Catch Him if You Can!

We bet some of you reading this will recognize our first student profiled right away when we say he’s a Division I student who, besides being a good soccer player, is an incredible Nordic ski talent. Yes, it’s Wylam Mocatta.

Wylam comes to The Peak School from Upper Blue Elementary where he was a good student and active in sports and activities. During this first year at Peak, Wylam has continued his strong academics and intense sports training. Peak’s flexibility provides him the opportunity to be an aggressive competitor. Spring, summer and fall, Wylam participates as a forward on the Summit Strikers competitive league. But his favorite extracurricular is Nordic Skiing, where he really loves how free you are when skiing. According to Wylam, there’s “nothing like it when you get in the zone. It’s really fun!”

With Nordic, Wylam competes on two teams – the Summit Middle School team and the ultra-competitive Summit Nordic Club team. This keeps him in top shape, as well as pretty busy, with practices every day after school and competitions on weekends and some weekdays. In the summertime, he does “dry land” training by running and inline skating. This year, Wylam has travelled regionally all over the state and even to Utah. He’s placed as high as 7^th at multi-state tournaments and recently placed 16^th at the Middle School level competition facing top teams from all over the state of Colorado. We’re guessing his interest was sparked by his father Jonathan, a Nordic coach for the award-winning Summit High School team. With such strong support and talent, Wylam hopes to be able to ski at the college level and even perhaps for the U.S. Nordic Team someday. We believe he will do it!

Wylam is also a world traveler. With his family, he’s visited his Grandmother in London and been to England a number of times. He notes that Iceland was “really cool!” This year, he’s looking forward to visiting Paris, France. We look forward to hearing all about it!

When we asked Wylam, “why Peak,” he said he and his family made the decision based on the desire for a great personalized education, the schools unique approach to learning and the tight community. Some of his favorite things at Peak include the student-driven policies, that it’s a smaller school without such huge crowds and, especially, getting food for lunch from local restaurants. Thanks, Wylam!

Peak School teacher Monica (Moni) Mills recently returned from a Conference entitled “Learning & The Brain – Using Cognitive Science to Create 21st Century Schools,” which shared with educators and scientists the latest research on student learning and retention.  Currently, research findings take typically around 10 years to reach any sort of practical application in the classroom, and this conference was designed to help close that research to classroom gap. Specifically, neuroscientists have discovered strategies that make learning easier, more effective, and that can boost long-term memory, thinking and academic performance. By using mnemonics, movement, active learning, discussions, gestures and varied practices, teachers can improve their students’ ability to learn, reflect and remember. Moni was excited to see scientific, biological findings supporting The Peak Schools’ approach to learning.

Moni noted The Peak School’s choice of DMO’s for assessment and curriculum delivery rather than content-based, 10 Common Principles, the activity-based Outdoor Education program, and more were all key areas that are proven out in the research shared.  Key take-aways Moni shared include:

·         Giving time between content exposures and mixing information instead of presenting it in blocks are two ways that the brain is able to store information for longer periods of time. Interdisciplinary projects and collaborations within departments show that students learn how to access information from not only one discipline, but from others as well.

·         Rest is very important for our students! Not just sleep, but not packing in a ton of information – Use depth rather than coverage

·         Staff must pay attention to short term memory and attention span for maximized learning – differentiating between students individual capacities.

·         Outdoor exercise and even instruction, such as The Peak Schools Outdoor Education curriculum, can increase learning

·         Morning vs. Afternoon classes can change how much learning occurs, and breaks help. Again, Peak’s interactive learning style and Outdoor Education are reinforced by this data.

Additionally, UC Irvine provided a list of games which, in their researcher’s opinions, are useful for helping develop various skills. If parents are interested in donating a game to Peak or buying a game for their own kids, here is the website which contains a list of games and more about working memory and how memory affects learning for all ages.   http://wmp.education.uci.edu/ for-parents-and-educators/.

On her return, Moni noted, “I've learned so much new data about content delivery and teaching in the classroom that best taps into student learning and long term memory development.”  Soon, Moni will be sharing this information with fellow teachers during a staff meeting at school.

Summit Daily News | Monday, February 24, 2014 Read the story on Page 2 here, download the PDF or see below.