Gentle Folk

Episode 11 - Predictability and Support

The are several factors that makes New Covenant unique among schools.  We could point to the classical, Christian tradition from which the curriculum has been deeply shaped.  While that is a key factor, it doesn’t completely explain the culture of the school.  There are two other things that should be considered.  Our consultants at Independent School Management (ISM) have conducted longitudinal research to determine the factors that contribute most powerfully to student success and well-being.  With data from more than 4,000 schools they have found incontrovertibly that the biggest drivers in student success are predictability and support.  Predictability, by which we mean the “rule-reward” structure is strong, but also intelligible and fair from the student perspective; and support, which we define as  an environment in which  students perceive that the entire faculty, administration, and coaching staffs genuinely seek the students’ success and work to achieve that success without inflated reinforcement.  We can think of these factors as the two rails on which a train runs.  The rails are not the main thing - the train is - so these two “rails” are carefully maintained in our school.  Join me and our Principals for a discussion in this month’s Gentle Folk Podcast.

Episode 10 - Writing Literacy: From Threshold to Thesis

Speech, both oral and written, is a distinguishing feature of human beings.  Yet learning to write is an arduous task that requires attention to rules and lots of practice.  Not surprisingly, the classical tradition provides a time-tested method of developing this skill.  A student at New Covenant begins to acquire this skill from the threshold of literacy on the first day of school to the completion of a thesis by the last.  Both in college and in later vocational contexts, our students demonstrate notable ability to express themselves.  It doesn’t happen by chance. In this episode Middle School Instructor, Natalie Olenik and School of Rhetoric Principal, Dr. Erin Uminn, discuss the precise way we teach students the art of writing.

Episode 9 - Leisure and Learning

This month’s episode of “Gentle Folk” features a discussion on leisure and learning.  Our guest is Dr. Erin Uminn, Principal of the School of Rhetoric, who earned a PhD in education, and whose dissertation was an extended treatment of what the Greeks called “schole” (pronounced SKO-lay).  If that word looks somewhat familiar, it should; it’s the word from which we get “school,” but its original meaning had more to do with what we might call leisure.  In this podcast, Dr. Uminn provides a fascinating discussion of this concept and its implications for the students and faculty alike.

Episode 8 - The Necessity of Beauty at School

In this Episode, Headmaster Heaton interviews Derek Brooks of Benedictus Art and discusses the pursuit of beauty and its necessity within the school context

Episode 7 - Teach Us to Pray: The Book of Common Prayer in the Life of the School Community

Headmaster Heaton joins faculty members Lukas Stock, Jacob Webb, and Jonathan Hart in a thoughtful discussion on the Book of Common Prayer and the ways in which it forms and nourishes the worship and daily rhythms of our school community.