Middle school students met with clients (many of whom were international and based in China), scheduled their own meetings, and consulted with clients to build their dream sustainable homes. Students then executed these plans by designing and building models of these dream homes - all while learning more about sustainable housing design. This project exemplifies how students learn through authentic interdisciplinary bilingual projects.
Dr. Keisha Siriboe, a consultant who we have closely worked with since 2020, recently came to visit us on campus - for the first time! Over the past two years, she has worked closely with our faculty and staff, addressing critical topics such as diversity, representation, and social justice, and has formed a Social Justice Cohort among faculty and staff…
As we read this story, we had one burning question - how can we replace our collective imagination of Native Americans with authentic experiences that increase our understanding? As students realized from the story above, good intentions are not enough. If we allow ourselves to remain ignorant, we can end up causing embarrassment at best, and trauma at worst.
Middle school students met with clients (many of whom were international and based in China), scheduled their own meetings, and consulted with clients to build their dream sustainable homes. Students then executed these plans by designing and building models of these dream homes - all while learning more about sustainable housing design. This project exemplifies how students learn through authentic interdisciplinary bilingual projects.
Service learning combines classroom learning with real world application. Throughout the year, the PA PKS Service Learning Committee (Service Learning Committee) has been working to identify service learning opportunities for students to learn through experience and make connections within their communities. Here are some exciting current projects.
Integrating Service Learning with Learning English as a Foreign Language (ESL)
Since March 2021, Middle School students have connected with immigrant and elderly students enrolled in Edith Witt Senior Community’s ESL class to serve as their conversation partners. The Edith Witt Senior Community is a community-based organization that assists seniors in obtaining and maintaining safe, quality low-income housing and affordable resident services for those in need. Students and seniors communicate with each other in English and Mandarin on topics that the teacher provides. The ESL class takes place every Tuesday from 3-4 pm.
Launching the PKS-On Lok Pen Pal Program
Since January 2021, the Service Learning Committee has partnered with On Lok to engage our students in service learning. On Lok is a community-based organization that has provided Bay Area seniors with comprehensive medical and health care, bilingual case management, home-cooked meals and opportunities to socialize for over 50 years. You may have seen their green vans zipping through the streets to drop off meals to seniors at their homes.
During the past several months, PKS students launched two pen pal projects, one led by the Middle School student government and the other by students in English Literacy Teacher Will Carroll’s 4th Grade Purple English class. The pen pal projects are intended to promote connectedness between students and seniors, who had been in isolation during shelter in place. Writing and receiving letters creates a continuing cycle for building skills in reading, writing and story-telling. And getting to know people of different ages has enormous benefits for all involved, helping them stand in the shoes of others and seeing life from a different point of view.
In these projects, students are paired with senior pen pals at On Lok and exchange handwritten letters, in both Chinese (Middle School) and English (4th Grade).
The Service Learning Committee will host a reception at the end of the school year where pen pals will meet each other virtually.
PKS Lower Elementary Sends Cheer to Senior Centers This Year
For Lunar New Year, Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd graders made 110 pieces of lunar auspicious art for seniors at Edith Witt Center to decorate their living quarters. The words and colors and symbols are suppose to bring good luck, happiness, and health to whoever hangs it up.
During National Poetry Month, 2nd graders, guided by their English Teacher, Christina Garbarino, each illustrated a poem to send to seniors at On Lok. The illustrations were beautiful and thoughtful and receiving personalized mail was very meaningful for On Lok seniors.
This year our students have been thinking about ways that we, as first grade students at PKS, can help to make positive changes in this world, even in small ways. In our Life Cycles unit, we first took on the role of being scientists to learn about the phenomena of life cycles and how they unfold for different plants and animals.
Hello! My name is Missy Silver, and I joined the PKS Wellness team at the start of the school year. Despite the challenges of joining a new school during COVID restrictions, I’ve been delighted to be a part of this warm, innovative, and joyful community. I’ve already met many families; I look forward to meeting more of you over the coming months and years.
Over the past year we have been on an arduous journey, enduring a global pandemic and facing previously unimagined challenges with unpredictable outcomes. Parents have had to weigh murky options for their children, and persevere in the face of worries about mitigating unknown levels of risk. We’ve worried about learning loss, loneliness, excessive screen time, and how the time spent apart from our in-person communities will affect our children’s social development. We’ve comforted ourselves with the knowledge that children are almost miraculously resilient, but we’ve also had to wait and see how things would actually work out.
This year in middle school, PKS students have completed two projects (the first focused on the 2020 Election, the second focused on Newton’s laws of motion that included an egg-drop challenge). The current project is focused on game design, world building, myth, and fantasy. Students are currently working in groups to design D&D campaigns, escape rooms, and choose-your-own adventure stories for Chinese gamers. (Our final project, which will begin in late March, is titled X也和tā, and is focused on a cross-cultural analysis of gender norms.)
Black history is our history, and at PKS, we continually explore history and current events through multiple perspectives, and examine the stories and contributions of Black people within our year-long curriculum. Black History Month is a time to have a focused celebration of Black Excellence, to explore and learn together a history that has historically been distorted and suppressed, and to explore together ways to more fully include the Black experience into all of our Units of Exploration. Our library and class libraries are increasingly including books by and about Black people (Our Books for Birthdays program this year is focused on increasing the diversity of our library).
Preschool is filled with a million moments of learning, bonding, and most importantly joy. Children approach the world so differently than we do as adults and the things they observe, do, and say help us see the world in a different light. As we approach the holiday season, we wanted to share just a few of the many preschool moments that brighten our days and bring smiles to our faces.
Everyone has their own story. Teachers, like most people, bring those stories – stories that grow out of our passions, our interests, our cultural background, and our personalities – into the workplace. These stories inform how we see the world and how we approach our work. Although teaching is what we do as a profession, it is not all that we are, and it’s those extra dimensions that make each classroom so special.
In 2009, a year after PKS opened its doors, I felt so lucky to join a tiny but cozy two room preschool in the Presidio with 25-30 students. Ten years later, a lot has changed, but watching the school (and my first students) grow and transform has been amazing. Although the school may not look the same on the outside, what makes PKS such a special place still remains: our community and sense of family.
Instructions: Please spend five minutes drawing a scientist. Add as much detail as you can. There is no correct answer; just use your creativity and draw what comes to mind.
As you may suspect, the 'draw-a-scientist' test is not merely about art. It is, in fact, a well known experiment that has been given to tens of thousands of children over the last fifty years, and it can reveal trends in children's beliefs and stereotypes about scientists.
