TaborTalk Blog

Whenever I am at a conference, I always opt for the sessions that have the keyword “research-based” or “neuroscience.” Since teaching is all about building that neuron network, learning more about the related studies makes sense to me. Therefore, 5 days at CTTL, the Center for Transformative Teaching & Learning, where all sessions are backed by both experienced teachers and prestigious researchers, made me feel like a kid in a candy store.

How do Tabor students see the world around them? In the past three years, the curriculum of the Introduction to Microeconomics and Macroeconomics courses have adjusted to incorporate data analysis, statistics, and predictive modeling to inform the worldview of students.

“Creativity is as important now in education as literacy and we should treat it with the same status.”

― Sir Ken Robinson

Until TAMT, I had never truly felt that I was part of a team. I have been on teams, but none of them really brought me passion the way TAMT does.

Maggie Shipstead is an accomplished novelist, travel writer, and author of esteemed short stories and articles. Prior to her week-long visit to Tabor, this is all I knew of her.

The following is an excerpted version of Head of School John Quirk's Opening Chapel Talk:

My dad was a great guy – a funny and bright man of inspiring idealism. This trait expressed itself in many ways, but one of the best was his devotion to the Constitution as a living document. Many peoples’ passions are blind, but not his. He knew the document well, recognized and spoke with knowledge about the tensions and “unfinished business” of it, and was an expert in the ideas of the people who were its architects. In this, he was perfectly matched to the times he lived in.

He was a postwar baby born in 1945, with national pride beaming and nuclear fear coldly simmering. He was a high school student during the tumultuous early sixties – the death of John F. Kennedy, the rise of Rock and Roll and the drug culture. He was in college in the mid-sixties when I was born, as two of his heroes – Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. -- were slain, the cold war was heating up in Southeast Asia, and race riots and violent protests were peppering the news.

Lily Blouin is doing a Senior Project about Senior Projects. For some context about her project, read her first blog post.

During my past three years at Tabor I often heard about senior projects, however I never had a clear understanding of what actually happened during those seven weeks. Senior projects seemed almost mythical to me, you would hear about them from seniors when they first talked about them in the early spring when they were excited about dropping classes.

“Senior Projects allow seniors in good academic standing to drop classes in the last seven weeks as necessary in order to pursue a project of their own creation.” This is how Senior Projects are described on the Tabor Academy website. One week into my project and that description doesn’t feel exactly right.

There is nothing more rewarding for language students than connecting with peers across linguistic and national borders. This year, Tabor’s French 4 students had the opportunity to experience this by partnering with a class at the Institut d’éducation motrice in Couzeix, a small town in central France. We first met their instructor Madame Stenger via an online forum. At the time we both had thirteen students eager to participate. Our primary goal was to communicate with francophone students in French. Most groups mostly want to practice English, which makes finding a good match challenging. Madame Stenger’s interest was cultural. She wanted her students to learn about America in their own language. It was a great fit. 

Our students will inherit a very different world than the one we know today, a point well illustrated in this viral video “Shift Happens.”  They will need to be able to navigate as adults in the 21st century. This broader sweep is punctuated with some jarring predictions and extrapolations: For instance, the learners in our schools right now will have anywhere from 10-14 job changes by the time they are 38. The complex issues before us today require a key set of problem-solving skills. How does Tabor Academy ensure our young men and women develop the curiosity and resilience to pursue and practice the skills of critical thinking, collaboration, communication, metacognition, empathy and citizenship for transfer to novel scenarios, as well as have the applicable content knowledge they need for the world they will engage?

by Rob Hurd and Erica Lunn '16

Again this year, Early Decision and Early Action college admissions were popular choices for the Senior class. Between Early Decision Round I and the various Early Action options, 82% of the Class of 2016 (113 out of 137 students) filed one or more applications. With additional students applying Early Decision Round 2, about 85 % of the class will have applied under one or more early program.