Previous difficulty in learning a language should not predict future language success
Opening Day Remarks 9/2/2014
Opening Remarks, All School Assembly
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Welcome, welcome! Welcome back to our returning families! And a hearty welcome to our new families. Welcome back, teachers! And a special welcome to our new teachers—Katie Maiberger, Heidi Kollins, Kristin Doherty, Jeremiah Dyke, Bob McDonald, La Tasha Do’zia-Earley, and Donna Day.
We have many, many thank yous this morning. As you probably noted on your way into the building, much has changed here on the Stephens City Campus. Thanks to Ms. Meghan’s leadership and vision, we have a new outdoor stage, a sound garden, an outdoor chalkboard, a much cuter fence, Tire Mountain, and several other tire-based structures. As a matter of fact, TIRE as both a noun and a verb was the theme of the summer—tire, tires, tiring, tired. As much as we love that play on words, today we would like to rename Tire Mountain in honor of someone very special--someone who spent a lot of time on Pinterest figuring out how to create an upcycled playground and then even more time (literally every day this summer) making her dream a reality. I hereby rename Tire Mountain “Meredith Mountain.”
Inside, our teacher workroom has moved to a new location that includes conference room space. Our Commons Room is now significantly more spacious. The Lobby got a new trophy shelf and a little new paint. And we have not one, but two, Upper Elementary classrooms! You may also notice that Ms Meghan’s room has a different look and feel too, and very soon you will be able to walk between Rooms 3 and 4 without running through the coat room, the hall, and the Commons.
In addition to some pretty significant upgrades here on the Stephens City Campus, we also acquired space at the Youth Development Center. Our Middle and High School students will enjoy a black box theater, a café, a gym, a pavilion picnic area, and a creek. Of course, getting those areas ready required packing up several rooms here, moving what seemed like thousands of boxes, unpacking said boxes, painting, building storage units, sewing theater curtains, buying and installing lab tables and a ton of lab equipment for science, new literature books, white boards, a smart projector, and new professional lighting for the theater.
Ms. Meghan, teachers, parents, and students, these improvements were made possible by your generous contributions of time, and in some cases, blood, sweat, and even the occasional tear. If you assisted us in any way, please raise your hand to be recognized!
All these changes are very exciting. And a little scary. ISW’s history is already filled with change. We spent the 2008-09 school year in a tiny barn on our family’s property. We spent two more years on the second floor of a renovated barn in Cross Junction. In 2011, we moved the program to Stephens City, and we opened with 16 full-time students. Today, six years after our first Opening Day, we have twice that number in this building and 10 more students at our new campus, the Youth Development Center.
What gets us through all this change with our identity as a school community intact? How do we keep our ISW-ishness? Certainly, our progressive education approach and our Core Values (respect, responsibility, integrity, empathy, and commitment to education) will carry us a long way. But ISW is far more than a progressive school, and it’s more than a collection of Core Values.
It’s about the people. It’s a community of like-minded and sometimes not so like-minded people (students and adults) working together to develop our minds and spirits and to prepare ourselves for the future. With all our emphasis on pursuing our individual passions and dreams, our community is also exceptionally good at taking care of one another. This is a place where students make cards when a fellow student’s parent is ill, where meals show up when someone has surgery, where thank-you-for-being-you cards and emails show up with no holiday necessary, where students burst into song or poetry on the playground out of sheer joy, where students trust adults with their heart of hearts.
For the next year or two, while we look for a more permanent home, ISW will be a dual campus school. Let us each do our very best—in big ways but more importantly in small ways—to retain the intangible connections that make us ISW.
And let us hope that, at the end of the school year, we are able to say something more positive about our move to a two-campus model than Washington Irving had to say about his experience with a stagecoach: "There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse. As I have found travelling in the stagecoach, it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place."
In hopes that we will avoid new bruises, it is time to buckle our seat belts and begin this school year…
Kindergartners, Lowers, Uppers, Middles, and High School Students, thank you for your excitement, your inspiration and your trust. This school is, as always, our gift to one another. Welcome to the new school year.
--Claire McDonald 9/2/2014
Welcome, Heidi Kollins!
ISW is pleased to announce that we have hired Heidi Kollins to teach Elementary Art. Heidi brings a wealth of experience in art education to ISW. She has taught elementary students for more than a decade, and she has a number of teaching awards, nominations, and grants to her credit. She also works as a professional artist—exhibiting at various juried art shows as well as working as a muralist. Heidi earned her Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University and is working toward her Master’s degree in Art Education as well. Heidi lives in Winchester with her husband and two children.
Welcome, Donna Day! American Sign Language Comes to ISW
We are very pleased to announce that ISW has hired Donna Day to lead our American Sign Language high school class during the 2014-15 school year. Donna is a certified ASL instructor who has taught students of all ages–from very young children to adults. She taught ASL for seven years at Lord Fairfax Community College, and she currently works at Access Independence, where she has been employed since 1998. Donna is very active in the local deaf community and is herself a native ASL speaker. Donna lives in Inwood, WV.
Ms. Day’s class, which is available in our full-time program and also as a single course for part-time students, will meet from 2:00 to 3:00 pm Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday beginning this fall. Interested students should contact ISW at 540-877-5552 or info@iswva.org for more information.
Welcome to our staff, Donna!
La Tasha Do'zia-Earley Joining ISW's Faculty!
We are very pleased to announce that ISW has hired La Tasha Do’zia Earley to lead our Select Performing Arts program and to teach several modules of our high school Communications class during the 2014-15 school year. La Tasha has worked with students of all ages for the past ten years. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of Selah Theater Project in Front Royal, and she has taught theater classes in many venues in the Winchester area. La Tasha is an accomplished performer with credits in both regional and community theater, including the Sandler Performing Arts Center, the Apollo Civic Theater, Ohrstrom-Bryant Theater, and Winchester Little Theater. La Tasha graduated from the elite Governor’s School for the Arts in Norfolk. She has completed coursework in voice, theater, and communications at Shenandoah University and is pursuing a degree in education through Western Governor’s University. She has served as a preschool director, a Big Sister and foster parent. La Tasha and her wife, Tamiya Do'zia-Earley, live in Winchester with their son.
ISW is ambitious about building our creative and performing arts program, and we look forward to working with La Tasha to make our joint dreams a reality! La Tasha is taking over our Select Performing Arts program, which meets Wednesdays after school and is open to area students in grades 6 through 12. Since its founding in 2012, Select has produced two musicals (Sleeping Beauty Kids and Cinderella), performed in many concerts, and delivered Singing Telegrams throughout the area. In 2014-15 we plan to produce two more shows. More details about the shows and auditions coming soon!
Seeing the Miraculous in Middle Schoolers
ISW Science Teacher Rebecca Lloyd delivered these remarks at 8th Grade Celebration on Friday, May 30, 2014.
A few weeks back, the stars aligned and I got to drive into Martinsburg with three lovely young ladies. And, because we buck social convention and thumb our noses at rules of polite conversation, we talked about religion, and then moved briefly onto politics. And I said to those lovely ladies then that I am not a student of politics, I am a student of science because I see politics as the study of people, and sometimes I find it hard to see the miraculous in people. I can see the miracle in a seed. In the movement of our solar system. In the perfect geometric pattern of a forming mineral. But people – I can struggle with.
But you guys, with your foibles and your eccentricities and your compassion and your unbridled enthusiasm for everything from kitty pictures to classic rock to catching simulated circuits on fire make it relatively easy for someone like me to see your "miraculous".
You, especially, my soon-to-be-non-middle-schoolers, project your “miraculousness” in such a way that anyone who cares to look can see it in so much of what you do. It is a kind of unquantifiable quality that only someone who has a pretty strong sense of themselves can possess. Because every one of you has been able to see the miraculous in yourself. You may not even realize it yet, but once you’ve found it there (somewhere in your belly...) you can’t help but show it off a bit. And y’all do…you positively shine.
What excites me about you five is that you have found your way through middle school and are now emerging on the other side with the knowledge that you are a miraculous being. Even if you have never actually said to yourself, “Self, you are a miracle,” your actions and your attitude and your commitment to realizing everything you can be reveals that you know that you have something worth sharing with the world. And to be in that position as you enter high school is a very cool. You are in a position to take advantage of the amazing opportunities you are going to be offered, and to explore all that makes you miraculous, and to start to channel those qualities into deeper endeavors that will shape the world in which you live.
But. Even more than all of that, what settles into my heart and warms up my tummy is the knowledge that you not only see the miraculous in yourselves, but you see it in the world around you. Again, you may not even be aware of it, but your interactions with other people (usually…) reveal that you understand that they, too, are miraculous beings. And your desire to learn and to explore and to laugh with delight reveals that you understand something about this universe that some adults don’t even get yet; that it is…miraculous. You revel in the workings of this world.
I have seen y’all with your heads huddled together around wires trying to unravel the same mysteries that Einstein grappled with, and I’ve seen you giggle yourselves breathless being a colon and an esophagus and a rectum passing newspaper through a digestive tract, and I’ve seen you chase a big black plastic bag around the school yard as it rose above your heads, and I’ve heard you quietly speak to one another with kindness and understanding. You know that this world is (to borrow from Dr. Who) so much stranger, so much darker, so much madder and so much better than what you can see right now. That is what’s really exciting about your position right now. You are a miraculous being, taking another giant step out into this miraculous world, and you know it. And I could not be any more proud and excited for you.
8th Grade Celebration Remarks
Ms. Claire delivered the following Opening Remarks at ISW's first 8th Grade Celebration. The event included a lovely luncheon, a slide show, and a very special speaker. Perhaps most touchingly, our 8th graders spoke about one another. The love and care that has developed within this group is extraordinary. ISW is exceptionally lucky to have this group as our pioneers.
Welcome to our luncheon marking our first class of Middle Schoolers completing the 8th grade. Welcome, teachers—who have worked so hard to prepare our 8th graders for high school and for life! Welcome, 6th and 7th graders—in whose honor this event will be in just a year or two. Welcome to our rising 6th graders—who begin Middle School in the Fall. And welcome especially to Mavis, Ming, Nula, Emery, and Yona and their parents, without whom none of this would be possible.
Many thanks to Tom and Faith, who have prepared a wonderful luncheon for us! Ms. Brigitte and I are the self-appointed planning committee for this event, and we chose “The Road” as our theme. Corny? Yes, absolutely. What else would you expect when Ms. Brigitte and Ms. Claire get together? But it’s also true that there’s no escaping corny when you come to these transition points in life. Endings and beginnings of all sorts—it’s all corny. The trick is to embrace it!
The Road theme reminds me of what was probably this class’ favorite in-school production, Conflict Resolution in Oz, AKA the Wizard of Oz. How appropriate for Middle School. You entered Middle School as 6th graders at the start of the yellow brick road. Some of you looked and perhaps felt like a tornado just dropped you down in a whole new world. The next three years would see the fastest period of physical growth and change since before you were born. Like the three traveling companions Dorothy encounters in Oz, pretty much everyone entering Middle School is on a quest—for a brain, or a heart, or courage, or all three. It’s not always the same quest on any given day, but those are excellent goals. Intellect, love and courage will take you very, very far in this world.
You have probably figured out by now that there’s no wizard waiting to make you into something you aren’t. It’s up to you to decide what kind of person you will be. And hopefully, now that Ms. Diane, Ms. Brigitte, Ms. Christy, Ms. Becky, Mr. Jay, Mr. Bob, Mr. Todd, and Ms. Kerry are almost done with you as Middle Schoolers, you also know that developing your brain, your heart, and courage is very hard work. Congratulations, 8th graders. When I think back over the past three years, I see a great deal of hard work and struggle and triumph, and I see emerging adults whose brains, hearts and courage are truly remarkable. We are so proud of you!
As you leave Middle School, each of you will have to find your own way on the yellow brick road. And if the road doesn’t head in the direction you think it should, at least one lesson to take from ISW’s Middle School is that you can and should build a new one. We didn’t spend all that time on Destination Imagination for nothing. There may be days when you say to yourself, as the Wicked Witch of the West does, “Oh, what a world, what a world.” However, whether you are defying gravity or just dodging flying monkeys, whether you are staying here in Oz or getting in a balloon and sailing away, know that you always have a home in ISW. And, as we know, there’s no place like home.
May 30, 2014