Summit Daily News | Monday, October 24, 2015 Read the cover story here!
Summit Daily News | Monday, November 23, 2015 Read the story on Page 3 here or see below.
Summit Daily News | Monday, October 19, 2015 Read the story on Page 3 here or see below.
Arguably one of the best Mandarin speakers in the school is not a Division 3 student, or even a Division 2 student. It’s Division 1 student, Piper Miller. Piper’s extensive background and skill in Mandarin come from her seven elementary years at an immersion school, the International School of Denver (formerly Denver Montclair International School), in that language. She remembers the challenge of the early years there where curriculum was delivered in nearly 100% Mandarin. While there, she explored a few instruments too: piano, violin and guitar.
Since coming to The Peak School, Piper said one of the biggest differences she’s noticed is the very close bond and strong relationships students have with teachers. She enjoys being treated as a mature student member of the community and appreciates the opportunities to present to different audiences, as she did with her STEM project and her civil rights movement/MLK project.
Outside of school, Piper has a broad array of interests. While she enjoys snowboarding, soccer, camping, hiking, fishing and even hunting, her real passion is hockey. Piper plays center and left wing with Summit Hockey. She enjoys competing in the regional tournaments; and their team made it to state this year. Piper also will attend the prestigious Shattuck-St. Mary’s hockey school for a week long summer hockey camp. Whether on the ice or in the classroom, we look forward to seeing more great things from Piper over the years!
Like many Peak students, Arel Svenson is smart, active, loves to get outdoors and really enjoys life in Summit County. Along with those things, this Division 3 student has so much more going on. Besides snowboarding, back country experiences and mountain biking, Arel enjoys ultimate Frisbee and, recently, has taken up climbing. As far as time at the climbing gym, he’s been getting some great coaching from friend and fellow Peak student Will Sharp.
Arel successfully transitioned from home schooling to The Peak School. He liked the home school experience because, if he worked hard to complete his studies for the day, he was able to get out and snowboard or bike. Since coming to Peak, Arel has really enjoyed the strong student-teacher relationships and class interaction with teachers and other students alike. After completing his high school education at Peak, Arel intends to pursue studies in engineering, videography and as a pilot.
Uniquely, Arel hasn’t waited for graduation to start his education or experience in videograpy. This full time student also runs a business. He and student Will Sharp have partnered to create and run Ten Mile Digital, where they shoot both interior and exterior video footage for clients like the Breckenridge Nordic Center. He’s already off to a great start!
Summit Daily News | Monday May 4, 2015 Read the story on Page 3 here or see below.
The way Danny Rudolf moves through the backcountry - quietly and steadily moving forward - is exactly what he’s been doing at The Peak School. This year, Danny’s steadily developed and moved forward with some tremendous projects of great benefit to our school: Peak 2.0, the accreditation process and the assessment and communication enhancement tool, JumpRope. As you know, Peak 2.0 was rolled out after much inquiry within the Peak community, planning and development. This evolution of the Peak Divisions, structure and curriculum brings about logical places for students within a progressive education setting, academic progress, college preparation and more. Also, the accreditation process is a long one with many varying stages; and as our school prepares for its accreditation visit next week, Danny has been a huge part of our readiness.
One of the areas Danny is most excited about is the assessment, data management, reporting and communication tool JumpRope. He has been a key part of the Assessment Task Force, leading parents, students and staff on a journey of investigation and reflection about these areas at Peak. In looking at the strengths and challenges present in the current program, Danny began much arduous research and evaluation to find a tool that meets the identified needs of the Peak community. The need for this is best expressed in Danny’s words per his recent article to the accreditation committee:
Formerly, teachers at Peak relied upon basic Google web-based spreadsheets and documents to manage and share class data. This made organizing, analyzing, and communicating student assessment information cumbersome. One of our 10 common principles is to dedicate resources to teaching and learning. Increasingly, the amount of time spent managing data has felt inconsistent with our desire for teachers to focus on true progressive education practices. As our community has continued to grow (students, staff, and parents), a more simple, robust and useful data management tool is needed. After much exploration and investigation this year, JumpRope was selected for its capacity to manage the assessment of our specific learning objectives in a way that makes sense for us – not just based on traditional assessment (i.e. state standards or common core).
This exciting new tool soon will be piloted with the staff. After further review and tweaking, it will be implemented for the 2015-16 school year. Don’t worry – there will be additional communication and parent/student training sessions.
Concurrently with all this, Danny continues to pursue his Master’s Degree in Science Education, which he hopes to finish this year. We are so fortunate he’s taken time away from these studies to help our community thrive!
With a passion for animals, singing, acting, volleyball and her studies at The Peak School, Winter Michelle Eby’s plate is full; yet she makes it look so easy! Winter Michelle is a Division 2 student at Peak who joined the Peak community after successfully beginning her education at Frisco Elementary. This year, Winter Michelle’s volleyball season has just concluded with successful participation in a competitive tournament in Atlanta. She was a setter on both the Summit Middle School’s team and on Vail Volleyball Club’s #1 14 year-old team. She’ll continue with volleyball camps this summer where she hopes to continue to improve as a setter and possibly to learn a new position, either as a hitter or a libero. Also this summer, you may want to head down to the Boulder Actor’s Academy to see Winter Michelle in a performance of Mary Poppins. She began performing with the organization 3 years ago when she appeared in the lead of the musical Gleeful, and followed that performing in last summer’s Footloose. Winter Michelle said, “I really enjoy acting and singing because you can really let loose and express yourself.”
She also stays busy doing volunteer work with the Summit Animal Shelter. Winter Michelle began volunteering at the shelter a few years ago playing with and giving attention to the cats and dogs. After spending time there and learning about the importance of the Shelter, she wanted to take that work to another level. Now, Winter Michelle and a couple other students teach a class, Humane Ed, once and week to second graders at the SC Elementary Schools. Her class covers the benefits of the Shelter to Summit County, the importance of spaying and neutering pets, how to approach a dog or cat safely and other topics.
Two other experiences really stood out for Winter Michelle this past year. Last summer, she attended the Rotary-sponsored Young RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Awards) camp. While it’s billed as a Leadership experience, she said it covered so many valuable areas that it’s really a “Life” camp. “It was really amazing,” noted Winter Michelle, “I learned so many life lessons that I apply day-to-day and in supporting my volleyball team.” She highly recommends all Peak 7th graders apply. During the Winter Break, she was the youngest person to attend Dr. Deepak Chopra and Dr. Andrew Weil’s alternative healing and body/mind connection seminar, Journey Into Healing, at the Chopra Center for Wellbeing in Carlsbad, CA. Besides getting to meet and learn from the author, speaker and alternative healing guru, she really enjoyed learning mindful meditation and loves to share her experience and all she learned with her peers.
With such a strong and diverse background, Winter Michelle is an asset to our Peak community. We can’t wait to see what she’s up to next!
“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” If you know STEM and Outdoor Education teacher Morgan Moore, you’ll agree that quote perfectly sums up her approach to experiential learning and love of the outdoors. In fact, it’s her favorite Dr. Seuss quote. For Morgan, making the leap from the curriculum to real world and the outdoors is what it’s all about. One of her personal favorite outdoor adventures was climbing Denali. She said, “It was hard work with a big reward!”
Morgan is particularly excited about identifying and studying local and regional water issues with Division 1 students in the coming months during the “Water in the West” STEM curriculum for the 4th quarter. An important take-away for the Division 1 students will be to understand the value of water as a controversial natural resource. Noted Morgan, “Water in the West is a precious resource for many reasons, and it will be very interesting for them to study our local and regional relationships to water, and the controversies surrounding specific water issues."
For Division 3 students, the OE trip is a 5-day rafting trip with Adventure Bound River Expeditions. These students are reading a book prior to the trip about John Wesley Powell's expedition down the Colorado River so that they will learn the history behind the river exploration. Besides the educational benefit, she appreciates the opportunity to build community, as well as strengthen leadership, teamwork and outdoor skills. She’s looking forward to making some great memories and having a lot of fun!
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 7th at multi-state tournaments and recently placed 16th 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.
