News from the NEF

2017 Spelling Bee

Mar 23, 2017

Eliot Wins the Elementary Round!

On Sunday, March 19, the Needham community came together to test their spelling prowess at the 26th Annual NEF Spelling Bee. Over 30 teams participated, including elementary, middle and high school students, teachers, parents, members of Needham community organizations, and local business people. The afternoon kicked off with Kathy Curran, member of WCVB’s 5 Investigates, helping the middle school Treble Choir film a Wake-Up Call for Channel 5’s EyeOpener. The choir then performed the National Anthem beautifully to kick off the Bee. Throughout the ensuing six rounds of spelling, celebrity pronouncers Kathy Curran, Superintendent Dan Gutekanst, and Last Minute Productions partner Gary Gillis kept the event lively and fun.

There was some fierce competition in the Elementary round, which was led by Superintendent Dan Gutekanst. At one point, Dr. Gutekanst consulted with Bee co-chair, Sarah Mesnik, about the possibility of running out of words! The Eliot Queen Bees, Danielle Sockol, Talia Feeney, and Taylor Chen, ultimately secured the elementary-level trophy by correctly spelling “discrepancy.” The girls were so excited about their win, they opted to join in the Championship Round with winners of the other adult and older student rounds. The Queen Bees spelled several words correctly before they were knocked out of the competition! Great job Queen Bees!

Library Bookies Take the Championship!

Joining the Queen Bees in the very challenging Championship Round were the Newman Pride teachers, the Needham School Committee, the Needham Finance Committee, and the Library Bookies from the Needham Public Library. Represented by Gay Ellen Dennett, Rose Doherty, and Janice Bowen, the Bookies were ultimately victorious when they correctly spelled the word “ranunculus,” which is a genus of plants including Buttercups. The Library Bookies are especially deserving of their bragging rights because they are long-time supporters of the NEF and the Bee, having competed at all 26 Bees!

It was a fun-filled afternoon in support of the NEF and our mission to make learning come alive. Hundreds of spectators cheered on the spellers, enjoyed snacks provided by Roche Bros, and purchased Treat cupcakes and raffle tickets for great prizes from area businesses. We are grateful for all of the support!

A Study of Courage for Mitchell 5th Grade Students

Feb 12, 2017

Eighty students in Mitchell School’s fifth grade classrooms are undertaking a year-long “study in courage” thanks to a $3,500 grant from the NEF. The goal of the grant, written by Mitchell Assistant Vice Principal Barbara Hayden and the 5th grade teachers, is to introduce 5th graders to inspirational people who have demonstrated courage and resiliency in overcoming obstacles–with a special focus on individuals from diverse cultures and races. “Thanks to the NEF Grant, our students are learning to face the inevitable difficulties of life. Our hope is that our students will work hard — giving up less often because they will realize what is making them want to give up and address it.” said Hayden.
 
This fall, students participated in a read aloud of the book Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate and then completed a partner project based on the book. This piece of historical fiction tells the story of a young Sudanese civil war survivor adapting to life in Minnesota. In October, fifth graders were visited by two inspirational speakers, William Muorel and Moses Ajou, both Lost Boys of the Sudan and survivors of the Sudanese civil war. The men shared their struggles, strategies for coping, and their ways of finding joy in life after losing their homes and families. Said Colleen Soldato, a fifth grade teacher, “The grant has provided a cross-curricular opportunity for students to explore topics such as immigration and what it means to be an American. This learning was brought to life by the visit from the former Lost Boys, William and Moses.”
 
In the spring, students will read about other courageous people who have faced adversity and overcome obstacles as they conduct partner research and prepare a presentation for their classmates.  The NEF grant funded a library of biographies and autobiographies for this project. Finally, fifth graders will participate in service-learning projects to support the South Sudanese Enrichment Center for Families in Medford and a school for children in South Sudan later this year.
 
So far, the grant has made a lasting impression, particularly the visit from the two former Lost Boys of Sudan.  As one fifth grader said, “You sent across a message to never give up and be optimistic and follow what you want to do, and work hard for what you want to do!  I will never forget that and never forget this presentation.”

Blues Guitar Player Visits Needham High

Jan 20, 2017

NEF was proud to award the “Blues in the Schools” grant to Needham High School to fund a visit from Toby Walker, a Master Blues Artist and member of the NY Blues Hall of Fame. He provided an engaging presentation to the African American Studies classes that follows the history of blues from slavery, emancipation, and beyond. He also shared his personal narrative of how he came to acquire his knowledge journeying through the South. He also worked with guitar classes to teach them how to play blues style music, including rhythms and picking techniques.

See the article that appeared in the Hometown Weekly.

NEF Awards Large Grant for Virtual Reality at High Rock

Jan 17, 2017

On January 17, 2017, the School Committee voted to accept $9,999 in funding for Google Virtual Reality Expeditions Kits at High Rock School. The large grant follows a successful pilot last year and will fund the purchase of virtual reality equipment, including 30 student devices, 30 Mattel View-Masters, a teacher device and other supporting equipment. High Rock will use them for a wide variety of purposes, including virtual reality tours of historic sites, virtual trips to foreign countries for language immersion, and virtual tours of the galaxy in science classes.

You’ve Got Mail! Helps Prevent Summer Slide at Broadmeadow

Nov 19, 2016

Last spring NEF awarded a small grant entitled “You’ve Got Mail!” to Broadmeadow reading specialists Martha Heller-Winokur and Julia Reichheld, which enabled them to offer a targeted summer reading program to 47 rising 4th and 5th grade readers reading at or below grade level. The program, which had been piloted previously with rising 4th graders, aims to help struggling or “fragile” readers maintain progress they have made throughout the school year and grow in their understanding of and love for books. 
 
During the summer, each student received 6 self-selected books in the mail, completed a reader response postcard for each book, and met in peer groups with the reading specialists to share their thinking about their reading. About the expanded program, Heller-Winokur writes, 
 
“The students shared how much they enjoyed getting together with their friends to talk about what they had been reading rather than just reading a book and moving onto the next one. In addition, the postcards that we received revealed a high level of investment, thoughtfulness, and engagement!”
 
At the conclusion of the program, parents surveyed the program, students completed a self-assessment and teachers performed benchmark reading assessments to determine the impact of the program. One parent summarized her daughter’s experience,
 
“It provided the right mix of excitement and incentive – she loved receiving the books in the mail and meeting her friends in the library over the summer!”
 
The NEF funding allowed the reading specialists to expand their library of “just right” books and serve both rising 4th and 5th graders for the first time. Going forward Heller-Winokur and Reichheld hope to replicate the program in all 5 elementary schools.

Film Screening of “Beyond Measure”

Nov 19, 2016

On October 20, over 200 parents and community members gathered for a screening and panel discussion of Beyond Measure, an award-winning documentary, which outlines problems with our current education system and paints a picture of what’s possible in our schools. The film follows five public schools across the country “breaking away from an outmoded test-drive education [and] shaping a new vision for our classrooms.” 
 
While many other education-themed films focus on shortcomings, including disparities in student achievement, low graduation rates and poor attendance, Beyond Measure looks at the innovations at work in school districts across the nation. Rather than asking why students are failing when tested and compared with peers, the film asks us to reconsider the greater purpose of education: What if our education system valued personal growth over test scores? What if it focused on project-based learning versus memorization or encouraged passion over rankings? What if we decided that the higher aim of school was not the transmission of facts, but the transformation of students?
 
The panelists for the evening included Dr. Elizabeth Coleman, former President of Bennington College, who led the university through an educational reformation; Dr. Beth Hennessey, Professor of Psychology at Wellesley College, who focuses her research on creativity and intrinsic motivation; and Dr. Jay Moody, Entrepreneur and Innovation Coach at Wayland High School.
 
The panelists concurred with the film’s theories and ideas, and they shared their thoughts on what our society needs to consider in order to improve the status of our educational infrastructure. Dr. Coleman stressed the importance of great teachers in education, noting that any approach to educational reform is only as good as the teachers who teach it. Dr. Hennessey added that it’s important that educators engage students in their own education, so that it will be individually relevant. Dr. Moody noted that while it is possible to have courses like the ones shown in Beyond Measure in our public schools, it would be very difficult to change completely to project-based coursework. The rest of the evening continued with lively discussion, with topics ranging from homework in elementary school to gap years for high school graduates.
 
With this grant, the five elementary school PTC’s have organized screenings of three additional films for the remainder of this school year. This will include a re-screening of Most Likely to Succeed and a screening and panel discussion of Race to Nowhere.

NEF Awards $40,718 in Fall Grants

Nov 16, 2016

The Needham Education Foundation (NEF) announced the recipients of 12 grants totaling $40,718 in the fall small grants cycle at the Needham School Committee meeting last night. Three of the awards are for multi-school grants that will provide funding for a musician residency for middle and high school string students, reader’s theatre props chests for High Rock and Pollard, and professional development for K-12 math teachers and school administrators with Dr. Adrian Mims. Dr. Mims is the national director of the Calculus Project, and his focus will be on narrowing the
achievement gap for students of color.

Awarded grants also include:

  • A series of workshops with young adult author, Tara Sullivan. These workshops at NHS will encourage students to be global citizens.
  • E-Reader Tools for English Language Literacy to provide powerful comprehension tools for English language learners at Pollard.
  • Mindfulness equipment at NHS to formalize the mindfulness meditation practice that is part of the health curriculum.
  • A Project VOICE performance, using spoken word poetry, for 8th graders at Pollard.
  • Virtual Reality equipment that will provide high school students with the opportunity to experience and create their own virtual reality environments and videos in the classroom. As a viewer, students can manipulate an object or experience an environment, like visiting Machu Picchu.
  • Pollard Challenge Course, an adventure education-based challenge course to create dynamic opportunities for developing resilience in students.
  • Differentiating Math at Broadmeadow, which will provide kits for fourth-grade teachers to use to differentiate learning during small group and independent instruction.
  • Two Express Grants benefiting Broadmeadow and Newman which replicate a successful grant at Eliot for Kore wobble stools.

NEF Awards $44,351 in Spring Grants

May 27, 2016

The Needham Education Foundation announced the recipients of 10 grants totaling $44,351 in the spring small grants cycle at the Needham School Committee meeting last night.  These include four (4) multi-school grants benefiting all five elementary schools, the largest of which provides math backpacks for all Needham kindergarten classrooms to build early math literacy around Common Core standards and facilitate math-related activities at home.

Awarded grants also include:

  • An interdisciplinary workshop for African American and Guitar classes at Needham High School (NHS) about the history of Blues with visiting Master Blues artist Toby Walker.
  • The transformation of the current technology lab at High Rock into a Creation Lab that will allow for stop motion and animation creation, green screen videos, audio recording and book creation.
  • A three-film series and panel discussions focused on the future of education and designed to promote family and community dialogue around educational innovation.
  • Number sense challenge kits for all elementary schools which enable individualized math enrichment at all grade levels.
  • Twenty-five (25) Lightbox interactive multimedia learning modules for K-5 students in all elementary schools, including modules on Four Seasons, Continents, Earth’s Water, Forces of Nature and Rock Science.
  • A summer book mailer program, which builds on a successful pilot, intended to prevent “summer slide” among struggling 3rd and 4th grade readers at Broadmeadow.
  • “A Study of Courage” ELA/Social Studies unit for Mitchell 5th graders, in which students study inspirational people who have demonstrated resiliency and which includes a visit from two lost boys of the Sudan as well as service-learning projects.
  • A school-wide book reading program for Newman teachers, administrators, parents and students focused on developing strategies and classroom activities for cultivating grit, supporting resiliency and learning from failure.
  • An “express” grant, which replicates successful grants at Mitchell, Hillside and Eliot, to build more culturally diverse classroom libraries at Newman Elementary and Needham Preschool.

Piven World Comes to Mitchell Elementary

May 20, 2016

Through a small grant funded in the Fall 2015 cycle, Mitchell Elementary School students experienced the unique artistic talent of Israeli illustrator Hanoch Piven during self-portrait workshops with the artist. Piven’s illustrations, known for their playfulness, use everyday “found” objects to create unique works of art. 

This collage technique encourages creativity and communication through play. Mitchell art teacher John Walek summarized the visit: “Having a world-renowned artist like Hanoch Piven teaching at Mitchell is not only a wonderful experience for the children, but also enhances our elementary art curriculum beyond measure.” To read more about Piven’s visit, check out this article in the Needham Times.

Film Screening of “Most Likely to Succeed”

Mar 25, 2016

“Most Likely to Succeed” has been heralded as the “best film ever done on the topic of school.” This film talks about a project-based approach to teaching and learning.

For most of the last century, entry-level jobs were plentiful, and college was an affordable path to a fulfilling career. That world no longer exists. The feature-length documentary Most Likely to Succeed examines the history of education, revealing the growing shortcomings of our school model in todayʼs innovative world. The film has been named “among the best edu-documentaries ever produced” by Education Week, and called a “smart and engaging look at education in the 21st century” by The Hollywood Reporter. Most Likely To Succeed, a film by award-winning documentarian Greg Whiteley, was an official selection of the 2015 Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals.

In collaboration with all seven Needham PTCs, the NEF offered a free screening and panel discussion of the award-winning documentary on Thursday, March 24th at Newman Elementary School.

The panel included:

  • Daniel E. Gutekanst, Superintendent of Needham Public Schools
  • Robert Martello, Professor of the History of Science and Technology, Olin College, Needham, MA
  • Mark Somerville, Special Advisor to the Provost, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics, Olin College, Needham, MA
  • Daniel Warren, Sample & Recruitment Manager at the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development, Tufts University; Former Grade 5 Teacher at Newman Elementary School in Needham, MA

Excerpt from The Needham Times:

“Faced with a college admissions-obsessed, achievement-driven student body, Needham educators and parents began a discussion last week about whether they should – or even can – reinvent education in Needham.

Some 500 concerned parents gathered with educators for a screening of “Most Likely to Succeed,” followed by a panel discussion. According to the provocative, recent documentary, a college degree no longer guarantees a good entry-level job, because those jobs do not exist anymore. But most parents want their children to go to college – the best possible college – anyway. Subsequently, the high school curriculum is focused on AP classes and standardized test preparation to get kids into these colleges. This is a big, vexing problem, which calls on educators, administrators and parents to re-imagine U.S. education practices so that they might better prepare students for life in the 21st century.” Continue reading coverage of the event in The Needham Times.

Learn more about the film at http://www.mltsfilm.org/