Dalton News

Community, Character, and Curriculum: The 3 C’s of Middle School

Story by Eri Noguchi ~ On the morning of Wednesday, January 16th, 2013, in the Cafeteria at The Dalton School, the Middle School held a panel discussion featuring teachers from across the middle school grades and subjects, focused on the ways in which themes of diversity, community development, character building, and empathy are interwoven with the school’s curriculum.
Titled “Community, Character, and Curriculum: The 3 C’s of Middle School,” the panel provided a window into the amazing and intricate ways that concepts such as human rights, respecting human dignity, the true definition of friendship, challenging gender norms, inclusion and exclusion, embracing the “other” or the outsider, honoring and working through difference, confronting stereotypes, and fostering cross-cultural understanding, are integrated into lesson plans, so that they enter into the lexicon of our children’s conversations about the world in which they live. 

Highlights included:
  • Monique Vogelsang presenting a unit on forced migration as part of the yearlong fourth grade study of immigration, as a way to facilitate discussions of personhood, helping children to connect to the humanity and life stories of individual enslaved persons, and connecting that history to the modern day and even to New York City;
  • Geoffrey Perry and Amanda Schollenberger presenting a 7th grade History unit on Islam, with a special focus on the story of St. Francis and Al-Kamil during the fifth crusade – unique among the many crusades for its emphasis on extending an olive branch and pursuing peaceful relations between East and West, and on the history of Abassid, a society credited with introducing the foundations of much of the scholarship that we build on to this day, and culminating with a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a project in conjunction with the Art Department to create works of art incorporating Islamic motifs;
  • The Art Department itself was represented through Linda Hanauer who provided several examples of “inclusion,” embracing artists across a diverse spectrum of traditions, perspectives, and social status, such as Georgia O’Keefe, a female artist who spent much of her life in the Southwest, Heinrich Eisenbauer, who had no formal art training, Aboriginal artists of Australia, the quilt makers of Gees Bend Alabama, and Junko Yamamoto, an artist with autism.
  • Representing the 8th grade, Andrea DeJesus provided an overview of the way that she uses three classic works of literature – “Of Mice and Men,” “The Crucible,” and “Twelfth Night” to launch discussions about stereotype threat and the ways that institutions can both reinforce and challenge processes of discrimination, and she presented illustrative examples of the children’s own written work demonstrating sophisticated and thoughtful reflections on the parallels between the struggles that the characters confront in these stories, and current events.
  • Paul McElfresh concluded the panel by presenting a 5th grade-wide curriculum, new this year, conducting a joint series of studies with a group of first-time students in Maisha Mikononi Mwako, a school in Tanzania, with whom Dalton’s fifth graders have been in regular communication, through web-based blogging, Skype, and discussion boards. So far this year, the students have explored education and access to water as human rights – providing opportunities for cross-divisional learning as members of the High School Human Rights Club and FLOW were tapped to provide introductory lessons, and “flowing” seamlessly into other curricular themes such as irrigation and geography in Ancient Mesopotamia. 
Through all these presentations, it was clear that the teachers incorporate in a very intentional way the building blocks of community, diversity, character, and resilience.
 
On behalf of the Dalton Parent Association and the Community Life & Diversity Committee, we wish to extend our heartfelt thanks to all the teachers who participated, as well as Lorri Durbin, Jay Golon, and Stacey Lorentz, who made this event possible. 

The complete Podcast is included below, as is a video of excerpts from the presentation.  
Back
(Grades K-3) 53 East 91st Street
New York, NY 10128
General: (212) 423-5200 | Admissions: (212) 423-5463
General: info@dalton.org | Admissions: fpadmissions@dalton.org

(Gr. 4 Dalton East & PE Center) 200 East 87th Street
New York, NY 10128
General: (212) 423-5200 | Admissions: (212) 423-5262
General: info@dalton.org | Admissions: admissionsmshs@dalton.org

(Grade 5-12) 108 East 89th Street
New York, NY 10128
General: (212) 423-5200 | Admissions: (212) 423-5262
General: info@dalton.org | Admissions: admissionsmshs@dalton.org