The return of Five for Friday!
Back in our early days – this is well before Stone opened – we shared out a weeklyish newsletter called “5 For Friday”. “5 For Friday” was a fun compendium of interesting things we stumbled upon on the internet; and meaningful events happening around Lancaster; and a few slightly-more-complex ideas we were chewing on; and the programs we were developing for the Stone community (and yes, we absolutely… “borrowed” the idea from Tim Ferris).
Though “5 For Friday” took a brief 4+ year hiatus, we’re excited to welcome back this occasional update of things we’ve been doing, thinking about, listening to, working on, and mulling over here at the Stone Independent School:
Here on campus, we’re getting ready for the January Open House. Our Open Houses are a little different than most – we spend the first half of the Open House talking about recent concerns and developments in education, and then we share experiences which allow visiting families to “sample” Stone classes run by Stone instructors. Though we are indeed getting pretty close to full for next year, we currently have some room available – if you’re excited to learn more about Stone be sure to check out our admissions page or the facebook event for the Open House right here or just go ahead and email us at admissions@stoneindependent.org.
And, we’ve been sharing around this really wonderful Ted Goia piece about the revival of Barnes and Noble. While we’re not necessarily fans of “Big Box Stores” in general (here, we’d like to shout-out Aarons Books in Lititz, and Dogstar and Pocket Books and all the other great independent bookstores around our community), the analysis of B&N’s revival feels pretty…timely. It turns out that if you want to do a better job selling books…well, listen to people who love books. Which brings up the question of what this analysis might teach us about education…?
And, we’re thinking a little bit about how to review last year. James Clear (author of Atomic Habits, a book we reference a lot in these parts) talks about Annual Reviews in this podcast and shares his annual reviews here; Courtney Martin (who we read a lot) has ten great questions for completing an Annual Review here; Ramit Sethi (whose book I Will Teach You How To Be Rich is one we give to a lot of our seniors) reflects on “Rich Life Reviews” here; and David Allen (author of Getting Things Done) offers up key reflections for an Annual Review right here. So far, James Clear offers our favorite review question: “What am I optimizing for?”
Have a favorite Annual Review process? Email us at info@stoneindependent.org and tell us all about it!
And, we’ve been thinking a lot about what ChatGPT might mean for education. Labeled “the best artificial intelligence chatbot ever released to the general public”, ChatGPT is inspiring both some legitimate excitement and legitimate concern. It’s hard not to wring your hands about it at least a little bit when you first think about it (schools in New York are already banning it); it’s also hard not to wonder how it is that artificial intelligence tools might change education for the better. A question we’ll be kicking around at a faculty meeting soon: is this just a new tool that will soon become part of our student’s learning toolbox (like a really complicated calculator)? Or is this something altogether different?
And… we’re reading this piece in McSweeney’s and laughing a lot because it’s just really funny (and/also we’re maybe wincing a little bit here and there because…well. Schools.)
And, of course, we’re up to a lot of other really cool stuff too! A few weeks ago we threw our “Sixth Annual” First-Ever Winter Week and we wore bad sweaters and had an ice sculpting competition and roasted marshmallows in Solo Stoves; and we’re getting ready for the return of Spring travel (we have trips running to Italy, to the Bahamas, and to San Francisco-and-back in a van); and – in case we haven’t mentioned it yet – we’re getting ready for next year already with the January Open House; and we’re loving this photograph of senior Erick Otto working on a sculpture of nine inch nails (yes, really) for a senior art project:
We’d love to tell you everything we’re up to here at Stone (it’s…a lot!). If you are interested in learning more, be sure to email us at admissions@stoneindependent.org to schedule your private tour or shadow day!