Around the School
Upper School Critical Thinking Retreat TMS teacher 1st woman to finish race! TMS teacher, Jesse McTigue participated in the Just for Kids Foundation Fundraiser, Mountains to Desert Race. This was a grueling and rewarding 133 mile race. Congratulations to Jesse for being the first woman to finish the race! Just for Kids Foundation is a generous supporter of Telluride Mountain School.
Last fall the Upper School began an initiative to implement two critical thinking retreats to introduce high school freshmen and sophomores to higher order, critical thinking skills required in their high school classes. The first retreat in the fall of 2012 focused on reading and writing, and the second, completed this past October 2013 focused on speaking and listening. Mountain School teachers participated in a workshop to teach them specific methodology to lead Paideia seminars — a collaborative, intellectual dialogue facilitated by open-ended and specific questions that lead students to explore a specific text, image, map or graph. In a Padeia seminar, students meta-cognitively focus on the their role in the discussion as well as the content they are discussing. This fall upper school students and teachers spent a night at the High Camp Hut. Away from the distractions of computers and cell phones they dove into the material and ideas presented long after the discussions ended. After the exciting introduction to the seminar format, teachers have been implementing them into their classes back on campus.
STUDENT PHILANTHROPY For the month of NOVEMBER, 6th grade student Sophia Bridger will be collecting non-perishable food for her non-profit, Kids Aid. Kids Aid is a Colorado Non-Profit Corporation founded to provide services to needy kids in Montrose, Olathe and Ridgway. School meals are the only source of good, nutritious, food during the week for many kids in these communities. Kid’s Aid provides backpacks filled with food to children who would usually go hungry on weekends. Working with the schools directly, food is given to the schools then passed out to the children on Friday before they leave for the weekend. The privacy of the family and the child are protected. Let’s support Sophia and make her food drive a success!
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