Education section
Express Fluency- a new language school offering Spanish classes in Brattleboro and Putney– is offering free intro classes over the coming weeks.
The way that they teach language is so radically different from the way most of us were taught language in school that you have to experience one of these classes for yourself to see what it feels like to pick-up a language easily.
Putney’s Greenwood School received national attention Tuesday night with the PBS premier of Ken Burns new film, The Address. The film shows how students learn to recite the Gettysburg Address, and how that process impacts them. Viewers get to follow along, watch the struggles and triumphs along the way, and see the results. If you missed it, I have it embedded below.
I never had to memorize the Gettysburg Address (it looks like a tough assignment!), but I do know the relief and exhilaration of mastering something difficult. It can be a life-changing experience to do something that seemed impossible. It makes other, future impossibles possible. This film captures that process quite well.
BRATTLEBORO UNION HIGH SCHOOL BOARD
53 Green Street
Brattleboro, VT 05301
www.wssu.k12.vt.us
NOTICE OF COMMITTEE MEETING
The BAMS Committee will meet at 7:45 a.m. on Monday, April 21 in the BAMS Conference Room.
The BUHS Teacher Curriculum Committee will meet at 6:00 p.m. on Monday, April 21 in the Cusick Conference Room.
If you travel to skateparks, as I do, it’s impossible to not notice the trend- younger and younger users are appearing in greater numbers. The prevalence of scooters is undeniable. Many scooter users begin their riding careers soon after they get solid on their feet as walkers.
If you travel to a city, it’s striking how many youth travel the sidewalks, often rolling alongside their parents pushing a sibling in a stroller. There are adult scooters too, and it wouldn’t be exaggeration to speak in terms of an army of scooters flooding a street.
Hospice Foundation of America’s Annual National Living With Grief Program, sponsored by Brattleboro Area Hospice and The Retreat, Tuesday, April 22nd, 2014, 1:00-4:30. This educational event is free of charge to attend.
This program focuses exclusively on the issues that adolescents face as they cope with death loss, and explores ways that professionals and other adults who work with adolescents can help them cope. The format for the afternoon is an archived webcast featuring national experts as well as a live discussion led by local professionals who have expertise in this area.
The teleconference will be held at the Brattleboro Retreat Education Center. Refreshment will be provided. Continuing Education Credits are available through Hospice Foundation of America.
Bryn Mawr Decides to Drop Vowels
April 1, 2014
Bryn Mawr College is announcing today that it is dropping the vowels from its name and questioning the use of vowels generally. The college will now be known as Brn Mwr. The move is being described as the first major initiative of the college’s new president, Kim Cassidy. A statement from Cassidy said: “This is the age of Twitter, every character counts. And really, what’s the difference, no one can pronounce our name anyway.” The college also announced plans for an academic conference related to the institution’s new skepticism of vowels. The conference is The Hegemony of the Vowel: Incontinence and Lipogrammatics.” One of the planned sessions is “The Habermasian Response: Communicative Ir-Rationality?”
BRATTLEBORO UNION HIGH SCHOOL BOARD
53 Green Street
Brattleboro, VT 05301
www.wssu.k12.vt.us
NOTICE OF COMMITTEE MEETING
The BUHS Teacher Curriculum Committee will meet at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, April 7 in the Cusick Conference Room.
The BUHS District #6 Finance Committee will meet at 7:00 a.m. on Wednesday, April 9 in the WSESU Central Office Conference Room, 53 Green Street.
It is that time of year !!! Planning your summer? Got an idea for you. Host
an exchange student from Spain in July…just 3+ weeks. Bring an international dimension to your life and share Vermont with an eager teen. For more info contact Ann, 802-257-4710, exchangevt@gmail.com. Host families also needed for the coming school year for kids from around the globe.
BRATTLEBORO UNION HIGH SCHOOL BOARD
53 Green Street, Brattleboro, VT 05301
www.wssu.k12.vt.us
NOTICE OF MEETING
The BUHS #6 Board of Directors will meet at 7:00 p.m. on Monday, March 17 in the WRCC Cusick Conference Room.
AGENDA
It is important that newly elected Board members have completed the taking of the oath of office prior to participation in this meting.
On Tuesday, March 11 the Safe and Green Campaign invites you to join us to commemorate the beginning of a man-made permanent crisis for the entire planet: the meltdown of multiple nuclear reactors in Japan. From 6:30 – 8:30PM in the Brattleboro Food Coop Community Room, we will host “Voices of Fukushima 2014,” an evening of short documentaries on Fukushima followed by a discussion with Chiho Kaneko about her recent visit to the Fukushima region.
Last year the Safe and Green Campaign organized the first “Voices of Fukushima.” People in seven towns
around Vermont Yankee “adopted” their counterpart towns in Japan. In Brattleboro, we studied what life is like for the 21,000 residents evacuated from the town of Namie, five miles from the nuclear reactors.
This year marks the 120th anniversary of the founding of Kurn Hattin Homes for Children. The non-profit is located in Westminster, Vermont and serves as a charitable year-round home and school for boys and girls ages 5-15, who are in need or at risk. It is the oldest childcare organization in the northeast to be continuously supported solely by philanthropic donations.
While working with homeless youth in Boston during the late 1800s, Kurn Hattin founder and Westminster native Charles Albert Dickinson developed his vision to create a place where children in need could experience the kind of childhood he himself had enjoyed in Vermont, believing that rural New England life instilled the values, skills, and character necessary to lead a successful, productive life.
The Windham Regional Career Center at Brattleboro Union High School is pleased to announce their Community Education and Training Programs for this spring. Betsy Gentile, Workforce Development Manager and Adult Education Coordinator has developed 18 community education and training programs to meet the needs of area employers and their employees as well as providing personal and professional enrichment opportunities for all community members.
BRATTLEBORO UNION HIGH SCHOOL BOARD
53 Green Street
Brattleboro, VT 05301
www.wssu.k12.vt.us
NOTICE OF COMMITTEE MEETING
The 2013-2014 BUHS District #6 Finance Committee will meet at 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday, March 5 in the WSESU Central Office Conference Room, 53 Green Street.
NOTICE OF MEETING
The BUHS #6 Board of Directors will meet at 7:00 p.m. on Monday, March 3 in the WRCC Cusick Conference Room.
Notice is hereby given that the Brattleboro Town School District Auditors’ Report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2013, is available upon request and may be picked up at the Brattleboro Town Clerk’s office, 230 Main Street, Brattleboro, Vermont, or the Windham Southeast Supervisory Union (WSESU) Central Office, 53 Green Street, Brattleboro, Vermont.
Persons interested in obtaining a copy of said Auditors’ Report should contact the Brattleboro Town Clerk (251-8157) or the WSESU Central Office (254-3730). Copies are available on the WSESU website: www.wssu.k12.vt.us or for pick up, and may be transmitted electronically or sent via first class mail.
MONTPELIER, Vt., Feb. 19 – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) provided an overview on federal education policy in testimony today at the Statehouse before the Vermont House and Senate education committees.
Sanders, a member of the Senate education committee, focused on ways to expand pre-kindergarten and make college more affordable.
“There is perhaps no issue more important than how we educate our youth,” Sanders said. “I am very concerned that, on many levels, we are failing our youth. We must do away with the archaic notion that education begins at 4 or 5 years old. For far too long, our society has undervalued the need for high-quality and widely accessible early childhood education.”
The Brattleboro Town School Board rescheduled last week’s cancelled board meeting for today, February 10, 2014 at 5:00 pm at Academy School. It is expected that the Board will discuss the first public forum which was held in January, among other topics.
Interested members of the public are welcome to attend. If you do, please post comments here for the benefit of those of us who are unable to be there.
Neighborhood Schoolhouse revives “kinder” program for ages 4-1/2 to 6
Brattleboro, Vt.—When education pioneer Friedrich Fröbel invented the nurturing “garden of children” we now call kindergarten, he never dreamed that rigid literacy training, minimal recess, and a controversial “Common Core” curriculum would one day bear its name.
Kindergarten just isn’t what it used to be—many educators recommend starting at age six because the school day is so demanding—and some parents are seeking alternatives.
In anticipation of the BUHS District #6 Annual Meeting at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, February 11 in the high school gymnasium, the BUHS District #6 Annual Reports are available at all WSESU schools, Superintendent’s Office, Brooks Memorial Library, District Town Offices (Brattleboro, Dummerston, Guilford, Putney, Vernon), and .
A Public Forum to discuss the proposed FY ’15 budget will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, 2/3/14 in the WRCC Cusick Conference Room.
BRATTLEBORO UNION HIGH SCHOOL BOARD
53 Green Street
Brattleboro, VT 05301
www.wssu.k12.vt.us
NOTICE OF COMMITTEE MEETING
The BUHS District #6 Finance Committee will meet at 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday, February 5 in the WSESU Central Office Conference Room, 53 Green Street.
NOTICE OF MEETING
The BUHS #6 Board of Directors will hold a Public Information Meeting about the FY 2015 Proposed Budget at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, February 3 in the WRCC Cusick Conference Room. The regular meeting will immediately follow.
Express Fluency language school launches this week with a free intro class in Brattleboro.
Express Fluency (formerly Escuelita Spanish School) teaches Spanish (other languages coming soon) in the way our brains are designed to acquire language. Their classes are lively and engaging, and 100% comprehensible– allowing students to acquire Spanish naturally and effortlessly. Their methods resemble the way in which we call learned our first language. There will be a free intro class in Brattleboro this Thursday, January 30th at 5:30 pm at the Neighborhood Schoolhouse. A new beginner session begins the following Thursday, Feb 6th and runs for 7 weeks from 5:30-7:30.
