News from the NEF

In celebration of its 25th anniversary, the NEF hosted a weekend of events to commemorate this milestone. 

Pancake Breakfast

Many families, former NEF board members, and community members enjoyed a delicious pancake breakfast co-hosted by the Rotary Club of Needham. Kids enjoyed mini-spelling bees, balloon animals and face-painting, while adults enjoyed learning about the NEF through an historic timeline exhibit. Thanks to many corporate sponsors, there was fantastic food for all!

Da Vinci Workshop Reception

The festivities continued at a reception celebrating the opening of the new Da Vinci Workshop at Needham High School – a space funded in part by a $50,000 gift from the NEF. This interdisciplinary learning space provides students and teachers a place to build and create. Town officials, community members, families, and current and former NEF Board members enjoyed a special 25th Anniversary video as well as demonstrations from NEF-funded programs such as Let’s Build Engineering and the High School Robotics teams. A special thanks to Superintendent Dan Gutekanst and Needham High School teacher Hans Batra for their opening remarks.

24th Annual Spelling Bee

The celebration concluded with a special Sunday edition of our Annual Spelling Bee. Over 50 teams competed in this annual community event, including (for the first time ever) teams from each of our five elementary schools! The High Rock & Pollard Teachers team came away with the victory.

Read Superintendent Gutekanst’s anniversary message to NEF!

Read coverage of the milestone in The Needham Times.

The Needham Education Foundation (NEF) announced the recipients of its 2014-2015 Large Grants at the School Committee meeting on January 20th. Two grants totaling over $25,000 were awarded. One grant supports a 1:1 iPad program in the Language Based Classroom at Eliot Elementary School. The second grant supports the ongoing interdisciplinary arts integration pilot by extending the partnership to 6th grade science classrooms at the High Rock School.

iPads for the Language Based Classroom at Eliot

This grant of $13,529.60 provides 12 iPads, a cart, and thirteen apps for 1:1 student use in the Language-Based Classroom (LBC) at Eliot. The students in the LBC are fourth and fifth graders from Needham who often struggle to access text-based curriculum due to learning disabilities in the areas of reading, writing, and spoken language. The use of iPads in the LBC will provide students with the means to reach their individual and collective goals across the curriculum. The iPads will also help to foster greater independence and creativity. This grant was submitted by Kimberly Hoffman and Bonnie Nguyen (Special Education Liaison and Speech-Language Pathologist).

Interdisciplinary Arts Integration Project at High Rock

This grant of $12,010 extends the large grant interdisciplinary arts project currently being implemented at the High Rock School with Social Studies and Visual Arts. This extended pilot is designed to explore the impact of an interdisciplinary partnership between sixth grade Science and Visual Arts teachers. The funds will be used for materials and additional planning and instructional time for the existing Visual Arts teacher to co-teach certain lessons in the Science classes. For example, students will work to create a collagraph plate and print that represents the atomic structure and attributes of an element from the periodic table. The pilot will be implemented in the 2015/16 school year and will impact all clusters. This grant was submitted by David Neves (Director, Fine and Performing Arts).

Needham High School will once again offer the Greater Boston Project course for seniors. The GBP is a full-year, accelerated-level course worth eight credits (4 English, 2 social studies, 2 mathematics). This interdisciplinary class, entering its third year, has drawn praise for instilling the critical thinking and communication skills expected by top colleges.

Students and parents can learn more about the class on January 29th at a daytime event for students and an Interdisciplinary Learning Night for parents. All interdisciplinary classes offered at NHS will be presented (including others supported by NEF grants). To learn more, visit the Greater Boston Project’s website.

The Greater Boston Project class was created as a Collaborative Initiative between the NEF and the Needham Public Schools and has been funded through the generosity of NEF supporters.

The Needham Education Foundation (NEF) has awarded $106,742 to fund the third year of an innovative class for seniors at Needham High School (NHS). The class has been lauded by the Massachusetts Secretary of Education as “the future of what a senior year should look like…..preparing kids for college and the real world.”

Funding of the class continues a 4-year collaborative initiative between the NEF and NHS to foster interdisciplinary learning.

With the NEF’s funding, up to 60 of next year’s high school seniors will be able to enroll in the class, called The Greater Boston Project (GBP). This course incorporates English, social studies, and math as students study specific turning points in the city’s history. Students are required to think across academic disciplines and use primary source research – perhaps creating a mathematical model of 18th century census data to better inform the literature and history they are reading. Students work in groups and independently. In the second semester, they create a community action project to address a current issue.

Last year’s students recently described the value of the GBP, speaking as college freshmen:

• “GBP has been by far the most helpful class I’ve taken thus far to prepare for college,” one wrote back to his teachers.
• “I strongly believe that GBP has helped me with my group skills and my public speaking skills thus far in college…. [After] completing the GBP class, I was more outspoken about my opinions (good thing) and/or knew how to communicate better with people on all sorts of levels.”
• “I had a group presentation last week and we got a 100 because I made all the slides just like GBP taught me …. I also made my group practice, and we were the only ones in the class who got an A on presentation skills. I guess I have your class to thank for that.”

Asked recently by The Boston Globe for examples of innovation in public schools, Secretary of Education Matt Malone singled out the Greater Boston Project:  “[The students] work to solve a real-world social justice problem in Greater Boston. That’s the future of what a senior year should look like. That’s preparing kids for college and the real world.”

Interdisciplinary studies depart from traditional teaching models that present academic subjects (English, math, science, etc) in isolated silos and emphasizes problem-solving, collaboration, creativity, and innovation. Thinking across disciplines is now frequently required for college-level academic work and in many professions. A 2009 accreditation report by The New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) noted the need for opportunities for interdisciplinary learning at NHS. The district subsequently set a goal to implement an interdisciplinary course at NHS.

The recent award of $132,742, announced at the meeting of the Needham School Committee on November 18, is the 3rd large installment of NEF funding for the Interdisciplinary Learning Initiative (ILI). It includes $106,742 for the 3rd year of the GBP course plus $26,000 to continue seeding additional interdisciplinary initiatives. Since 2012, NEF has granted a total of $390,617 for the ILI, including a competitive process to choose the project, development of the pilot course, and running and staffing the course for three years. In addition to the GBP course, the initiative has spread know-how and inspired interdisciplinary teaching throughout the district. Teachers currently are piloting units at NHS called Art in the Dark (combining world history and art) and Kinetic Robotics (combining art and robotics to create moving sculpture), and last year’s sixth graders at High Rock School participated in an interdisciplinary program for visual arts and social studies. The Da Vinci Lab, an evolving space for hands-on collaboration and creativity at NHS, also was funded earlier this year.

NEF makes such large-scale projects possible through its Collaborative Initiative, in which it works closely with the Needham Public Schools administration to fund multi-year initiatives that will have major, strategic impact on education, yet may not be possible within the district operating budget.

The Needham Education Foundation has awarded 16 grants totaling $66,813 in the Fall small grants cycle. These include three multi-school grants – two for programs that will reach all elementary schools and one for the middle and high schools.

Needham students will learn from musical groups, historical reenactments, interactive anti-bullying assemblies, and even opera singers! These grants were announced at the Needham School Committee meeting on November 18.

Fall grants include funding for:

• Cultural proficiency training for athletic coaches and student athletes at Needham High School (NHS), Pollard Middle School and High Rock School;
• A musical presentation designed to bring energy, excitement and context to students beginning to learn Spanish;
• Interactive assemblies that offer students the opportunity to explore their own solutions to real-life situations dealing with bullying, prejudice, and peer pressure;
• Two “express” grants that repeat programs that have been successful at other schools: one that introduces drumming circles into classroom activities at Broadmeadow School, and another that increases cultural proficiency at Eliot School;
• A school newspaper at Pollard;
• Hokki stools, which will allow Eliot students to move while participating in class lessons; and
• The purchase of a pug mill to give NHS a fully- functioning, high-production ceramic studio.

NEF featured in The Needham Times: needham.wickedlocal.com/article/20140904/News/140908937