naturewalk

“Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.” -Rabindranath Tagore

This warm and sunny week has been filled with sweet-sounding tunes of our students in music classes and soothing hum of the grasshoppers in our gardens. The Geckos started the week by going on a nature walk with their magical paintbrushes, while the Starlings observed some of the fruit trees we have around campus. Grade 3A began their next Thematic Unit on Tumpek Kandang, a Balinese ceremony that honors animals that help Balinese people in their daily lives, and the Middle School’s Grade 8 kicked off their newest Thematic Unit on Mass and Capacity with a wild water race. What a fun week we all had!

In this issue:

Green School News

Upcoming Events

Ongoing Events

Weekly Sports Update

Media & Links

Green School featured on “Jalan-Jalan Men”(Let’s Travel, Man!)

Also in the Green School Community

Green School News

Parent Information and Events Calendar

creativity

February:
Feb 7-9 : Green School Educator Course
Feb 12 : Parent Education Offering with Robert Lonsdorf 9:00am at the Meranggi Bale: A Presentation on Bali’s Unique Nature, Culture and Spirituality
Feb 14 : Valentine’s Day Assembly, 02:15pm in the Mepantigan
Feb 15 & 16 : Green School Family Day to Munduk Mountains & Bali Treetop
Feb 19 : “Get into Golf” free introductory program with Pak Rory (see details here)
Feb 21, 22, 24 : No School, Professional Development Days
Feb 27 : Parent Meeting with Principal, Head of School & General Manager,
08.30am in the Mepantigan

March
March 8 : Saraswati ‐ required attendance for staff & students
March 10 : No School, Saraswati Day
March 15 : Green School Family Day – Hike Mount Batur
March 28 : Parent‐teacher conference
March 29‐April 6: Mid‐semester (II) break

From the Head of School

john I have been reading a few interesting papers and books of late – one from John Medina, called Brain Rules. In this treatise, Medina looks at rules for the brain and considers the implications for schooling. He considers key features that help with the brain’s development: exercise, sleep, nutrition, lesson-structures, gender differences, memory.

Medina also exposes the neural myths: there is no right-brain/left-brain evidence; there is no Visual Auditory Kinaesthetic (VAK) learning dominance; memory is not a box, there is no such thing as multi-tasking.

Medina’s book, Brain Rules, puts forward interesting and reliable findings from research, which we would be mad not to consider. He outlines key elements for learning gains – how to improve the inputs, embedding and recall of concepts. These are the elements that we should be targeting in our schools.

Briefly:

There needs to be active play breaks and exercise daily. Exercise improves a host of executive functions. We did not evolve to sit in a classroom or office for 8 hours a day. Two recess breaks is a good idea. An active lifestyle halves the risk of Alzheimer’s and cognitive degradation.
Sleep is important for any learner – and so we need to switch off electronic distractors at home in the evenings (including television) because they over-stimulate. A NASA study found a 26 minute nap improved pilot performance by 35%!
Meditation is beneficial for it can promote mindfulness and calms the mind – stressed brains don’t learn!
Every brain is wired differently. Our neural connections are shaped by our individual experiences. Therefore even twins have different experiences because perception differs.
Multi-tasking is a myth. Our brains process information sequentially. Distractions mean we become task-switchers, which means multi-tasking evokes over 3 times more errors and takes more time to accomplish a task. Drivers using mobile phones are 4 times more likely to get into accidents than drunk drivers!!
Nutrition is key – we need to have healthy diets feeding our brains to maximize ‘knowledge’ and ‘understanding’. The brain feeds off glucose and relies on oxygen to remove free radicals.
Engagement is a keystone that pulls all learning traits together – and the magic number for instruction is 10 minutes. 1 minute for a general single concept; 9 minutes to detail and connect iterations with the single concept. After this ten-minute period, there must be a ‘hook’ to stimulate and hold the mind for another ten minutes.
Activity based learning holds interest and contextualizes learning – hands-on is ingrained in our psyches.
Stories and narratives hold interest – so engagement can be harnessed by using parables and connected examples.
Memory needs lots of repetition. Sometimes it can take over ten years to have concepts “embedded” – so we cannot get frustrated saying, “You should have learnt that in Year 3” because brains may need much longer periods of revision in order to truly master a concept.
Test taking improves memory retention
Learning is not chronological – it is bizarre we group students in age-cages where a child’s birthdate determines learning content, year group and social mix.
Being smart is being open to learning
Maleness is real – and is based on nature and nurture. As such, boys do need variations in how things are explained.
Multisensory learning improves recall – and smells retrieve memory better.
Visual sense is the dominant sense in everyone – and pictures are better for recall than words or sentences. The rule of thumb is you will get 3x better recall of information that is presented visually rather than orally, and you get 6x better recall for information simultaneously presented visually and orally.
Schools must focus on promoting curiosity.
Families and relationships in the home have a direct bearing on a student’s learning success.
Family stories emphasizing elaboration improve cognition

I wish to contest schools can be structured better to maximize the learning experience and gains. Did you know there is greater inequality in schools than between schools? (Ben Levin, University of Toronto).

Schools do need carefully considered frameworks. Schools need to promote engagement, stoke curiosity, implement best practice, repeat purposefully concepts being taught, and look at how the day, the term, the year (and the physical environment) support individualized learning development. Schools also need strong community links.

It is all about optimizing our resources and our sources so we can work smarter not just harder. A good motto to forge in the fires of the front line: everything with purpose.

Caterpillar Alert!

Caterpillar The children at Green School love to be out in nature, and are encouraged to go out, explore, and play as much as possible in their natural environment. The flora and fauna they can see and learn about around campus is incredibly diverse though sometimes, some beautiful little creatures are discovered that can pack some pretty uncomfortable results if touched.

Bali is home to several different types of moths and before they become the lovely airborne creatures that you see fluttering about, they are furry little caterpillars. You may have seen a few around – cute and fuzzy but definitely hands-off! The hairs and spikes on their body can have an uncomfortable and sometimes painful effect if you touch them, leaving an itchy and irritable rash that appears within minutes after the initial contact. Burning and itching can last for hours and be excruciatingly painful, but most of the South East Asian caterpillars will rarely have that effect on you or your child. The rash is generally mild, and only lasts an hour or two.

How do you treat it? The first step, of course, is to remove the danger. If the caterpillar is still on you, take it off with tweezers; do not try to touch it! In some cases, the hairs or spikes can still be stuck in the skin, so you can either pluck them out individually with tweezers, or you can use a piece adhesive tape over the affected area, repeatedly sticking then stripping the tape off to help remove the tiny hairs. Then wash the area with soap and water, and apply ice packs to reduce the stinging sensation. If you wish, you can apply a topical, low potency steroid cream to ease the inflammation. If possible, try to photograph the caterpillar that you or your child had been stung by so that you can identify it using the many photos online. It is easier to treat it if you know exactly what variety it is.

Green School and Yayasan Peduli Kemanusiaan Connection

green-school-with-lokal-murid

Started in 2012, the Middle School has a program which helps Green School students connect with students from Yayasan Peduli Kemanusiaan (YPK). Known as the Bali Humanity Care Foundation, YPestablished in 2001 in Denpasar, in response to the needs of people with physical disabilities in Bali. The foundation also provides specialized modified education for children with physical disabilities.

green-school-bali-with-sekolah-lokal Through our theme Health and Healing, the grade 7 class has been visiting them. We are engaging in activities such as gardening, cooking, sharing favorite things and culture, yoga, art, drumming, singing, games etc. We had our first visit this year on January 15th. We are visiting them again on the 10th February and we are inviting them to Green School in March. Our first visit went really well and it was great to see their happy smiles when they saw us.

YPK will hold a High Tea Event ‘Love for Muji’ on Saturday 15th February at the Best Western Premier, Sunset Road. It is a charity events to raise fund for a 10 year old boy, Muji, who suffers from Cerebral Palsy, to come to receive treatment at YPK’s rehabilitation centre in Denpasar. See our event poster here here, for more information go to YPK’s website http://ypkbali.org.

Upcoming Events

Wednesday Evenings in February with John Stewart

john-hary-school This week Green School Founder, John Hardy, offered Bambu Indah as the venue for the first of a Month Of Wednesday Evening Dinners to give Green School new parents the opportunity to meet and get to know the new Head of School, John Stewart.

The evening was a great success as a few of our new families were entertained within the exquisite setting of the boutique hotel’s Minang House, beautifully decorated with welcoming flowers in the Balinese Tradition. The conversation was open and forthcoming about John’s vision of a Green School education. The evening began with an ethereal interactive musical experience with Rudiger, the artist behind Green School’s unique harps. The complimentary BYO dinner was authentic and delicious and also gave parents an opportunity to meet John’s wife, Sophie.

The couple are already looking forward to next week’s dinner. There are a few spots still available for those who are new and want to come.

Those who want to come along to one of the three dinners yet to take place in February should respond to the invitations already sent out and RSVP to Yuni Basrie at yuni@johnbali.com. Numbers for the dinners are limited and need to be in by the previous Monday.

Another evening will be held at the end of term so that John can meet and address the whole Green School parent body at a venue and date yet to be announced.

Green School High School Rises With One Billion People Around the World for VDAY 2014

vday

Please come and join us on February 14th, 2014 for a special VDay assembly hosted by the high school. VDay is a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls. We will welcome some important guests and explore the issues concerning violence against women, both globally and locally. Come out on Valentine’s day at 02:10pm –we will sing, we will dance and we will rise together to break the silence and end the violence!

‘HEALTH IS WEALTH’ Green School Community Event on February 14th
Options available for even the busiest person

1 2 3 4
EAT WELL MOVE WELL CHOOSE WELL DAILY KINDNESS

yogikids

The Health is Wealth Community Event would like to get as many of the GS parents, staff and students participating as possible. We just need to choose one thing (big or small) in one of the above four categories.

Health is Wealth is a non-profit run by two GS parents where they have been visiting local schools around India to educate students about the innate wonders of their body and how to make good choices to support long term health. The children in India come from the base of the pyramid societies. Central, hot, poor dusty India. They have no shoes, half of them have no parents and the ones that do have parents see them maybe twice a year. They sleep on concrete floors, 100% are undernourished.

India-kids We will embrace the same material being used in India here in our Green School’s health is wealth program. Although we come from differing nations, cultures, wealth levels, body shape and size, these health principles are universal, inviting, non-dogmatic and simple to understand.

Please come to the launch event Friday Feb. 14th at 4:00pm.

Here we will get a summary of the category options and a fun condensed presentation of what our Middle School students did last term.
Two special short movies will shown about “health is wealth”.
People split into their groups of interest and we all walk through our personal health maps together.
The idea is to add one positive key stone habit and do it every day for 28 days with community support. Just focusing on one thing, research shows that other areas of health start to improve by default.
Optional dinner after the presentation from Living Food Lab 60,000 Rupiah. Please contact joguelke@gmail.com if interested.

Green School will be taking the Health is Wealth Program to a neighboring local school of over 1000 kids!

We will finish the event on March 14th

Please everyone participate! All us participants and staff are invited to a fun day of activities and community building fun. It will be an experience sure to fill everyone’s cup.

Free “Get into Golf” Introduction Program at Green School

golf-green-school-bali Introducing the “Get into Golf” school programme. Head coach Rory Young is a PGA professional and ex-‐tour professional with a passion for teaching golf. In 2013, Rory and The Golf Academy Bali introduced the “Get into Golf” school programme with great success and now it is coming to The Green School.

On Wednesday, 19th February there will be a free introductory session into golf at the school. The session will start at 03.30pm and will give the children involved a great insight into what golf is about.

For those interested there is also a full junior programme on Saturdays at New Kuta Golf where Rory guides the juniors through every aspect of the game using new and fun ways to introduce the game of golf.

For more information, contact Rory at Rory@golfacademybali.com or +6282-145-285-408.

Ongoing Events

Weekly Sports Update

BSSA Basketball:
Well done to all our teams for a great effort in Week 1 of the round robin games!
Matches for Wednesday 12 February:
9/10s v French at French (bemo leaves 2.30pm)
11/12 boys v CCS 1 and 2 at Green School (2.30pm start)
13/14 boys v CCS 1 and 2 at CCS (bemo leaves 2pm)
13/14 girls- no game
11/12 girls- no game

Parents please inform coaches if you’ll be collecting your child from the match venue. A child automatically goes back to Green School with the coach on the bemo if a parent does not inform the coach of a pick up.

Please make sure the kids have green and white sports kit and proper shoes, and bring water bottles with them.

After School Sport: Free “Get into Golf” Free Introductory Class
Another great after school activities program is here! Attend a one day free introductory class of “Get into Golf’ with Head Coach, Rory Young.
Date : Wednesday, 19th February 2014
Time : 03.30pm-04.15pm
Contact Pak Rory at Rory@golfacademybali.com or +6282-145-285-408.

Media and Links

Green School featured on “Jalan-Jalan Men”(Let’s Travel, Man!)

Green School was featured on a famous Indonesian online media and series “Jalan-jalan Men!” Click here to see the Green School part and click here to see the whole episode.

Also in Green School Community

Green School Family Snapshot

john-family Sophie and I first came to Green School on our 20th wedding anniversary last year when Greenstock was on. We were immediately impressed with the atmosphere, vibrancy and community – as well as the amazing environment. We have four children: Katie (aged 18, just finished her HSC and currently completing a Gap Year in Cambridge, UK – at my old school), Celia (just turned 16 and in Year 10 at Green School), Wilfred or Wilf (13 and in Year 7), and Mimi (11 and in Year 6). Our children had never been to Bali – but we felt it was important they gain a more global outlook and recognize the sustainability issues impacting this small blue planet. As John Hardy would say, “Escape the mono-culture”.

Things seemed to align. When I was contacted and asked whether I would like to apply for a position, I decided to go through the process to see the final outcome – no decision until there is a decision to be made. That involved attending two Green Educator courses and being interviewed by Board members on numerous occasions as part of a selection panel interviewing prospective candidates. This process highlighted to me the great vision and creative acumen of key members. I am a creative mind and so I found a ‘good fit’ and was successful in the process. The hardest part was informing my community. My father said, “I am sure you know what you’re doing but you’re going from sandstone to bamboo!”

Needless to say, I was a little anxious joining as I know how much has been achieved in such a short time. I also know that there has been a lot of change – which is part of the process when a new school starts. However, I have been welcomed as have my children. They are enjoying the school – and love the relationships with staff and the freedom of no uniform – as is Sophie: the mornings are so much easier.

All my children surf. I grew up at Lennox Head, and we still go there every holiday to stay on my family’s farm. It is my special place. I love learning and am passionate about education. Sophie is a journalist-come-writer-come-mother-come-everything. We are still to find our ‘place’ in Bali but we have definitely found our heart. I love the Balinese culture. We are so pleased we took the jump.

A quote H. Jackson Brown Jr – wrongly attributed to Mark Twain – is one I love to follow:
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Ubud Chiropractic Gives Free Spinal Screening for Green School Students and Parents

Spine Jyoti, parent of Dali (grade 7) and Finn (grade 4),
recently opened UBUD CHIROPRACTIC and as a part of the Health is Wealth month on Green School (starting mid February), they want to create awareness around the importance of your child’s spinal health. They would like to offer a free screening in their practice during this month. Chiropractic focuses on spinal function. The spine houses the nervous system and this system plays an important role in a child’s physical, emotional and intellectual well-being.

Signs and symptoms of an unbalanced nervous system may include:

Headaches
Tiredness
ADHD
Sleeping difficulties
Stress related conditions
Back pain and/or Neck stiffness
Pregnancy related conditions

Please phone or mail our office to make an appointment at: +62 822 3629 2888, email: ubudchiropractic@gmail.com. Address: Jalan Raya Ubud (opposite Bali Buda Mart and Kue cafe)

Yours in health,
Jyoti Schonfelder DC

From the Green School Shop

greenshop Need a laptop bag, purse, wallet, folder, laundry basket, or a beach bag?

Check out the XS Project catalogue at the Green School Shop as we are planning to order from them soon. Get your requests in!

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