The Stone Independent Blog

“The quality of your life is a direct reflection of the quality of the questions you are asking yourself”

“By establishing clandestine schools, the people of Khonkho  took up the tools of the oppressor to fight for liberation. Education in Khonkho was literally life or death. To borrow a phrase from bell hooks, education in Khonkho was the practice of freedom.”

“It’s been nearly 8 years since we had that conversation, in so many wonderful and unexpected ways we are a very different school than the one we envisioned back in 2016, but here’s what has never changed: we have never turned anyone away for financial reasons, and it’s our goal to make sure we never do.”

“My sidekick, Sully, is my Australian Shepherd who hikes, camps, and hangs out at practice. He loves watching over his herd of teenagers.”

“The long-term implications of AI are, of course, profound — what ChatGPT means in the short term for students, schools, and education is at best unclear.  ChatGPT may quite literally change education forever in important and interesting ways; it may merely be a “plagiarism super-tool”; it might both dramatically improve academic research and also undermine our understanding of well-constructed sentences. Schools across the country have “banned” it; others say: absolutely, do not ban it. Some say it’s a little like the introduction of the calculator to mathematics classes; others see this as a paradigm shift of immeasurable proportions.”

Nothing ruins my day like a mustard stain on my favorite pair of jeans. If you’re reading this, you’re always welcome to borrow my Tide stain stick.

“Last week, Lee House worked together to transform Stone into “Camp Lee”.  For about 24 hours, a Lee-themed campsite sat in the middle of our School; advisory meetings and student meeting and even small-group faculty meetings took place in tents; students played cornhole and jenga; a “campfire”...materialized, as did multiple sing-alongs (#JohnDenverFTW).”

“Our entire school has been embroiled in a running “serif vs. non-serif font” debate for +/- 6 years – it’s tearing us apart! – and today we’ve come to learn that The State Department is embroiled in it too: the State department has decided to retire the use of Times New Roman (that’s a big win for the anti-serif community) for…Calibri. “

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?