Every year at Milton, each K–8 grade reads a newly chosen summer book. The summer reading book stimulates new curriculum each fall, as the book is woven into the work and the activities at the start of school. Developing this curriculum each summer is something Brendan enjoys; this year it will be a joint project with Brendan’s new partner, Martha Lee Slocum. The book and related activities are valuable conduits for seeding Milton’s social and intellectual culture. Among the opportunities available through this year’s book, The Way Back Home by Oliver Jeffers, is experience with a key element of Milton culture: the open-ended problem. Milton classroom work is based on open-ended problems, that is, challenges without prescribed routes to solution or single answers.
Children must often shift from the pattern they bring—that there’s one way to get to a correct answer—to the idea that they need to think about different ways to approach this problem, and the various outcomes they might reach. In addition to all the thinking they are doing and the skills they’re building, Kindergarten children must find the stamina and focus to thrive in a fastpaced environment. They are busy. “Their skill development, month by month, is astonishing,” Brendan says. Children put together a “year book” of monthly contributions; comparing their writing in the early months to their final months’ work is always impressive. Brendan’s hope is that they come out of the year not only with these new skills, but as poised little individuals who
“While [the students] are figuring out expectations, we begin right away to develop what it means to be in a community,” says Kindergarten teacher Brendan Farmer. 40
Milton Magazine