Peachtown Elementary Blog

Resolutions abound this time of year, and many of us are on track to drink more water, go to bed earlier or get more exercise. While adults tend to feel the pull of a new calendar year, children are more likely to associate fresh starts with a birthday, the start of a school year, the beginning of summer vacation or even a return to the classroom after a long break. Whatever the occasion, goal-setting is a healthy way for children to begin to think about what they want from life and how to get it. Children as young as 4 or 5 are able to begin this process, and we can all benefit from taking the time to formalize our approach. Here are some tips to keep in mind as you think about setting goals with your children or students. As tempting as it may be to decide on goals for our children, the most empowering experiences will come from self-selected ones. Start by asking your child leading questions to get ideas flowing: What’s a skill you wish you were better at? If you could play an...

The results of an annual lake shore clean-up last spring Enter any elementary math classroom, and you’ll hear kids talking at some point about the concept of zero.  The idea that we would pair the concept of nothingness with waste sounds a little silly in today’s consumer-driven economy. If you search the internet for Zero Waste inspiration, you’re likely to find pictures of people holding single canning jars crammed full of a year’s worth of waste for an entire family. This just isn’t a realistic goal for most of us. Somewhere between the idealized version of Zero Waste and the expensive and wasteful disposable culture sits a middle ground where waste can be sensibly and ethically minimized by people like you and me — people who live, work, and maybe raise children in America today. Here are some affordable and realistic tips to get you started, because as the adage goes, the world doesn’t need a handful of people doing Zero Waste perfectly. We need millions of people do...

By Alyssa Binns Gunderson, published on October 16, 2019 in the  Auburn Citizen One of the many unique aspects of our educational model is the fact that we teach rotating history and science units to our entire student body simultaneously. There are myriad advantages to this method, but my favorite is that we all have a common intellectual interest point when we’re sitting in the lunch room or playing outside at recess. I have watched kids play interactive, self-initiated Revolutionary War reenactments on the playground and have overheard intense debates about astronomical theories at lunch. Any teacher will tell you that there is little better than students discussing academic topics outside of the classroom. It’s a deeply satisfying feeling and encouraging sign that what you’re doing matters in the lives of your students. All that is to explain why I’ve been sharing stories of famous female physicists during our school-wide morning meetings. We’re nearing the end of ...

By Alyssa Binns Gunderson, published on August 20, 2019 in the Auburn Citizen We are living in the midst of a huge shift in the way the world records and understands history. In the earliest days of human civilization, history was shared through oral tradition. Stories were used to create a shared understanding of the world and how it works. As humans progressed, history became a written narrative, with people whose education and circumstances allowed, sharing their observations, opinions and impressions on paper. As printing developed and publishing became an industry, this information was further filtered through the lenses of those who had the power and capital to distribute it. In America, this means that until recently, history has been funneled through the privileged minds and hands of wealthy or middle class white men. I don’t mean to imply that women and people of color haven’t passed along their own histories — we certainly have — but when we look back on the iconic heroes o...

August 23, 2017 Peachtown Elementary School is situated on the Wells College campus, and every year I am amused to see that I am driving just about the ugliest car on campus. First-year college students usually drive better — or at least prettier — cars than I do. I am quite certain that Wells is no different than any other residential college in this respect. I just like a good, cheap car, and I drive it until it stops, whereas most consumers like something new and shiny. As a culture, we are a little obsessed with things: nice cars, nice homes, stylish clothes, exotic foods, overstuffed furniture and the latest technology. Even families with very little discretionary income are inclined to attempt this consumerist lifestyle. The parents of my generation all lived through the Depression and World War II; they were experts at the exigencies of spartan living. They saved rubber bands and twisty ties, and folded pieces of used aluminum foil and bread bags for later use. We thought...

July 26, 2017 Afternoons in the lower classroom at Peachtown Elementary (pre-K through third grade) are a little more casual than the morning academics. After lunch and an active recess, time is devoted to such things as foreign languages, art, music, stories, writing and visiting the library. Recently, in a work session to discuss the general tone of the afternoons, we spoke of “relaxed, productive, creative,” and, ultimately, a focus on aesthetics. Finding the beauty in everyday life and learning to create it may be a rapidly disappearing aspect of education. An enemy of aestheticism is the rush of contemporary life. It takes time to use all of our senses to appreciate what is before us and more time to create it ourselves. In the days of worn books, pencils, crayons and paste, children took their time to carefully practice their cursive, erasing not backspacing, drawing with fat crayons and gluing shapes with sticks dipped in pots of thick paste. A good book came with the smell...

June 28, 2017 Most parents start thinking about long-term savings for college when their children are still toddlers. That’s a good thing. Our culture and economy place a heavy emphasis on college education, but sometimes that emphasis becomes an obsession about a future, which supplants the importance of the here and now. The lives of many high school students and their parents are dominated by the focus of getting into a “good” college. Conversely, parents considering private elementary education are often daunted by even a modest tuition payment. The contrast between decisions made for a kindergarten student and a high school senior are marked. Often, the same parents who hesitate to invest in early education are later delighted to enroll their child in a very expensive Ivy League school. Raising and educating children requires a balance between the health and happiness of a child in the moment and the anticipated outcomes for the future. The two are integrally related. A col...