March 2006
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March 30, 2006
First Ever College and Post-Secondary School Fair at Craig
Craig Upper School hosted its first college and post-secondary school fair on Tuesday, March 28th.
On the evening of Tuesday, March 28th the Craig Upper School in Lincoln Park held its first College and Post-Secondary Fair for LD students. The exhibitors represented a variety of learning venues for students with learning differences and included two and four year colleges with comprehensive support programs as well as vocational schools, structured living experiences, and school-to-work programs.
Traditionally, the colleges represented at such fairs are four year institutions with basic support services available to their learning disabled students. Often the admissions representatives are not current or familiar with the support services offered to the learning disabled student. The College Fair at Craig was organized for the purpose of giving students the opportunity to become fully informed about post-secondary options offering comprehensive support for their academic, social and emotional needs and to seek out the best match for their personal learning needs and career choices.
The exhibitors included representatives from four-year colleges such as St. Thomas Aquinas, Fairleigh Dickinson, Centenary College Southern Vermont College and American International College which all offer traditional majors with a comprehensive support program for the LD student. Two-year colleges with academic support such as Mitchell College, Landmark College and County College of Morris, were present as well. Programs for more hands-on students such as Johnson College and Morris County Vocational (Adult) were represented in addition to structured post secondary environments such as the New York School of Technology Vocational Independence Program, Maplebrook School CAPS program and The Berkshire Center College Internship. For students interested in school-to-work programs, there were representatives from Employment Horizons and Department of Vocational Rehabilitation.
“Finding the right college match is difficult enough for a traditional learner; imagine what it is like when someone learns differently and requires accommodations to ‘level the playing field’? Programs change from year to year and it is important that the guidance given to the learning disabled student and their parents is up-to-date and relevant," remarked Dawn DeSimone, Craig’s Director of Counseling who organized the fair. “Craig School believes its students deserve the chance to be successful in whatever they choose to do after high school graduation and we feel a fair such as this is the most effective way we can help make them aware of their choices.”
Lower School Expo Attracts Throngs!
Well over 200 parents, students and faculty attended the Craig School Expo on Friday, March 24th
Long a tradition of the Craig School, the spring Expo has taken many forms. Originally a Science Expo, children (and their parents) would labor mightily during the winter months to develop a project in the hope of winning the top prize – Best Overall Science Project in the School. First, second or third in Group was a lesser hope, but also keenly sought after.
The original projects had to meet the criteria of “research experiments” and were conducted strictly according the scientific method with Introduction, Method, Results and Discussion sections carefully typed and presented on a display board along with models or examples of the research. Each student was required to give an oral description of his or her work while parents, faculty and other students circulated around the displays. A team of adult judges conducted the interviews and scored the children’s efforts. There was an elaborate schedule of deadlines by which notes, drafts, revisions, and final copies were to be completed generally over a three month period.
Over the years the event took on the appearance of a full scale National Science Foundation competition with the parents, alas, feeling increasingly both competitive and put upon as they strove mightily to shore up their children’s efforts – the academic versions of soccer moms and dads.
In response to the furor, the event was gradually transformed. “Let’s do social studies instead of science, and eliminate the awards,” was the first suggestion. The displays, however, were still elaborate and although fascinating for the visitor, the faculty questioned whether the work and time invested was evenly spread across the curriculum.
And so the Expo evolved to its present format – an opportunity for children to engage in the performing arts and to showcase their work in all subject areas. Now the burden falls on the faculty and their students rather than on parents to display the evidence of classroom achievements. A child can now justly express pride in his or her own work while exhibiting a math exercise, research paper, or art project to a parent.
Thanks to Anthony Aquino for his play “Spring is Fun Too, 2” and to all the students who labored to present this celebration of and commentary about spring time holidays. Too, the incredible panoply of mobiles, projects, theme papers, models in every classroom is a testament to the exceptional efforts of the Craig students and their teachers over the school year. The Expo has successfully evolved into a multi-discipline event much in keeping with the cross-curricular emphasis at Craig.
March 28, 2006
Teacher Needed
Craig Upper School is looking for a science teacher.
Needed: Teacher - HS physics, chemistry & math. Required: Bachelor's degree in Sci/Ed, 5 yrs exp and certification. Send resume to dblanchard@craigschool.org.
March 20, 2006
PACS Sponsors a Workshop by Dr. Ken Gates at the Upper School
Dr. Ken Gates addressed Craig parents at the upper school on "Survival Skills for the Parents of the LD, ADD/ADHD Teen"
Dr. Gates began by reviewing several familiar points, beginning with self-esteem. He noted that self-esteem comes from an individual’s own sense of “caring and competency”. The caring starts within the family, then expands to teachers and friends. As children are given opportunities to give to and care for others and subsequently receive praise for their efforts, their feelings of self-esteem and competency develop.
Dr. Gates also reviewed Social Learning Theory and three types of individuals:
1) The typical person: normal social behavior is acquired through through observation, modeling, instruction and naturally occurring consequences,
2) The motivationally dependent person: normal social behavior is acquired through explicit and systematic consequences such as rewards and to a lesser degree, punishments,
3) The atypical person: normal behavior is not fully internalized and not maintained by typical consequences.
When discussing discipline, Dr. Gates reminded parents of the 2:1 rule – give two positive comments to every one negative. When using punishment to arrive at desirable behavior, take away something that doesn’t affect an individual’s self-esteem. For example, if a child loves karate and it is her/his only outside activity, rather than punish by taking away the karate class, take away the TV or internet instead.
An important part of a parent’s self-preservation is a happy, well disciplined child. Such a child has a strong sense of attachment and belonging; a sense of purpose and recognition for achievement; enjoys active play, recreation, physical fitness and rest. Other important elements include spirituality or a cause that transcends self, and a sense of security and optimism.
Dr. Gates discussed parenting pitfalls which often lead to stress for both parent and child. He included such pitfalls as denial, abandonment and expectation of miracles. Dr. Gates advised parents to "know your child, love and accept them for who they are – for weaknesses as well as their strengths." Enabling, ‘catastrophizing’, shame and blame, parental polarization and getting stuck in a rut will all work against a healthy parent child relationship.
A successful parent/child relationship can be achieved by fostering self-awareness, productivity, perseverance, appropriate goal setting, effective use of social support systems, emotional stability and coping strategies. Other factors not to be discounted are: IQ, academic skills, vocational training, job coaches and luck!
The evening closed with a discussion of the skills needed to be mastered in high school, which include setting realistic goals, strong time management and study skills, establishing a healthy lifestyle and developing independence.
Dr. Gates recommends the following books, which are also on CD:
Driven to Distraction: Hallowell and Ratey
Delivered from Distraction: Hallowell and Ratey
Healing ADD: Amen
Healing Anxiety and Depression: Amen
Authentic Happiness: Seligman
Dr. Gates speaks frequently on the issues of children and adolescents. He is the former school psychologist for the Mendham Township school district and has a private practice in Randolph, NJ. He is shown here with Dawn DeSimone who helped schedule the event.
Craig Celebrates Pi Day
Lower School students celebrated March 14 (3.14) with a full week of activities organized by the math department.
One of the more unusual celebrations of the Craig School year was Pi Day, March 14 (3.14). For those of us who have a hard time remembering elementary school math, pi denotes the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Although computers have carried the decimal digits of pi to over two billion places, Craig students worked with merely a thousand decimal digits during a week of pi activities.
The first pi task of the week was to string color-coded beads into a necklace. Each digit from 0 to 9 was assigned a particular color and the children's task was to string the correct sequence of colored beads; the integer “3” was indicated by a small bell and the decimal point indicated by a wooden bead. Each class strung between 50 and 100 beads in the correct order to create a Pi necklace. On the second day, Pi Day proper, all classes worked on a color-coded paper chain carrying pi to 1,000 places. The chain stretched all through the school hallways.
As the week progressed, students worked on a variety of activities according to their grade level and learned some interesting Pi facts such as: Albert Einstein was born on Pi Day (3/14/1879); the sequence 123456789 appears after 523 million digits; in ancient Greece, the symbol for pi denoted the number 80; Spock in a Star Trek episode outwits a computer by telling it to “compute to the last digit the value of pi”; and the ratio of the length of one side to the height of the Great Pyramid at Giza is approximately pi/2.
The culmination of Pi Week was an 8” wide cookie (“pie) for each class. Once the class measured the cookie and determined that pi really is 3.1415, the pi cookies rapidly disappeared!
March 07, 2006
Sold to the Highest Bidder!
Craig School's 19th annual auction is a huge success!
Held for the 2nd year at the Madison Hotel in Morristown on Saturday, March 4th, over 200 parents, faculty members, Trustees and friends gathered for a "Tuscany Evening" of good food, good cheer, and serious bidding on a wondrous assortment of donated treasures. 
The theme lent a romantic air to the festivities with chianti bottles on every table and grape leaves festooning the beautifully presented displays. Ticket sales were brisk as guests inspected the gift baskets stuffed with sports items, DVDs, books, cookware, ceramics, beauty products, etc., etc., donated by the parents of each grade. Moving into the silent auction room, people hovered near coveted items in such areas as "Sensational Entertainment" which included theatre tickets, restaurant certificates, and a library of books autographed by such authors as Jimmy Carter, Lauren Bacall, Goldie Hawn, and Caroline Kennedy. There was something for everyone -- for kids, for the home, for sports fans, collectors, wannabe chefs, music lovers, you name it!
Then came the main event -- the live auction with Board Chair, David Kaugher, once more exhorting the crowd to reach into their wallets and purses. Again, the selection was mind-boggling. Golf outings, vacation homes and trips, beauty treatments, fitness equipment, Broadway and the Metropolitan opera, and the very special decorative and art work of the Craig students and faculty. It was a spectacular evening thanks to the incredibly hard work over the past several months of the Craig School parents.
The auction is the major fund-raising effort in addition to the annual fund of the school year. The monies help support the superb educational program at Craig, a program that gives children with learning differences a real chance to succeed both academically and socially. The proceeds provide teachers with professional development opportunities and state-of-the-art classroom equipment such as SmartBoards, computer projectors, and specialized software. Auction dollars help fund the enrichment programs that tuition alone does not cover, the invited speakers and performers, the special trips that enhance the classroom experience, and the supplementary educational materials that take children beyond textbooks.
We thank all who put together this very special evening and who cheerfully emptied their pockets on behalf of the Craig School students.
