The Ridge

ReportJanuary 2015

To begin anew is a gift from God

By now (it is midway through January as I write this) some of

us may be in the all-too-familiar situation of having established

— and just as quickly abandoned —our resolutions for the New

Year. It happens. It’s human nature. So much so that each year,

that very circumstance launches a seemingly unending wave of

self-help books, articles, blogs and videos on making and

keeping New Year’s resolutions. (Which is why one of my

resolutions this year was to stop reading articles about making

and keeping resolutions!)

The good thing is that we have the opportunity – through

prayer or meditation – to connect with God, who will support

us in our endeavors to be good, to do good and to share our

goodness with others.

You might recall that at the beginning of this school year,

I asked each member of the Forest Ridge community to

challenge ourselves to build community each week: one person

at a time, one possibility at a time, one promise at a time.

How are you doing so far? Yeah, me too. Fortunately, we have a

brand new year and half of the school year left to continue this

noble effort. As this prayer mentions, we may begin anew “with

a clean slate” knowing that God is “always ready to forgive us.”

So let’s forget the resolution-keeping self-help activities.

Instead, at the beginning of this bright, new year, let us rejoice

in this marvelous gift from God and begin anew in our efforts

to build community with one another and to live in peace…

one day at a time.

Mark Pierotti Head of School

God, thank you for a new year. May everyone in our family be willing to begin anew with a clean slate.

We know that you are always ready to forgive us. Help us to be willing to forgive ourselves and to forgive one another.

As we begin a new year, remind us of our truest values and our deepest desires. Help us to live in the goodness that comes from doing what you want us to do.

Help us to put aside anxiety about the future and the past, so that we might live in peace with you now, one day at a time.

(Family New Year’s Prayer from Loyola Press)http://www.loyolapress.com/family-new-years-prayer.htm

2 The Ridge Report

For the past four years, Forest Ridge has partnered with Challenge Success, an organization out of Stanford University that is dedicated to fostering student resilience and balance in rigorous educational environments. It was during the Challenge Success conference last fall that our student delegates suggested Forest Ridge create a new position that would serve as an umbrella for counseling, learning specialist advising and general student support. Ringing true of “Giving girls their voice,” Dr. Wittmann responded to the students’ suggestion and created the Office of Student Services.

Thankfully, my experience and passion for supporting students matched perfectly with this new position. I began my career in secondary education 11 years ago serving as a special education teacher. I then completed my Master’s degree in Counseling and worked as a School Counselor and College Counselor for seven years before accepting the role of Learning Specialist in the middle school here at Forest Ridge in 2011.

One of the things I enjoy most in my new role is the variety of support services I am able to offer to students and faculty—my job is never boring! You will find me checking in with students in the hallways or presenting in classrooms about study skills, time management or note-taking strategies. Another function of my role—and a passion of mine—is creating an environment that promotes student wellness. My office serves as a safe, welcoming space for

studying, test-testing and simply relaxing in a calm environment. In addition to the daily support services offered, Student Services hosts a series of Wellness Workshops throughout the year for parent, student and faculty education on a variety of topics that relate to the overall well-being of our community.

In our first Wellness Workshop, Forest Ridge welcomed Dr. Amy Mezulis, Associate Professor of Psychology at Seattle Pacific University and supervisor of our high school counseling intern, Mari Yamamoto. Dr. Mezulis presented on the topic of Coping with Adolescent Stress and Anxiety and gave practical solutions and applications for reducing and managing student stress. Forest Ridge is fortunate to work in partnership with Dr. Mezulis and benefit from her extensive research into adolescent stress.

Looking ahead to spring, some of the upcoming Wellness Workshop topics will focus on planning for and easing into transitions. For parents, we will host a Preparing for Empty Nest workshop, and, for students, we will host Life Beyond the Ridge: Focusing on Personal Safety and Independence.

I invite you to reach out to me with any suggestions for future workshop topics. These Wellness Workshops are a terrific opportunity to learn and grow together as a community as we work in partnership to educate and meet the needs of the whole student.

Crissy Stemkowski High School Student Services

Challenge Successinspires new position at FR

Two posters hang in my office: one says, “We Belong to Each Other,” and the other one says,

“We Can Do Hard Things.” I think these phrases help to summarize the work I do in Student

Services at Forest Ridge High School. The Student Services position is new this year, and, most

appropriately, the position was inspired by our Forest Ridge high school students.

The Ridge Report 3

Every year before Thanksgiving, something magical happens in the Middle School at Forest Ridge. Instead of moving from class to class in their section groups, students meet in mixed-grade family groups led by 8th grade students to solve real-world problems and experience some of the obstacles faced daily by girls around the world. Teachers become facilitators and observers, while students become refugees, government responders to natural disasters, designers and educators. Students work together, laugh together, learn together, pray together and create together. Students have called it an educational congé, but officially, it is Global Days.

Global Days started 12 years ago as a one-day “teach-in” style seminar that had students rotating through workshops to learn about life in other countries and the cultural traditions and stories of Forest Ridge families and friends. Since then, it has grown to be a two-day, in-depth, hands-on exploration of one theme. Past themes have included food, emphasizing food stability and sustainable agriculture; water, exploring access to clean water throughout the world; and this year’s topic, home, which focused on displacement due to natural disasters or conflict and the importance of emergency preparedness. Whatever the topic, the goals are the same: to increase awareness, both locally and globally, about the topic and to build community among middle school students as they consider their roles as agents of change in our world.

Community-building is especially encouraged through the formation of 5th-to-8th grade groups, composed of about 12 students per “family.” For many students, time getting to know students in other grade levels is the highlight of Global Days. The week before Global Days, families meet for the first time to learn names, play games and hear a little about what they’ll be doing the following week. Participating together in fun, group-oriented challenges, simulations and reflections deepens the family bonds. As one student wrote, “Usually I am a quiet person, only spending time with my best friends, but having the opportunity to spend time with new people was great!”

Several years ago, the role of Global Guide was created as an opportunity for 8th grade students to step into a leadership role for the duration of Global Days. The responsibility associated with this job

increased greatly two years later when we moved teachers out of family groups. Now, as teachers plan and facilitate activities and art projects and coach the Global Guides from the sidelines, it is the 8th grade students who encourage participation in activities, lead reflections after activities, help younger students work out disagreements and promote engagement. The Global Guides complete training before Global Days and work with one assigned teacher/coach throughout Global Days to problem-solve

and strategize about situations that come up in their family groups.

This year, a new leadership opportunity was made available to 8th graders: the Media Crew. This group of students captured Global Days in film, video, tweets and interviews and compiled all of it in a 4-minute video that was shown to the entire middle-school community at the end of the second day.

No matter the topic, hope in positive solutions is woven throughout Global Days. Although Forest Ridge students are learning about problems facing our world, their exploration is based in problem-solving and learning about people who have made a difference in these issues in a significant way. By including a service project as a part of Global Days, students see that they can make a difference in their communities. Whether restoring a public park, packing food for distribution by food banks or writing notes to include with emergency hygiene kits, students see the power of many small acts and experience the hope and empowerment that comes through active service in the community. They learn about the places in our world that need compassionate, creative solutions and they practice the skills to be leaders in realizing these solutions.

A few weeks ago at Middle School Homeroom, Mrs. Grasseschi asked the students if they thought the world still needed the kind of love St. Madeline Sophie offered it by starting Sacred Heart Schools 200 years ago. The girls agreed that this kind of love—a love that makes a place or person better—is still needed. “Well,” she challenged the girls, “if the world needs it, then you’re in charge. You can’t wait for someone else to bring it.”

Through our dynamic Global Days, Forest Ridge students will continue learning how “to bring it.”

Growing Global Leaders Through Global DaysJenny McGovern, Middle School

4 The Ridge Report

Over the Christmas break I had the luxury of reading my morning newspaper from cover to cover almost every day. As I languished over my second cup of coffee on Sunday morning, I came upon an article about a town in China where high school students go to study for the GaoKao, otherwise known as the university entrance exam. To do well on this test entitles one to a place at a major university in China, mediocre admittance to a lesser university or poorly—no admittance at all. The lifeline of economic success is a good grade on the exam.

The article went on to talk about the process of studying for this exam, and reduced it to memorization. Memorization done properly would produce desired results. So naturally students worked sixteen hours a day memorizing, and this heretofore little-known city in China, Maotanchang, was where the best memorization and highest scores on the test were occurring. Parents sacrificed everything to get their children there to live and study. Their “free time” was for three regimented hours on Sunday when they would walk, and walk some more.

The article got me thinking about memorization. How is it effective for some things and not others? How come we judge students, who memorize well, smarter than students who analyze deliberatively and think critically? How do they learn to conceptualize and create? But before I get on too high a horse decrying the ills of memorization, I have to recall my own training with memorization and how I still love today reciting the poems I was forced to practice long ago. I recall, too, how frustrated I had been helping my own son with his homework only to have him ask me what 7 times 12 is, and my responding with, “Haven’t you memorized your multiplication tables yet in 7th grade, at that school to which I’m paying so much money?”

Admittedly there is a role for memorization. In a September 2013 issue of Atlantic Magazine, “When Memorization Gets in the Way of Learning,” the author, Ben Orlin, makes a case for discretion in memorizing facts, plays, and poetry in order to make way for real learning by inquiry and discovery. Tipping his hat though to rote memorization, he points out that there is a cadence to memorizing that helps get mere facts under one’s skin which-in turn gives the fact or verse more meaning for the one memorizing. About 8 years ago, as an experiment, I asked my son to memorize a poem with me and we chose one my grandmother had recited often to all her grandchildren, “The Unknown Soldier” from America’s Best Loved Poems. It was written in iambic pentameter and therefore held a memorable sing-songy cadence. The more we recited it, the more I began to understand the poem in a new way. It wasn’t just the WWI war poem my grandmother identified. In fact, it was an anti-war poem full of sarcasm and unanswered questions. The cadence and repetition gave it a life cursory reading could not have offered. Considered in this way, learning by heart gave us the heart of the poem.

I’m still not a great fan of memorization. I am more inclined toward education by inquiry and conceptualization along with a healthy dose of scientific method. I could never learn successfully or with the dedication these young Chinese students were learning using rote memorization. God bless them. I would have been relegated to a “lesser” university.

The Power (or not) ofMemorization

Regina Mooney, Ph.D. Director of Institutional Advancement

The Ridge Report 5

The holidays provide a wonderful opportunity to

pause and focus on what is important. In early

December, I helped out at St. Madeleine Sophie

youth group where I had the opportunity to ask the students

to share what they were looking forward to at Christmas. I

was delighted to hear each student share about special family

meals and activities or gathering with family they don’t see

as often as they would like to because of busy schedules or

long distances. After everyone shared, I reflected back to the

group that I had heard two themes running throughout their

comments: family and tradition. It was refreshing to hear

that the young people really “got it” and were able to identify

what was essential about the holiday season.

The holidays are over. Break is done. The kids are

back to school, sports, arts, homework and other

activities. Adults are back to work and the daily

demands of juggling a household. Our culture tells us on

New Year’s Day we are to make a resolution. These

resolutions usually involve bettering oneself in some way—

eat healthy, work out, de-clutter, give more, engage in the

world in a different way. What if we viewed New Year’s Day

as a continuation of the good things we did during the

holiday season? (No, I’m not suggesting that we continue to

eat plates of cookies!)

Carrying the essential aspects of the holiday season

into the New Year—family and tradition—will

have a positive effect on our lives. It is a different

way of achieving the transformation many are looking for

with the freshness of a new year. Have dinner with your

family regularly, without cell phones or television as a

distraction. Send a note to a friend to check-in, without the

carefully choreographed family photo on the front. Give the

gift of time to your children or spouse. Continuing the spirit

of the holidays, long after the tree comes down and the gifts

are packed away, will help to keep our eyes fixed on what is

important and essential all year long.

May you find many opportunities to embrace

your family and all who are important to you

in 2015 and beyond!

Tanya Lange. Campus Minister & CAS Coordinator

A New Year of Old Habits

6 The Ridge Report

Probiotics are all the rage these days. Grocery refrigerators are stocked full of kombucha and kefir while even mainstream media report on the nutritional and gastrointestinal benefits of ingesting probiotics on a regular basis. But long before these trendy products took the stage, there were more familiar fermented foods like pickles, kimchi, vinegar and sauerkraut—all of which have probiotic benefits and have been eaten for centuries by cultures around the world.

The FRidge Executive Sous Chef—Sasha Seldon—is a fermentation aficionado. As a regular guest speaker in the 9th Grade Health class “Nutrition Unit,” she introduces students to what probiotics are, how they impact our bodies and what foods contain them. She encourages girls to sample several probiotic foods and concludes the session with a hands-on sauerkraut-making lesson.

“Probiotic foods are believed to improve immune function, increase nutritional absorption, lower blood pressure and cholesterol, improve liver function and protect against harmful bacteria,” says Chef Sasha. “Not only do we serve probiotic foods in the FRidge,” she adds, “but we participate in teaching students about the nutritional benefits of particular food choices.”

For Chef Sasha’s homemade sauerkraut recipe, visit the Forest Ridge website Food Service page, http://www.forestridge.org/Page/School-Life/Food-Service#

Probiotics in theand in the Classroom

FRidge Quick Take on

Are you aware that our own Executive Chef Ron Askew is not only a longtime proponent of the “slow food movement,” but he’s been a Northwest Region delegate for Slow Food USA® since 2008? Chef Ron represented the Northwest Region at the Terra Madre and Salone del Gusto in Turin, Italy last Fall. Described as the “Olympics of food,” the biennial event draws over 250,000 Slow Food® advocates and exhibitors from over 130 countries.

Chef Ron returned from Italy even more inspired (if that’s possible!) to promote healthy relationships with our food, our bodies, and our planet. We’ll be sharing that news through articles in The Ridge Report in our ongoing effort to educate students as well as the greater community on good nutrition and responsible crop cultivation.

This fall, over 180 pounds of Ozette potatoes and 250 pounds of winter squash were

harvested from campus gardens and enjoyed in FRidge-prepared meals. The potatoes grew

from second-generation seeds planted by 7th graders, while the winter squash sprang from

seeds planted by 6th graders. Along with planting and harvesting crops, students tasted and

learned the historical context of each.

Over 20 gallons of campus-grown blackberries were also harvested. The berries were sent to

Whidbey Island Ice Cream Co. where they were blended into 14 gallons of Northwest

Blackberry Ice Cream. The first samplings of the refreshing teat were enjoyed at the Meet

Your Farmer Luncheon in December along with other delicious fall-harvest offerings.

Campus Garden Fall Harvest Report

Dress codes in schools all over the United States are prohibiting young women and girls from dressing in provocative clothing. Throughout my years in elementary school, I was told by my parents and teachers that dressing in a certain way to get

people’s attention is forbidden. I never questioned this, and at the time, neither did any of my friends. Now, I am in a school with a uniform, so I have been somewhat isolated from the current dress code frenzy. However, after reading articles and doing some research, I have found myself questioning the reason behind dress codes, and I have become convinced that we may have taken them too far.

A recent dress code from a local middle school states, “Any clothing considered disruptive to the educational process or that makes an individual feel uncomfortable is inappropriate for school.” The policy continues to explain, “We would like to communicate with you…so that we can mutually support an environment of learning.” 

At first, these statements were approved by my critical eye, but with a closer look, I had a bit of a problem accepting them. When I read the particular words, “so that we can mutually support an environment of learning,” my eyebrows began to rise. Why would wearing spaghetti straps and short shorts be a disruption in a learning environment? 

Even if a girl wearing spaghetti straps and short shorts was a distraction to the boys, why are we making the girls change their clothing? Shouldn’t we be teaching the boys not to become unfocused in the presence of a spaghetti strap? After all, it’s not the girl’s fault the boys are being distracted by their clothing. Right?

Okay, let’s backpedal for a moment here. It may be a girl’s fault for wearing “disruptive clothing.” She is the one who is choosing to wear a crop top or a pair of short shorts. Girls realize that they

won’t stay any cooler by wearing a shirt two inches shorter than a normal shirt. Why are they exposing themselves this way? I am definitely in favor of dress codes prohibiting inappropriate clothing that is unnecessarily revealing, but I do think that we have taken certain dress code guidelines too far. 

A few particular dress-code requirements I have read seem very over the top and unnecessary. The middle school mentioned above also stated in their dress code that “Tank tops require a 2½ inch shoulder strap.”

A tank top with a 2½ inch shoulder strap is no longer a tank top (or at least not on the small shoulders of a middle schooler). 

During the beginning of fifth grade, my school had a “free dress day,” where students didn’t have to wear their uniforms, and could wear whatever they wanted (within the free dress guidelines, of course). That day in gym, I had decided to take off my sweater and wear my tank-top underneath so I would be cooler. My tank top, I’ll have you know, had a good 1½ inch shoulder strap. A few minutes into the period, my gym teacher consulted me. My tank top was unacceptable. She didn’t embarrass me in front of my classmates, and she didn’t even make me change, but I was flustered by the whole situation. I felt misunderstood. I remember thinking to myself, “my tank top isn’t revealing, why would wearing it be a disruption or a problem? What difference would it make if my strap was two inches wider?”

I continue to consider different aspects of that particular situation. I have tried to invent reasons why my tank top was a disruption, but when it comes right down to it, I can’t come up with anything worthwhile. Dress codes, in my opinion, often have excessive and unnecessary guidelines. However, they have their place. I wouldn’t dress in jeans and a t-shirt for a wedding.

I wouldn’t wear shorts and a crop top to a job interview. Dressing appropriately shows respect for people, institutions and yourself, although in my opinion, the details should be up to you and your family.

The Ridge Report 7

by aLLiSon HoFF, kirkland Reporter contributor Reprinted courtesy of the kirkland Reporter

There is a fine line when it comes to dress codes

Fulfilling dreams in the classroom Allison Hoff, 7th grade, ultimately wants to become a reporter someday. In the meantime, she is making her dreams come true as a guest editorial writer for the Kirkland Reporter. The below Commentary, based on an assignment in her social studies class appeared this month in the Kirkland Reporter.

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