I would like to nominate Jake Lifson. When he caught a Boston Blazers shirt at the game he realized it was too small and gave it to a young kid sitting in front of us.  He has also been working very hard since he has returned to break from his old image and become a positive member of the community.

On Friday, Haruka Koda, Bryn Nolan, Nathan Chesley, Ryan Delaney, and Nora Curran had lunch with a group of my classmates who were visiting campus.  All of the students were engaging, honest, and enthusiastic so much so that my classmates identified that lunch as the best part of the visit.  They were inspired by the way in which the students identified their personal connection to the process and maturity to engage in such a dialogue.

I nominate Zach Birnbaum.  Zach has jumped in with both feet and is trying to utilize all the resources available to him for growth in his family.  He initiated an FLC with his dad who he hasn’t communicated with in a few years and handled the FLC with a maturity beyond his years.  He also has volunteered to facilitate the FLC this weekend.  He is a great example of a student led process!

I want to nominate Chuck Watson.  I cannot say enough about this young man’s commitment to his best as an athlete.  It’s truly a character trait that is so rare and wonderful to watch, coach, and to be a part of.  What amazes me even more than his athleticism is his willingness to step into an uncomfortable situation and try and make the best out of it, as well as learning something about himself in the process. Chucky’s performance in the play probably won’t win him any acting jobs in Hollywood anytime soon, but he did show the community someone who is willing to put himself out there, make himself uncomfortable, and have fun.

Simon is a true inspiration to everyone around him. Almost every day for the past two weeks, I have seen him taking leadership and working hard to regain his Senior-ship. His dedication to this is absolutely astounding and truly shows the true content of his character.  He is definitely a star to me.

I would like to nominate Ryan Delaney and Tucker Mara. They came into my office with a concern for a student and set up a meeting. They worked hard to help this student with both support and challenge. It was inspiring to see brother’s keeper being played out in such a personal way.

I nominate Gabe Durand for coming to a new wing and immediately stepping up and taking leadership. It shows a lot of character as well as how far he has come. He is a model of what a Hyde senior should be and sets the standard high for underclassmen to meet.

Mac McGuire taught his Honors Chemistry class about Electrochemistry on Monday. Despite having a tough and complex topic that was not his first choice, Mac put in a ton of work. He taught for the entire period, answered everyone’s questions, was prepared with diagrams and explanations, and did an overall excellent job.

Nothing can describe my pride as a coach as we left the SENE’s on Wednesday night.  We went in an underdog team against a team we had lost to already, and a team ranked fairly well in the conference, and almost left with a banner.  The tenacity and perseverance I saw that day was incredible.  All wrestlers fought off their backs, forced their opponents into decisions and made some solid pins resulting in both matches being decided by a single bout.  We nearly won the SENE title and I know in a year, we will continue to grow as a team.  A ref who had been the official at earlier matches for us stated, “These guys have really come a long way, they looked great out there today!”  This comment made my season and is what keeps me coaching and teaching at Hyde.  Congrats men!—Wes Jenkins

After hearing that retired baseball player Mark McGwire finally admitted to the use of steroids during his playing days, I’m beginning to think that now I know how my mom felt. In that magical year of 1998 when McGwire and Chicago Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa kept us glued to the TV to watch which one would smash Roger Maris’ record first, it turns out that it was all a sham. And, to some extent, shame on us. Just about anyone could tell that McGwire and Sosa bulked up just a little bit too much in too short a period of time. While I understand that the weight room can increase muscle mass, I can’t think of anything (legal, anyways) that would increase the cranium size of a human or the size of a foot. Barry Bonds, the Home Run King, did just that when his cap size increased from 7 1/8 to 7 ¾ and his foot grew from a size 10 ½ to 13. Maybe when it seems like something is too good to be true, it’s false.

What is it about us that makes it so difficult to admit that we messed up? In retrospect, my biggest mistake back in high school wasn’t the drinking that I had been doing, but all the lying I did to cover it up. With these celebrities in the limelight, they could do a lot of good by showing kids the proper way to handle oneself when they make a mistake.

I was walking in Warren’s downstairs lounge and it was a mess. George Hammond took it on himself to make sure that everything was clean and in order.

Kelly Xie gets the big nod for super star of the week! She did a magnificent job dealing with a situation that required her help in both translation and concern last week.  We couldn’t have handled it any better without her.

During the New Student Orientation outing to the Brooklyn Bowl and Thai Basil Hibachi restaurant, Rachel and I had a great time. All of our mentors-Nate Chesley, Sarah Sherman, Barbara Zimmer, Kelly Xie, Chuck Watson, Simi DeAngelis, Nasir Ibrahim, and Mac McGuire-did a phenomenal job helping to making our new students feel welcome and have some fun. Evan Dienstag and Zach Birnbaum, two of our “older” new students, have already helped out some of our brand new students.  And last, but certainly not least, Mr. Cutrer is doing a fabulous job helping to acclimate these kids to Hyde; a tall order for anyone.

These patronizing recognitions exist for two reasons: it acts as a resume builder for college and a measure to ensure kids don’t feel excluded.  In the increasingly competitive market for college admission, is quantity valued over quality?  Harvard University’s Dean of Admissions, William Fitzsimmons, notes, “It’s very difficult to know with so many different honor societies and so many different criteria, what exactly we have in front of us.”  Perhaps this notion of honoring everyone is beginning to backfire.

Unfortunately, the prospect for change looks grim as long as we have a system that values what kids can do as opposed to who they are.  Kids will continue to jump through the necessary hoops in order to get the grade necessary to get into the honor society that will hopefully gain them admission into their top choice university.  I should know…I did it ten years ago.

With the current status quo, are we really preparing leaders for tomorrow?

Another star of the week should be Ming.  His attitude and effort on the wrestling team is very inspiring. He is a first-time wrestler and has stepped up to the plate and took on the responsibility as a varsity member of the team.  I also believe he should be recognized by the community for his day-to-day “happy to do it” attitude.

I would like to nominate Colin Czarnecki for Star of the Week.  He volunteered to do the sports write-up for JV Wrestling’s first meet at Pomfret last week, and he did a great job.  Terrific happy-to-do-it attitude!

I would like to nominate Nathan Chesley as a star of the week for his honesty.  Nathan needed to get a pair of sweatpants and realized when he got back to his room that he hadn’t been charged for them.  The next day, Nathan returned to the bookstore to let us know of the mistake so the charge could be completed.  Only Nathan knew that he hadn’t been charged and I commend and appreciate him for his honesty and for doing the right thing.

Marcos Mercado and Jabon Chubbuck are stars for their assistance with the Bronx FLC. Jabon connected with the Bronx students immediately and helped a young lady through some tough attitudes while giving on-point and succinct feedback in seminars. Marcos translated live for one of the parents most of the weekend (a very difficult task) and was also a fantastic representative of Woodstock’s open and generous spirit.

I am nominating Bryn Nolan for Star of the Week. She has been the standard in the class from day 1 but her work on her tessellation project over the last couple weeks has been inspiring. When she came in with her finished project on Wednesday, I was truly blown away. It was extremely creative and the attention to detail was amazing. This is the second year my classes have been working on this project and the balance of creativity, hard work and attention to detail that Bryn put forward the last couple weeks has yet to be matched.

Mike Stone’s Dining Hall Stars of the Month

I would like to recognize two students who have modeled leadership and hard work on dining hall crew–Mike

Allie Dubinbsky has the ability to use each person’s strengths to the overall benefit of her crew team. She has excellent supervisory skills as well as being a very nice person. It is a pleasure to work with Allison.

Jumah Sutton has been a student crew leader that has turned his team around. He has become a leader right in front of my eyes, Jumah has a great personality and is a pleasure to work with. Jumah knows how to do every job on crew but has no problem delegating responsibilities. He has truly earned the respect of his crew mates and the dining hall staff.

While we’ve all been privy to some news stories about character assassinations on social networking websites such as Facebook or MySpace, my jaw dropped the other day as I was perusing a story in Time about websites whose only function is to create and spread gossip. Sites such as CollegeACB.com (ACB meaning Anonymous Confession Board) or Juicycampus.com have quickly become the new way to drag someone’s name through the mud without so much of a shred of evidence to prove its validity. Beverly Lowe, Dean of Students for First Year Students at Colgate University, likens these sites to “an electronic bathroom wall…the worst of junior high.” While she is right, we have to wonder as a society why are we so eager to kick people when they’re down? Founder and owner of CollegeACB.com, Peter Frank, a sophomore at fellow-NESCAC college Wesleyan University, logged a record 480,000 hits in just one day in November. Thus, the entire financial vitality of his enterprise is based upon the assumption that people want to see people fall.

Conversations topics such as these are tackled on a daily basis at Hyde. Specifically, one of the things we wrestle with consistently is the importance of avoiding “triangular” conversations. A triangular conversation, for instance, is comprised of Johnny having a major problem with Mike…rather than talking directly to Mike about this issue, Johnny goes to Will to talk about Mike. Clearly, these websites take a triangular conversation to a completely different realm altogether. The irony is that it is not even in Johnny’s frame of reference that perhaps Mike caused this issue unintentionally. Had Johnny had the courage to simply say something to Mike, this problem could have been quashed altogether. This is one of the many life skills we teach every day at Hyde and are dealt with by our dynamic peer culture.

The Time article goes on to conclude that many of the United States’ top universities are struggling with how to find a solution to this problem. Perhaps these institutions can learn something from our students by dealing with issues head on; rather than enabling their students to exploit the misfortunes of others to show some mercy.

One of the primary issues with the Freshmen, this year and in years past, is their impatience with one another. It has traditionaly been a small class and because they spend a lot of time together, they end up getting on one another’s nerves. Every once in awhile, we need to stop the academic lesson and address how to speak to one another. I expect them to listen without criticism and to accept every one’s ideas as vaild, even if they do not agree. At the beginning of the year, this concept seemed impossible to them. But when they understood that I will not let up and that it is a priority for me, the class started to treat each other more respectfully. I have already seen a significant improvement in mutual respect with my current group of 9th graders. They are already accepting that not everyone has the same thoughts and feelings about the material, and have been excited to do peer editing of the written work.

The method I am using for teaching the subject matter was created by John Collins.  He designed a system of teaching writing that consists of daily writing assignments and longer term projects using focused correction areas (or FCAs). I choose 3 or 4 FCAs each time I assign a project and these are the only areas that I will evaluate for their grade. This way, the kids do not need to feel overwhelmed by the idea that they have to get everything right to create good written work. My goal is to develop confident writers.  This also allows the weaker English student to have an opporunity to excel if they follow directions. I have found that my struggling students are often shocked at how well they can do if they simply focus on the areas I am outlining and write without fear.

I will know if I have done a good job with the 9 graders at the end of the year by looking at two important markers: do they confidentally write one page spontaneously in any given writing prompt exercise and do they patiently listen to everyone’s varying opinions? If at the end of the year I observe that my 9th graders have satisfied these goals, I know they will feel like successful students and I will feel like a successful teacher.

Nas Ibrahim: Nas has been a consistent presence in the classroom throughout this fall. He is always prepared, and participates to the best of his ability. Additionally, I’ve been impressed by his ability to work with his peers and help others through difficult material. His curiosity has been a huge asset to his peers and has helped to create a great atmosphere in the classroom.  Nas has also shown himself to be a good sport on the sports field. Although he is prevented from playing soccer due to injury, he has consistently been there for his team on the sidelines, as well as joining in a few cross country practices voluntarily. It’s great to see someone really work hard to be a solid teammate even though he can’t be in the game himself!

Nora Curran has exemplified what I want from my students in Physics: she never quits, always asks for help when she needs it, and always shares her understanding when she has it. Outside the classroom I think she really shows what it means to be childlike without being childish.

Lisa Bertschy is remarkable in that her hopes and passion for her future drives her will to do well and to be the best learner she can be.  She is self-propelled and completes tasks before they are due - usually the first one to turn in requisite assignments - I have never had to nudge her to get one thing done.  And she does this all with a sense of calm and grace that makes my job all the easier.  Oh what a nurse she will be!  She is a superstar!

Sarah Sherman has definitely been a star this fall.  As a new student, Sarah has jumped in with both feet and her attitude has been spectacular.  Whether it is being a presence in the classroom, putting forth her best effort on the sports field, or jumping in to help with student activities Sarah has been a joy to work with and continues to lighten the spirit on campus.  Great job!

Allie Dubinsky has been an instrumental component of her senior class this fall.  She shows concern for her peers on a daily basis and her never quit spirit is exemplary.  In dean’s area, Allie is an all-star who uses her organizational abilities, leadership and courageous spirit to help the community.  I know I could not do my job without her help and want to thank her for being a star this fall.

Jane Letourneau is a reliable and hardworking staff member who has recently became the head of housekeeping at Hyde.  Not only does she model a superb work ethic, but she has recently also embodied the spirit of going for a personal best when she entered and completed a 5k.  She truly has taken on Hyde to the core and it is a pleasure to work with her on a daily basis.