Bread Baking!

This past week, we had what I thought was a wonderful event at Neary -- our 4th and 5th graders participated in the life skills bread baking program sponsored by King Arthur Flour. This past Thursday, King Arthur sent a representative to Neary, along with 700+ bags of flour, packages of yeast, dough scrapers, recipe books. . . all the materials the kids will need to bake two loaves of bread. During the assembly, the students learned how to make bread from scratch, as well as how to use bread dough to make breadsticks, pretzels, braided loaves, cinnamon rolls, and pizza crusts. The students were wonderful -- they listened attentively, and seemed to enjoy the program. Each student went home with a bag containing two 2-pound bags of flour, a package of yeast, a dough scraper, a recipe book, and a plastic bag, so that each student can make a loaf to share with his/her family, as well as a loaf to bring back to school and donate to a homeless shelter or soup kitchen. What a wonderful project! I think this connects well with both the 5th grade study of colonial America and our whole-school commitment to community service and this year's partnership with the Southborough Food Pantry. I hope that students will not only learn something about the art of bread baking, but also enjoy sharing their new skills with their families and feel good about being able to donate something they made to help others. Thank you to 5th grade teacher Mr. Stubbart for organizing this program and making it happen for Neary students!

Race to Where?

By next week -- January 13th -- every school district in Massachusetts is being asked to sign and agree to a "Memorandum of Understanding" with the state pursuant to which each district promises to take certain actions, including, among other things, tying teachers' compensation to student performance on standardized testing. This project is part of Massachusetts' proposal to the federal government to obtain part of the federal funding for what is being called the "Race to the Top." (See the Massachusetts DESE website for more information -- www.doe.mass.edu)

In my view, the "Race to the Top" epitomizes everything that is wrong with the current wave of mandated "education reform." Now, please don't misunderstand me -- I am passionate about continuous improvement, and convinced that we can make all of our schools wonderful places of excellence and growth for our students. But I think there are two fundamental things wrong with current legislation relating to education -- the goals, and the methods for reaching those goals.