Clairbourn second-grade students learned the value of giving back during their yearly fundraiser to benefit the Door of Hope homeless shelter in Pasadena. For the past 21 years, the second grade class has held a pocket change drive to help support those living at the Door of Hope. This shelter for homeless families strives to restore disrupted lives and to break the cycles of homelessness and domestic violence.
Clairbourn 2020 Engineering Design Challenge
Cranes—the heavy-lifting kind—are all around us, and they perform vital roles in a variety of industries. They can lift or lower tremendous amounts of weight, move loads into position, and enable construction companies to ascend their buildings into the skies. An opportunity to explore the mechanical principles of these fascinating machines was presented to Clairbourn students during their annual Engineering Week Design Challenge in January of 2020.
Empowering Middle School Math Students at Clairbourn
Clairbourn School’s Middle School Math Teacher, Rebecca Messler, returned from winter break excited to share with her fellow teachers powerful ideas gleaned from the California Mathematics Council South Conference which she attended in mid-November of 2019.
This conference, offering hundreds of sessions and packed with several thousand math teachers, proved to be a power-house of great information! Messler attended eight sessions applicable to teaching middle school math. Highlights included presentations from two important thought-leaders in math education, Jo Boaler (a Stanford professor, research, and author) as well as Dan Myer (speaker, former teacher, and the chief academic officer of Desmos.com which, is Messler’s favorite math exploration and education support website).
At the Clairbourn staff development meeting in January, Messler chose to share with everyone the idea from the conference of incorporating “Rich Open-Ended Tasks” (ROET) into their teaching methods. She explained this simple concept can be easily implemented and produces stronger engagement and increased understanding of subject matter among students with differentiated learning styles.
Continue reading “Empowering Middle School Math Students at Clairbourn”Alumni Legacy Family: Taryn Johnson, Class of 2000 – Five Generations at Clairbourn School
With an infectious laugh and effervescent personality, Taryn Johnson, Class of 2000, simply glows. Now that her daughter Harper is enrolled in the kindergarten class at Clairbourn, it marks five generations here.
The family history dates back to the mid-1940s when Taryn’s great-grandmother, Lola Wallden, started her career as a school bus driver and retired in 1982 as the Assistant Head of School. Taryn’s grandmother, Beverly Thomson, was the preschool and kindergarten teacher from 1971 until the year 2000. Taryn’s mother, Jodie Robison, is also an alum of the school and worked in the finance office for years.
Continue reading “Alumni Legacy Family: Taryn Johnson, Class of 2000 – Five Generations at Clairbourn School”Parachute Plunge – Clairbourn Preschool Teacher Skydives for Student STEM Lesson
Sayra Rubio, the preschool teacher at Clairbourn School, is willing to do whatever it takes to inspire her students! She recently completed her first skydive on Sunday, October 6, 2019, in order to give a first-hand account of the experience to her students and answer their questions about what it was like to descend to earth by parachute.
For over a month, preschoolers at Clairbourn have been involved in a STEM activity called “The Parachute Plunge” designed to teach the scientific principles that make parachutes work. Students learned about surface area, properties of materials, and air resistance/drag effect, all of which combine to work in opposition to gravity.
Faculty Growth and Development: What Our Staff is Reading
For the 2019-2020 school year and beyond, Clairbourn School has accelerated its focus on faculty growth and development. Parents will be able to notice the positive effects of this effort across all grades as the school year progresses. This includes funds for faculty development (thanks to the new Marks Family Professional Development Fund), new technical training and support for teachers provided by Knowing Technologies, creative language-learning solutions based on the TPRS classroom system (Teach Proficiency through Reading and Story-telling), and faculty reading assignments designed to create a school-wide embrace of educational and learning techniques heralded domestically and internationally.
Clairbourn’s Shakespeare Play: A 1920s Take on Twelfth Night
Clairbourn’s school community was treated to an unforgettable production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night performed by Clairbourn 6th-8th grade students in early March. This crowd-pleasing show took place in an Old Globe Theater setting, constructed in the school’s gymnasium. Over three consecutive show dates, the production featured a variety of humorous antics, stage fighting, great costumes, original music and stand-out performances. It is noteworthy that this unabridged, unedited production was offered by young people between the ages of eleven and fourteen.
The Roaring Twenties setting dazzled the audience with its costuming and jazzy tunes. Singing, live student accompaniment, dancing and action sequences—for instance, the comic boxing match—appealed to first grade students on up to adults. The young students who attended sat in the “groundlings” section where they were right on top of the action and thrills.
Clairbourn’s English teacher Janet Taylor provides an academic foundation for the production. Well before auditions occur, students learn the storyline and character relationships in English classes, and work through the meaning of unfamiliar words and terms. By the time the student-actors face their first show date, they have a good understanding of their lines (including some elements of rhetorical structure), and they have the tools to bring their performances to life with the humor and wit required of a Shakespearean comedy.
Continue reading “Clairbourn’s Shakespeare Play: A 1920s Take on Twelfth Night”