(setting: 9:40 A.M., January 17, 2006, in the middle school office) "I'm really excited about my next class." said Catherine as we both looked quickly through our email before heading for our respective classrooms, which were emitting a happy-sounding hum. "Me, too," I said. "What are you doing?" Her science class, she told me, was going to design their own molecule, both structure and properties, and discuss how it would behave in a mixture. My humanities class was going to analyze magazine covers, then write and perform skits in which characters from different books interacted. Meanwhile, earlier in the day, the 8th grade Humanities class had begun preparing to write an essay analyzing Birdy's character from the perspective of three different characters in the book Catherine, called Birdy. All classes were being asked to work with multiple perspectives and different contexts, and asked to stretch their creativity in the process.

(setting: 11:30 A.M., January 17, 2006, in the dining room) Ellen Carter, Catherine and I met to discuss upcoming sessions for her Thursday morning conversations with the middle schoolers. At that time, she was preparing to show and discuss the movie "Mean Girls" in preparation for "Mix It Up Day" and following up on a prior discussion about how groups are formed and how they affect our behavior - definitely an exercise in multiple perspectives and different contexts! The three of us became more and more excited and energized as we discovered connections between what we were already doing and reflected on ways to strengthen those connections and to fill in any gaps we might perceive.

(setting: 12:15 P.M., January 17, 2006, in the middle school office) I come up with the idea of one day writing an essay on this day as a random day in the life of the middle school. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that in many ways this day is not so random. This level of cooperation, collaboration and support among teachers is not random. This work to create and develop cross-curricular connections is not random. That I can connect the days' activities and accomplishments and works-in-progress readily to a number of SBMS's Purposes and Objectives is not random. All of this is transpiring because we are making a deliberate effort to live up to our ideals and respond actively to the needs of our students.

As we pass Winter midterm, we realize the year is half over. Much has been accomplished - your daughters' midterm grades and comments, which should be in the mail even as I type, attest to this. Much has yet to be be accomplished - your daughters' final spring term grades and comments will bear partial witness to that. But more importantly, your daughters' developing academic, artistic, physical and social skills - the growth she will have experienced as a person - will be the ultimate witness to what she will have accomplished. As we continue the journey together, with another half-year of opportunities ahead of us, we look forward deliberately and with excitement to all that is yet to be.

My grandparents ran a small general store in Mount Vernon, Washington, at an intersection between two long flat roads where the next house in any direction was way way off in the distance and tulip bulbs and pea plants outnumbered people by a factor of many thousands (here's our family farm). But they turned that little store into a center of the rural community, welcoming anyone who cared to shop there and standing up to those who were not quite so open-minded, and through skillful management of the store and their resources were able to send both my father and my aunt to college. My grandfather organized a volunteer fire department and served as the fire chief as well as winning the elected position of dike commissioner, and it's fair to say my grandparents were pillars of the community. Both their children eventually earned doctorates, and my grandparents always kept up with them, their work, and their families. Upon their retirement, they travelled throughout the world, and they always followed both national and world events. I would have defied even the most skilled debater to score a draw against my grandmother when arguing politics.

Yet, my grandmother couldn't clearly remember if she ever did graduate from high school, and I am pretty sure my grandfather never did. Certainly neither of them ever described themselves as strong students. Yet looking at their lives, one would be hard put not to call them well-educated. What, then, does it really mean to be well-educated?

An article by Alfie Kohn, published in a 2003 issue of "Principal Leadership" on just this topic has recently been actively discussed in two forums of which I am a member: a parent-teacher meeting at Full Circle School, which my son attends, and the MiddleWeb listserv, for which I serve as a member of the advisory board. In the article, Kohn argues that no one person can be the ultimate arbiter of what it means to be truly well educated. Yet you can see a major theme running through various definitions suggested at Full Circle, on MiddleWeb, and by Alfie Kohn himself:

"a habit of mind (. . .) which lasts through a life, of which the attributes are, freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation, and wisdom. . ."
- John Henry Neumann, quoted by Brenda Dyck on MiddleWeb

"That you would be mannerly. That you had knowledge. That you would pay attention and try to learn."
- from a member of the Full Circle School community

"To be well educated, then, is to have the desire as well as the means to make sure that learning never ends."
- Alfie Kohn

To be well-educated, all three of these people would seem to agree, is to want to be and know how to be a lifelong learner. It is a decision we can make every single day. Middle school is the perfect time to develop these habits of mind and this perpetual sense of the possible, as these children are old enough to reflect at a sophisticated level, yet young enough that each new day can easily feel like a fresh start. This is one of the major goals we have for each Stoneleigh-Burnham Middle School girl, and one of the major rewards for all of us adults who enjoy working with your daughters.

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the National Middle School Association conference in Philadelphia. It was a heady experience, with many of the top names in our profession attending, presenting, and even doing book-signings just like star athletes. More importantly, every single person I talked to was genuinely committed to and excited about their work. I met Heads of School excited about the possibility of applying for the NMSA Foundation grants after hearing about our experience, teachers from North Carolina emboldened to start a charter school after hearing about our success here, and more people than I can remember who were excited about the proposed partnership between the MiddleWeb virtual learning community and the NMSA, for which I am serving on the Advisory Board. For me, two experiences stood out and are continuing to resonate in continually evolving ways.

On the first night, I confess as much to show my support for conference organizers as out of any personal desire to attend, I went to the keynote address by Rick Stiggins. He began by positing that the traditional method of assessment has served its purpose well, that purpose being to rank students and separate out those who were bound for college and those who were not. He termed that system "assessment of learning" and proceeded to contrast it with a system of "assessment for learning." The goal of assessment in true middle schools, he argued, should be to help students understand their own learning styles and needs in an ongoing fashion. This allows students the chance not only to prepare in a purposeful and meaningful way for final evaluations, not only to become increasingly skilled at self-reflection, but also to develop a sense of what they need to be true life-long learners. So simple a contrast, and yet so profound.

On the second afternoon, I attended what turned into an informal conversation in the round about the democratic classroom model with Mark Springer, Gert Nesin, and Carol Smith. Mark is the founder of the "Watershed" and "Soundings" programs at Radnor Middle School, north of Philadelphia, which I visited last year, and Carol and Gert have worked in similar programs, one in a K-8 school and one in college. "Soundings" is an 8th grade program wherein students generate a vast quantity of questions of all conceivable types, collaborate to group together, evaluate, and prune those questions, discuss what themes join those groups of questions together and what activities could legitimately be used in studying those questions, verify that all the skills they should be acquiring during the year can be acquired during these units, narrow in on themes they as a group wish to study, and finally select the "essential questions" which, with the supporting questions and activities, form th! eir units for the remainder of the year. It was inspiring to hear of successes this and other programs have had, and great to have made some valuable connections for the future.

Rooming as I was with Chris Toy, who is our consultant this year on the follow-up work for our NMSA Foundation grant, I found myself constantly challenged to think more deeply about what I was experiencing and what it meant for our school. Fundamentally, though, the lesson I took away from NMSA is that a good school is at heart a student-focused institution united by common ideals and vision where all voices can be heard.

(article submitted for the October 28, 2005 SBMS Parent Newsletter)

In one of my online education groups, one teacher stirred up quite a controversy this past weekend by contending that there is no reason for us to kid ourselves, few if any people ever become true lifelong learners. After my initial splutter of outrage, I calmed down quite quickly, because I had the perfect counter-example: our Middle School Parent Meeting from Family Weekend. All of us were more than willing to put in the time to read "Our Last Best Shot" by Laura Sessions Stepp, not only to give us possible insight into the world of the students of SBMS, but also simply for ourselves, and as role models for these young women. Indeed, we were more than willing to go even further and discuss reading a second book in common, this one with the girls as well as in support of them. I was proud of our school, delighted with our example, and pleased to note that the teacher who kicked off this conversation dropped this cynical and unproductive line of! reasoning following my own and a large smattering of similar postings.
To help get us started thinking about some of the issues examined in"Our Last Best Shot," I would like to present a short extract of an on-line article by Pat Holt which includes extensive quotes from a lecture given by Ms. Stepp. The entire text may be found online at http://www.holtuncensored.com/members/column325.html.

**********

" 'When Patricia Johnson heard the explosion of the second World Trade Tower on September 11, she began running from her office on nearby Church Street in lower Manhattan and did not stop until she had reached her daughter's intermediate school on West 77th Street, more than six miles north. She found her daughter Tiffany in a classroom and held her close for a very long time.

'We all felt that urge that Tuesday, a primordial compulsion to collect our babies and slip into our caves and never come out again. I know I still feel that way, and my baby is 17.'

She goes on to say that even though parents know 'we have to get on with our lives and allow our children to get on with theirs,' the questions every family faces as they watch their kids 'take another step away from us with each month, each year' have become more urgent and profound.

Today in particular, Laura asks the audience, 'what can we give them so they will feel empowered to fight whatever monsters they may encounter, imagined or real? What do they need in that particularly stressful time known as adolescence *besides* our love and legs strong enough to run six miles to find them?' "

**********

Each of our answers to that question is bound to be individual, and each is bound to evolve as we read the book, observe your daughters' own growth and changes, and pass ideas back and forth with each other. I am very much looking forward to the discussion as we continue to build our community of learners.

When looking at the structure of a successful middle school, the National Middle School Association stresses the importance of common time for adults. Teachers and advisors might talk not only about the needs and achievements of individual students, but also about group dynamics, what various classes have been doing, what they are planning to do in upcoming units, and what strategies they are using in doing research projects, or working through drafts of writing, or wrestling with a difficult reading passage. One of the principles of successful middle schools as defined by the NMSA is that they see themselves as a community of learners, and when teachers and advisors support each other in their own learning, not only do they improve their own practice but also they can serve as powerful role models.

Middle school students in general, and quite possibly this is especially true of middle school girls, are acutely sensitive to and highly aware of their environments. When teachers are working together, they know it, and deep down (and sometimes quite openly) they appreciate it. So when Catherine Cahill, planning a research project for the 7th graders on scientists, has the place, time, and ability to sit down with me shortly after I have begun working with Humanities 7 students on a research project on the 1930's, we can coordinate what kinds of sources we will require the students to use, what website they will use to collect information on their sources, and what section of that website they will use to guide them in making parenthetical citations. What is happening in one classroom reinforces what is happening in the other, and further projects assigned throughout the year will provide the girls with additional opportunities to practice, use, and refine these skills. They will also see Catherine and me learning from each other, and for many it will come as something of a revelation that "the elderly" (as one of my advisees, who shall remain nameless, referred to me earlier today) still learn and still enjoy learning even at their advanced age. All of these are important life lessons.

Our principles and objectives are identical to the National Middle School Association's 14 principles for a successful middle school enumerated in "This We Believe," and we take the goal of fostering an atmosphere of being a community of learners very seriously. At the Class Dean's meeting on Family Weekend, one of the topics we will discuss will be the possibility of choosing a book-in-common to read and discuss together. We already have suggestions from several families. I look forward to talking with you all at that time, and to pursuing our learning goals together in support of your daughters.

“Do you want to have a go?” Melissa’s soft voice hit me like a thunderbolt. Did I want to have a go. Well, yes. And no. I knew we were asking all our students to consider getting up on the high ropes course, and it made sense for me to consider it as well. On the other hand, I do have this horrific fear of heights, and Camp Becket does do “Challenge by Choice.” Normally, balancing on a telephone pole 40 feet above the ground would not be a challenge I would choose. However, I had specifically worn my sneakers in case I was asked this question, and I believed it was only fair that I offer myself the same challenge we were offering the students. All these thoughts flashed through my mind in a split-second, and I said “Yes.”

A scant five minutes later, with Kathleen serving as the rock to give Melissa added weight and security, and Ivy serving as the additional ropes person, I was climbing up the large staples set into the vertical telephone pole which were my path upwards. About halfway, I made the mistake of looking up toward the top of the pole, and I froze. Luckily, few people were observing me, and no one said anything, at least nothing that I remember hearing. Eventually, slowly, I managed to get my foot up to the next staple, and after that it was easier going until I reached the horizontal telephone pole I was supposed to cross. At this point, I called down “I just need to hug the telephone pole for a while,” and I wrapped my arms around it and noticed my heart practically pounding out of my chest.

My breath was coming in quick and shallow bursts, and as I hugged the pole tighter it occurred to me that I had better get a hold of myself. I forced myself to ease the tension in my arms and legs, and to take slow, deep breaths. Surprisingly, I found myself becoming calm enough to shout down “How far do I have to go for you to let me down?” The answer was about three steps, but of course once I had stepped away from the pole I was hugging, it was easy just to keep moving until I had actually touched the vertical pole on the other side. At that point, I moved three steps back to the center, and Melissa (aided by Kathleen and Ivy) lowered me to the ground, where Melissa quietly said “Nice job, especially for someone so scared of heights.” Right then, I felt like there were two parts to my life – before I did the high ropes course, and after. I’m already thinking ahead to next year.

I'm on my second day of a course on Schools Attuned. As part of the course, we are asked to keep a journal, with daily topics assigned. Today's topic has to do with self-evaluating my strengths and weaknesses in terms of the constructs they have taught us so far, and how these will affect my teaching. I thought I would share this in my blog as well.

My time-management skills are reasonably strong, though I don't always apply them well. I am good at figuring out how long things will take, and allotting sufficient time to complete a task. At the same time, there are two forces in my life which can often pull me away from my schoolwork - my family, and the listservs to which I belong. Of course, my family must be my first priority anyway. Both my wife and my son are wonderful people, and they give my life meaning - it would be senseless to ignore them to spend all my time working. As for my listservs, they are probably a mixed blessing. They have provided invaluable professional development and enrichment, and as I have earned the respect of listmembers and have been appointed the new moderator of the MWProjects group which focuses on literacy instruction in middle schools, I have grown in self-confidence. But on the other hand, it does take a certain amount of time and effort to participate actively in these groups. So what often happens is that I stay up late, often quite late (hey, it's nearly midnight right now!) in order to have time with my family, to touch base with my listservs, and to give adequate attention to my schoolwork. Often, I am tired and sluggish in the morning. In a more positive vein, though, I am good at modeling how to do time management activities, and good at working with kids one-on-one to help them develop their own plans. Similarly, although I sometimes have a tendency to over-rely on sequences when teaching a whole class (something for which I can compensate since I'm aware of it), my ability to sequence does allow me to be a good role model, and help students one-on-one.

When it comes to organizing space, I am somewhat less of a role model. My desk, by the end of the year, is often buried under six inches or more of various important papers and other items I don't want to lose but haven't taken time to file properly. On the other hand, I have a pretty good visual sense that helps me help kids with, and evaluate, art-based projects, and lets me set up the assignment board, the white board, and bulletin boards both clearly and aesthetically.

I have very poor handwriting, mostly because of how much time I spend on the computer. This means I had to work extra hard to train myself to write largely and neatly on the white board, especially to make this task automatic. Interestingly, this has been much more of an issue for my middle school students than for my high school students. There has not been that much student handwriting in my classroom, and I think my own difficulties may have subconsciously affected that. I believe now that I need to incorporate more handwriting samples into my classroom, if only to keep track of this aspect of my students' profiles and development.

Growing up, I never thought of myself as having strong gross motor skills, and it wasn't until I was nearly 30 that I began to see myself as being at all athletic, when my school's athletic director complimented my on my running form. This gives me a certain empathy with students who have gross motor difficulties, or think they do, and helps me be particularly sensitive to not drawing attention to these kids in a negative way. Also, since running is a pleasant activity for me, I am able to stay in shape, and use those endorphins to help work through sticky problems, all of which helps my teaching.

I'm not sure my fine motor skills are quite so strong. I can play piano and guitar effectively, which I guess is a positive sign. But threading a needle is torture, and if I have to do repetitive finger motions, I start to feel sick to my stomach and tense all over, and eventually I have to set down whatever I am doing and throw my body around for a moment to relieve the pressure that has been steadily building up. Working with teenagers, I'm not sure this has a major effect on my teaching - maybe I have to rely a bit more on help for certain kinds of tasks, but actually that probably helps the kids by giving them an excuse to get up and move around and do something genuinely useful.

I grew up loving to read, majored in French, and have taught literature and writing through most all of my career, so it should come as no surprise that I view my language skills, both expressive and receptive, as being particularly strong. My background in French, plus the fact that I had to teach British pronunciation at one point in my life, have affected my phonological awareness to some extent, and I am told I occasionally sound "Canadian" in conversation, or when sounding out unfamiliar words. I actually think this helps my students - when I talk about it with them, it gets them thinking about how sounds are different in different languages and different dialects. Again, I can be a strong role model for my students, both as a reader and as a writer. Although I try to let their own ideas emerge both when discussing readings and when writing (this would be the discourse level), the fact that my own discourse skills are strong helps me see almost instantaneously where they are going and how well it fits with the text. What the girls are saying may be a new insight to me (and hopefully is - I always love to learn!), but I can evaluate it quickly and when necessary, if the kids don't work it out on their own, intervene to see what they are getting at and whether they might want to rethink their initial position.

Overall, then, my abilities and experiences with these constructs affect how effective I can be as a role model, how thoroughly I can help kids work through problems, and how quickly and efficiently I can get my own homework done. I'm looking forward to learning about the other constructs through the rest of the week.

I can still recall vividly the scene in the front lobby of my high school on the first day of senior year - feeling a little special but uncertain as to whether or not that was okay, wondering how others of my class were feeling, wondering how other younger students would be treating me as a senior. As students pushed by, jostling each other in a rush of different coloured backpacks as they hurried to figure out what their new homeroom would be, my friend Ewen Chen strode up to me and boomed his welcome. I grinned, not just because I was happy to see him, but also because I suddenly understood we really were seniors, it really was going to be a special year, and everything about which I had been worrying would be all right.

First days of school are major life passages, as students carefully choose what they are going to wear and pack up their backpacks with a fresh supply of notebooks, pens, and other supplies. Friends who may not have seen each other in three months shriek and run toward each other, hug, and exclaim about how much they've grown. A fresh start, a new beginning - and one with roots in the past. For elements of next September's first days of school are already falling into piece, are already being shaped, perhaps (probably!) even without the participants' knowing.

Many teachers I know have remarked on how much students seem to grow up not just literally but also emotionally and intellectually over the summer. Students often arrive in September with a new sense of purpose, increased depth and perceptiveness even in their casual conversations, and sensitivity. As teachers gain experience, they may learn to recognize signs of these impending changes during the last months of the school year - the class clown who is having more and more difficulty summoning up the energy for the latest in a series of escapades, the nickname which is clearly wearing thin, an increased focus on quality of work just barely too subtle for other students to notice. Students may or may not notice these changes, which after all may well have happened for them in infinitesimal amounts day by day. But they are there nonetheless, and they show that summer is a time for children, among other things, to consolidate past growth and look to future growth.

It has been a long time since our own first day of school when, thanks to the ten Founders, Stoneleigh-Burnham's middle school program came into being. For the past nine months, we have come together as a community, learned, grown, and planted the seeds for future learning and growth. It is only with time - if ever - that we will fully understand all that happened here this year, but one thing is a given: we have all been unalterably changed by our year together. We are all, forever, a part of what each of us will become. Perhaps the exact implications of this will begin to come clear on the next First Day of School, perhaps it will take more time. But it is true nonetheless.

As much as school is always on my mind, and as much time as I will be spending preparing for next fall, I also know that the very best parts of the summer will be relaxing with my family, scorekeeping for my son's baseball teams, travelling with old friends to new places, and seeing the Red Sox play in the prettiest ballpark in the world. May your summers be filled with relaxation, growth, books, and best of all possible gifts, time with your own families.

I remember learning in my high school chemistry class how it was once thought, as recently as 160 years ago, that atoms were indivisible units of mass. With the discovery of electrons around 1897, the model of the atom was updated to J.J. Thomson's "plum pudding" model in which electrons were embedded in a mass of positive charge like raisins in a pudding. Rutherford further refined the model of the atom in 1911 to include the idea that electrons orbited a central nucleus. Although two of the six quarks had been discovered by the time I was in high school, I was still taught that electrons were the smallest atomic particle, and that they orbited the nucleus of the atom in well-defined "electron shells." That does not seem so very long ago, and yet we have gone through several further iterations of the model of the atom since my graduation from high school. Who knows what our children's children will learn?

Yet, despite the seeming impermanence of knowledge, it is also true that as time has gone by the model of the atom has only become more and more refined. J.J. Thomson was right about the existence of electrons and Rutherford's idea that electrons orbit a nucleus also proved to be correct, and if the concept of "electron shells" which I was taught in 1975 still needed modification, the current concept of "electron clouds" is not all that different.

Similarly, the middle school model, based as it is on research, is becoming more and more refined with time. The 2003 edition of "This We Believe" is based on a huge body of educational research; over 3,700 studies relating to middle schools were published between 1991 and 2002 alone. This edition reflects slight modifications from the 1995 edition of the position paper, which in turn reflected a greater number of modifications from the original 1983 edition. The "Middle School Journal," published by the National Middle School Association, presents and updates the body of middle school research in five issues a year. The theme for this month's issue is "Getting from Standards to Relevant, Challenging, Integrated & Exploratory Curriculum." One article examines a middle school model called "Success for All." Organizationally, this model calls for interdisciplinary teams, a full-time facilitator, grouping for reading, and cooperative learning. The humanities component of this model calls for 90-minute blocks integrating English, language arts and social studies, and describes a series of thematic and topic-based units explored by students in various-sized groups and for which the findings are presented "in various forms of writing" (p.6). The science component of this model calls for a mix of direct instruction, explanation and teacher demonstration, and direct experience for students through exploration and experimentation; one sample unit described asked students to learn about earthquakes and design an earthquake-resistant building (p.6). The parallels with Stoneleigh-Burnham's own curriculum are striking, and yet this makes perfect sense because there are also strong parallels between the principles behind "Success for All" and the 14 principles of "This We Believe."

Data with which to evaluate this model are still being collected by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. However, reading results for the seven schools involved in the study were obtained for the years 2001-2004 from state websites. Each school was paired with a comparison school, and the results examined. In each case, students in the "Success for All" schools showed far greater gains in state reading assessments than did those in the comparison schools. While not yet definitive, these results are certainly encouraging. As the article concludes, "As the Success for All Middle School Model and other content-focused middle school reforms are implemented on a larger scale and continue to produce convincing data, we may finally achieve the breakthrough that Turning Points promised 16 years ago: reliable, replicable models to help schools ensure the success of all young adolescents."

Sources
*Acosta, Darin. "History of the Discovery of Quarks" University of Florida. 10 May, 2005. http://www.phys.ufl.edu/~acosta/phy3101/quarks/sld020.htm.
*Anfara Jr., Vincent A. et al. Research and Resources in Support of This We Believe. 2003: National Middle School Association, Westerville, OH.
*"History of the Atom." 10 May, 2005. http://www.broadeducation.com/htmlDemos/AbsorbChem/HistoryAtom/page.htm.
*National Middle School Association. This We Believe: Successful Schools for Young Adolescents. 2003: National Middle School Association, Westerville, OH.
*Slavin, Robert E., Cecelia Daniels and Nancy A. Madden. "Success for All": Middle Schools Add Content to Middle Grades Reform. in "Middle School Journal," Vol. 36, No. 5, May, 2005. 2005: National Middle School Association, Westerville, OH.

Additional Website
http://www.successforall.net

Successful schools for young adolescents are characterized by a culture that includes school-initiated family and community partnerships.
- "This We Believe," National Middle School Association

In her book Our Last Best Shot: Guiding our Children Through Early Adolescence, Laura Sessions Stepp, a journalist for the "Washington Post," performed a comprehensive review of research on young adolescent development, supplemented it with a series of interviews, and wrote about what children in the 10-15 year old group are getting and what they need from their parents and other adults. In the introduction, she states "The intellectual and emotional changes we see in our growing children are largely the result of new experiences they encounter, their reactions to those experiences, and to the increased demands of friends, parents, teachers, and other adults." (p.2) The more these adults can coordinate, the better off each child will be. As Chris Toy pointed out at the beginning of the year, the school provides educators who know the field intimately and who watch and understand how the girls interact here on campus, while each parent contributes an intimate knowledge of her/his individual daughter's talents, needs, and style. Beyond this advisor-parent and teacher-parent teaming in support of middle school students, the school has initiated this weekly newsletter as a means of communication. In her introduction to the section of her book entitled "Learning In and Out of School," Ms. Stepp writes of Alana, one of her subjects: "She also needs the emotional resources available in classes that are not too large, where teachers have the time to get to know how she learns and can tailor standards of achievement that are high but not impossible to meet. And she needs parents or other caretakers who are familiar with the challenges she faces at school and who support her accordingly." This passage reflects the goals of our school-initiated partnerships with parents.

As for school-initiated community partnerships, the most visible which affects the middle school is the community service program. This past Wednesday, when we arrived at the Food Bank, there was a loud whoop followed by someone yelling "Hey, the Stoneleigh-Burnham girls are here!" We spent the next hour dusting, sweeping, mopping, scrubbing, washing, rinsing and drying in preparation for a special dinner which was being held that night. In a situation like this, everyone benefits. The girls, because they are performing a genuinely needed service to people who value and appreciate them. The charitable organization, which gets much needed work done by cheerful and hard-working volunteers. The school, because events like this help build good will out in the community for what we have to offer. The same benefits accrue when the girls who volunteer at the animal shelter help train the new volunteers from Northfield-Mount Hermon or talk knowledgeably to visitors about specific animals who are up for adoption, or when the girls who volunteer at Federal Street Elementary spontaneously lead the younger students in various getting-to-know-you games. At the end of Ms. Stepp's book, she reflected with Alana about the year and the changes she had undergone, and the book ends with these words from Alana: "I'm part of it. I'm not watching from the sidelines any more," (p.291) and this passage reflects one of the key goals of our school-initiated partnerships with the community.