The Roberts Field School

We are Expanding and Enrolling Kindergarten!

FIELD NOTES

Roberts Field School’s Ode To Remaining Actively Curious

"I have no special talents, I'm only passionately curious."

-Albert Einstein


The sheer delight of opening a new school year comes in many forms of ritual celebration. One of the most palpably enjoyable is witnessing the children arrive at the school threshold, undeniably older, taller, and emanating confidence with a bit more pep in their step even if there might be an initial, short-lived, measure of timidity. This eager reemergence nourishes our expansion as a community and bolsters our curiosity as we look forward to engaging in three full seasons together.



As educators and leaders, we know the most highly successful people hold one specific attribute in common, they are extraordinarily curious and were nurtured to be so. We relish the opportunity to foster curiosity across disciplines and we celebrate the satisfaction that comes from learning that way. Roberts Field was founded upon the essential question, “What do children and families need to remain fully engaged with community, the natural environment, and vigorous multi-dimensional learning?”



Our priority continues to be infusing all aspects of academic, social, and emotional learning with the innate wonders of environmental field science, the joy of ubiquitous mathematical acquisition, and the full expanse of humanities. We remain proud of the stream of our questions, and relish in the flow of discovered answers.



This school year, as always, we will offer our students, faculty, and families resources and opportunities to remain curious and celebratory together both in school and at home. We look forward to learning, growing, and remaining curious with you in a year filled with science study and research, earth conservation, and community peacemaking!



We encourage you to take advantage of the following resources to keep the process of joyful discovery ignited at home.



NPR's Science Friday Educate.

NPR Podcast For Curious Kids

Peace and Presence for Family Life

FIELD NOTES

Roberts Field’s Compassionate and Just Contribution to Elementary Education


The kindergarten through 5th grade trajectory of thematic-based learning is of a depth and expanse that prioritizes providing the student with consistent visual, visceral, narrative, and historical representations. Students are immersed in the stories, plights, and accomplishments of people from different racial, cultural, ethnic, and environmental backgrounds spanning the seven continents of the globe. As well, progressive, justice-based explorations involving how individuals and groups have moved and struggled through time and society are opened for truthful understanding around diversity and equity. This includes social justice reflections that are developmentally appropriate to each classroom. At the absolute center of RFS, and our school’s organization, has always been the commitment to nurturing our students as knowledge seekers, incessantly curious about the great myriad of human civilization throughout history on our Earth – including humanity’s greatest flaws, challenges, achievements, and visions of progress and evolution. In this dedication, we care that each of our students also perceives themselves, their communities, and their heritage as mirrored and celebrated. This is the heart of the RFS mission, and this is the absolute spirit with which we educate and bring about peace and justice in the world. Most ubiquitously, this is accomplished through the literature, picture books, and areas of environmental field science investigation, research, and nature-based mindfulness practices that are a part of every school week.

As you continue to grow with us, through the weekly Lenses, visits to your child’s classroom, conversations, events, and celebrations with us, we hope that you continue to see, intuit, and grow in your awareness of RFS’ thorough, just, and compassionate contribution to elementary education.

FIELD NOTES

Interdisciplinary Learning Continued: Exactly what is interdisciplinary learning? Why are we so committed to it? And, what are the benefits?

Earlier this month we wrote about some of the elements of our thematic approach to developing an interdisciplinary curriculum. This week, we’re sharing our detailed Interdisciplinary Units of Study overview outlining the essential questions guiding each of our classroom unit explorations. We also realize that although the term “interdisciplinary” suggests some intuitive definitions, it might be helpful to explicitly summarize the RFS practical understanding of this approach to instruction and learning. As defined by The International Bureau of Education, interdisciplinary is an approach to curriculum integration generating an understanding of themes and ideas cutting across disciplines and of the connections between different disciplines and their relationship to the real world. An interdisciplinary approach emphasizes process and meaning rather than product and content by combining contents, theories, methodologies, and perspectives from multiple disciplines.

A quick google search will reveal an abundance of scientific research on the benefits of interdisciplinary learning from the fields of neuroscience, cognitive science, social psychology, and human development. From our perspective, two of the most important gains identified in the research are the development of critical thinking and cognitive development and an increased ability to uncover preconceptions and recognize bias.

When students are immersed in interdisciplinary learning, they strengthen their capacity to understand multiple viewpoints on any given topic and integrate conflicting insights. When you think about it, this kind of cognitive growth makes perfect sense. Different disciplines often attempt to understand the same or related problems, but each discipline adopts different approaches to evaluating their insights. As students explore these distinct and often divergent paths to learning with roots in multiple disciplines, they naturally begin to make connections and integrate ideas. The cognitive bonus is the ability to engage in more complex issues. Further, because we introduce students to these complex issues through multiple disciplinary lenses, existing notions are naturally challenged and students instinctively strengthen their ability to notice prejudices or implicit bias.

We invite you to take a few moments to read through our Interdisciplinary Units of Study and incorporate some of our essential questions into the content of your practical family discussions and debates at home. We’d love to hear about “what makes something a system” in your family. Perhaps your family will have a personal need for “why inventions happen” or how you can “attempt to repair wrongs done in the past that have become part of your everyday systems.” We’re sure your children will be eager collaborators in developing new systems!

References:
International Bureau of Education. (n.d.). Retrieved from: http://www.ibe.unesco.org/en/glossary-curriculum-terminology/i/interdisciplinary-approach

RFS and MLK

The spirit and vision of Dr. Martin Luther King's humanitarian devotion to social and racial equality is deeply embedded in the consciousness of Roberts Field's educational practices and the myriad ways we holistically nurture students and guide our school families. In the vast breadth of our curriculum and community experience, Roberts Field continuously celebrates and teaches about the plethora of diverse contributors to our world's seminal developments in the sciences, the arts, the humanities, peacemaking, and changemaking. In our classrooms, we regularly revisit the rich and unique histories of various cultures and races of people on our planet. This intentional curriculum reveals to our students a more meaningful, intelligent, and rewarding expanse of life to learn about and belong to.

Dr. King's "Dream" is actively manifested through the educational belief systems and contributions of Roberts Field, which prioritize the universal power and active pursuit of whole justice on Earth. The children are taught to recognize the innate beauty and equal value and purpose of all people with whom we share our globe. We teach the importance of centering compassion and openness in our relationships, and how this practice yields a world of greater opportunity, inclusiveness, and love for all.

Much Peace and Love,
The RFS Team

Roberts Field + Peaceful Planet!

In a recent lesson we learned about human rights, and the ways in which the human rights that governments give to people around the world can differ. We explored questions and feelings about what it means to be human, what defines us as human beings, and what most similar threads of need and desire we as Americans hold as human beings to other places and cultures. While our cuisine, architecture, beliefs, apparel, language, and even skin may be different around the world, what is it that we most want that allows us to feel joy and freedom in life?

We learned about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and explored its text and articles to see what diverse leaders from around the world had compiled to uphold compassion, expression, freedom, and justice throughout societies across our planet. We agree! Human rights are ours because we are born, and they cannot be taken away. They must be protected and we must stand to uphold them. And, we believe that this Declaration can continue to be further developed and modified as we continue to grow and change in our needs and rights to justice as humans.

We are also children learning and growing -- future leaders and stewards of justice and equalities in our communities - and in the world. How enthralled we were to learn about The Declaration of Human Rights for Children. At Roberts Field we'll learn and connect further to these salient foundations of a peaceful planet -- ones that we can stand for, and protect. One that we remind ourselves of frequently, is Article 26.

Article 26

2) The idea of education is to help people become the best they can be. It should teach them to respect and understand each other, and to be kind to everyone, no matter who they are or where they are from. Education should help to promote the activities of the United Nations in an effort to create a peaceful world.

At Roberts Field we help people become the best they can be, we are taught and practice regularly to respect and understand each other, and to be kind to everyone, no matter who they are or where they are from. And, we help promote and we create a more peaceful world!

Rachel C says know to care, to protect...

At Roberts Field, we seek quotes from other people, past and present, who dedicated a major part of their educational and personal practice to exploring the outdoors as a way to best become closer to the ubiquity of nature and all of the knowledge that it holds. We are hardly the first to have tread out into these fields. So many others have unearthed the answers to how these natural systems originate, bloom, sustain, cycle and act as the primary foundation for our planet. As a school, students and teachers, we also arrive upon these outdoor landscapes and meadows filled with questions, answers, and sheer delight that we can immerse ourselves in learning with so much knowledge and with all of our senses. From there, we wield adventures, research and breathtaking discoveries. These are big and small quests in math, science, art, music. We write, journal and philosophize!

The ponderings and expertise of these uniquely bold, courageous, and intuitive naturalists feed and implore us as we witness and learn through our own lenses. We connect to all of the textures surrounding our learning. We are free to grasp onto these bountiful offerings given to us from nature.

Rachel Carlson said, “The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us the less taste we shall have for destruction.”

We remember Carson’s quote because we read and recite it several times throughout our Day In The Field. We want to know more and protect every single leaf, bird, and stretch of cloud above— as much as we can possibly imagine. Mostly, we want to be creative…

Prospect Park Trees Are Important To The Brooklyn Community!

At Roberts Field researching and exploring the vegetation that specifically surrounds us in Brooklyn is another key way that we learn and tap into the unique history of the species of plant life that is the expanse of nature within our city. And, upon Brooklyn's Prospect Park 585 acres there are more than 30,000 different types of trees. We know the names and attributes of the types of trees surrounding this area where we learn so intently. We experience how these trees both viscerally enliven our experience, and feed our quest for knowledge. They are the main webs of our park's healthy ecosystem, and through staying connected to tree life in our ecological learning, we develop a greater pride in our environment.

In particular, in our weekly Day in the Field, being amongst these trees as a part of our learning center implores us to want to take greater care of the park, and to be mindful of the way in which we play and go to school in this community field. Most of these trees have had very long lives -- they've been here long before us, and they will remain many more years and decades, if not more into the future. At Roberts Field we learn that we must take care of the Earth also for the future of humanity, and for the purpose and great gift of nature as a whole. The park is here for everyone, and the great diversity of the people of Brooklyn contribute to the vast spectrum of activity and joy in life that we know of through the park. We remember that so many communities and culture come to the park to rejoice. This we must care about enough to actively preserve. We also remember the purpose of the park, all that it does hold, through the diversity of the trees, how and where they sit upon the landscape. The trees offer us clean air and become posts of respite and stamina as we move through the great expanse that holds thousands upon thousands of lessons about what the earth is made of and how it works -- and why people come and go in great volumes through it as a way in which to live fully.

The largest tree in Prospect Park is an American Elm that is over 100 years old. It has a diameter of 6 feet and 5 inch across. We know because we've measured it!

To support trees in Prospect Park and for more information on the way the life supports Brooklyn air quality, greenhouse gas benefits, and other environmental energy benefits go to:

https://www.prospectpark.org/news-events/news/get-know-parks-trees/

Seeing Nature Up Close -
This Kind of Experience Can Enrich All Children!

Today Roberts Field celebrates the integral part that nature powerfully plays in that which we learn and how we learn it. To intentionally turn our attention to the both impermeable and delicate intricacies and designs of nature's global ornament breathes inspiration and a grander perception into our own creativity.

At Roberts Field, when we look at nature up close
we yearn and wonder. We want to further research and understand how our global ecosystem works, as well as the interconnected systems and webs that make and feed life. We look far and deeply into nature's elements to know more about our world. We stretch for this knowledge and remember how vast and expansive and diverse the world really is!

Today we can observe any leaf that we can find up close. We can observe it dangling from a tree, a branch, or we can hold one in the very palm of our hand, identifying the shapes, lines, extensions, and connected pathways of the stem, the petiole, the veins and venules, the tips, margins, and midrib running down the very center of the leaf's body, it's spine! Just taking in these details with our eyes, and holding our attention to it, connects us to these essential parts...

When we learn amid nature, place ourselves within it, we also long to innovate and act in harmony with it.

Happy Summer!

Roberts Field Loves Sharing With You Brooklyn -
Here is our summer story!

As RFS emerges into the height of the summer season, once again we reignite our outreach to the broader Brooklyn community and beyond. Celebrating the heart and core tenets of our mission we remember that education founded on innovative and holistic nurture and practices necessarily must embrace, include, and share with the various people and cultures that make up our city, and that make up our world. Surely, a school should be educating about people and the world, and a school should be educating in collaboration with people and the world beyond its own center and membership.

This summer Roberts Field will share with you our school passions, visions, and discoveries as we delve further into more studies and explorations in science and technology, art and music, conservation and preservation of our Earth environment, and compassionate awareness as we create and learn deeply as diverse people and participants. We will unfold more learning and sharing from these ends too!

Join Roberts Field daily this summer! Let's learn, create, and aspire together.

The Roberts Field School is expanding its Fall 2021 school year community in grades kindergarten through 5th grade. We are continuing to enroll throughout this summer 2021. Roberts Field is devoted to joyful and deep academic and creative learning that involves the regular integration of the arts, sciences, humanities, and nature.

Learn more at www.robertsfieldschool.org
Inquire at [email protected]

If you believe your child and family would thrive within the RFS Kindergarten through 5th grade learning community reach out to us at: [email protected]

For families who may be seeking financial aid, we offer a financial aid grant program. We look forward to hearing from you this summer!

This school year we all had to attune our ears, hearts, and minds to a tempo of trusting that the best could still come from the unknown. We also learned to open ourselves to a phase of new receiving and listening, which allowed us to hear what would have otherwise been obscured in the pace and cacophony of yesteryear's demands. Listening most intently to ourselves and to others--because we had to, and because we sought answers and solutions never before pursued--also offered us an opportunity to understand the ubiquitous lenses, landscapes, and plethora of adventure and ornament already there awaiting us. It allowed us to bask in the comfort and higher purpose of family, school, and community. The children so naturally followed and jumped in to rejoice, finding peace and elevating trust, as if that were what they were most born to do. This year, we are most reminded of the children's brilliant resilience and sacred impressionability. So, at Studio and in school we were marinated in the seasons of nature this year in particular to pick up and carry on responsibly and creatively, to accept, improvise, join in, and find the beat. And in many facets, the way we view teaching and the innate gifts and frequency of the young child's mind has evolved. Our knowledge that our world, even in its most bereft state, is never void of infinite spectacles of tangible beauty and care has never been more amplified.