Meet Lisa Barker, Food and Farm Coordinator. Lisa is responsible for all growing spaces on campus: the Baron Greenhouse in the Commons, the high tunnel, and the Harley Micro-Farm. You will learn more about her Food and Farm 101 course in a separate blog post.

Meet Kima Enerson, our new Maker Educator in the Commons. Kima is in charge of the workshop space in the basement of the Commons, but serves as a collaborator with many faculty to expand their teaching to include more hands-on and design thinking principles for their students. You will learn more about her work with the Middle School students in a separate blog post.

Kevin Boyd and Jocie Kopfman are returning teachers in the Commons, but this year they are teaching a new course together: Sustainable Community Engagement. This course offers students the opportunity to design an educational partnership with a locally based community non-profit organization. This hands-on engagement is coupled with an in-class introduction to basic elements of sociological research methods, with specific attention to power and access through the lenses of race, gender, and socio-economic factors. The pedagogical aim is to empower students with the tools to create mutual, enduring, and transformative social partnerships.

Our fearless Commons Director, Seth O’Bryan, helps oversee all of the courses in the Commons while teaching a few of his own specific to the sustainable energy and systems in the building.

TRIMESTER I COMMONS COURSES and CLUBS:

Design and Innovation Lab — Upper School elective

Design and Innovation Lab is an entry-level engineering and innovation class that exposes students to the basic elements of the design process (Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test) and then supports them through a series of increasingly difficult design challenges. Through this hands-on, shop-based class, students work with core engineering and design concepts and collaborate to solve various problems. Material and the related tools the students will utilize include cardboard, wood, metal, electronics, digital logic and programming, biology and plants, and more. Additionally, students learn the basic knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to operate a baseline set of tools in the shop safely and effectively.

Design and Innovation Flex Time – Middle School flex time option

Middle School students learn the basics of design in the Workshop, while developing familiarity and skills with hand tools.

Food and Farm 101 – Upper School elective

This course provides students with experiential hands-on learning through working as the management and labor force behind the Harley Micro-Farm and greenhouse. This fall, students have been harvesting produce and experimenting with unique recipes, as well as planning and planting crops for fall/winter green production in the high tunnel. They also have the opportunity to explore design concepts related to small-scale food production and education, as well as to examine the framework of community food systems, beginning to think conceptually and practically about real-world food issues, discrepancies, and solutions.

Food and Farm Flex Time– Middle School flex time option

Middle School students can spend time working with Lisa in the Micro-Farm and getting their hands dirty!

Garden Club – Upper School weekly club

The Garden Club has been working on identifying projects around the Micro-Farm and are starting with supporting the compost program.

Hospice – Upper School year-long elective

Students learn both the medical and emotional side of providing end-of-life care, which includes assigned shifts at local hospice houses and reflection on what they are learning and feeling as they care for others.

Independent Studies – Upper School electives

Students are offered opportunities to pursue a particular subject in-depth or develop an understanding of a topic not offered in the current curriculum.

Intro to Mindfulness – Upper School elective

A trimester course designed to introduce students to elements of mindful practice, the research behind it, and exercises/meditation to increase their awareness of their thoughts and ability to be fully present in the moment.

Living Building – Upper School elective

Students work together to investigate topics and address problems related to the Commons building and sustainability. This trimester, the students are building a gate for the Micro-Farm, studying coding to gather data from the solar chimneys, and designing and interactive lobby space for the ground floor of the Commons.

Maker Mornings — Sixth Grade homeroom activities

The sixth grade homerooms attend Maker Mornings once a week each to build their sense of community, learn to work collaboratively, and to tackle quick engineering challenges in the Project Space.

Rights & Responsibilities – Ninth Grade mandatory trimester rotation

R & R is a trimester-long freshman seminar that engages students in discussions and activities that explore our individual and collective rights and responsibilities within the various communities to which we belong. Students use issues facing the Harley community, the Rochester community, and the broader national and global communities as discussion points and examples. They explore their thoughts and opinions about these issues in terms of individual and collective success, and social and environmental justice. Students learn basic qualitative research skills in order to explore a social issue that interests them so that they can effectively advocate and work toward solutions they could implement to effect positive social change.

Robotics– Upper School year-long elective

Students are introduced to the basics of coding in this course. They learn how to design and build a robot to complete specific tasks as assigned by the competitive league guidelines. Using design thinking, collaborative problem solving, and creativity, the “team” learns how to maximize their strengths to leverage the best outcome as they program their robot and prepare for competition.

Sustainable Community Engagement – Upper School year-long elective

This course offers students the opportunity to design an educational partnership with a locally based community non-profit organization. This hands-on engagement is coupled with an in-class introduction to basic elements of sociological research methods, with specific attention to power and access through the lenses of race, gender, and socio-economic factors. The pedagogical aim is to empower students with the tools to create mutual, enduring, and transformative social partnerships.

She shared some rather sobering and startling information about the population she works with:

• 1 in every 5 of the world’s poorest people has intellectual disabilities.
• There are up to 200 million people with intellectual disabilities worldwide.
• 90% of children with intellectual disabilities in developing countries are denied education.
• The world unemployment rate hangs around 9%, but for the Special Olympics athletes, it is closer to 21%.
• 68% of the female Special Olympics athletes have been abused before the age of 18.

While these are dire numbers indeed, Special Olympics has been working for 50 years to send the message that people with intellectual disability can and will succeed when given the chance.  They are the world’s largest public health organization for people with intellectual disabilities.

In 1997, Special Olympics started the healthy athletes program. This delivers free services in seven medical disciplines to the competing athletes. These range from evaluations to free services and equipment, like hearing aids, glasses, and dentistry. They have trained 136,000 health care professionals to work within this program. Special Olympics also holds the largest data base of health information for athletes with intellectual disabilities.

Meredith described the Healthy Communities program that was rolled out in 2012. With primary funding from the Golisano Foundation, this program focuses on access and education. Currently, they have partnerships with over 200 health organizations and universities to extend health services to the communities in which the Special Olympics athletes live.

In her job, Meredith spends 30% of the year on the road to far-reaching places such as Malawi, Ireland, South Korea, and Austria. She works with these countries (and many more) to help them meet the Sustainable Development Goals. She is especially excited about the Unified Champions for School and Youth Initiatives in the United States. This program delivers $15M in federal funding which is all spent on the athletes and their health and education. Special Olympics makes the initial investment, then schools match the funding and grow it each year until they are self-sustaining. For more information on Unified Champions, please follow the link to their website: http://www.playunified.org/.

Chris Becker is teaching 7th and 8th Grade Science as Carli Rivers’ long-term sub while she is out on maternity leave. Chris not only teaches all 7th and 8th Grade Science courses, but has accompanied the 8th Grade on their outdoor education trip to the Adirondacks. Welcome, Chris!

Kevin Boyd is our new Hospice instructor. In addition to teaching three sections of Hospice, Kevin is also teaching an Introduction to Mindfulness elective for the Upper School and a mindfulness rotation for the fifth graders.  We look forward to Kevin continuing to make strong community connections for our Hospice students!

Lars Kuelling was hired to fill the newly-established position of Academic Dean. In addition to his administrative work with curriculum, schedule, and teacher development, Lars co-teaches the 9th Grade Rights & Responsibilities class with Jocie Kopfman. Their approach aims to have 9th graders engage in healthy discussion and dialogue on a variety of socially-relevant topics, encouraging them to invest in advocating for a cause and justifying their efforts. We welcome Lars and his family to Harley!

A little over a year ago, we posted on this blog about Ryan’s work with his peers to support Alex’s Lemonade (to fund childhood cancer research) through Roc-Ade. That link can be found here.

Last week, Ryan was recognized for his tireless efforts by the Rochester Business Journal and was awarded one of their 2014 Philanthropy Awards. The excerpt from the story in the RBJ is below. We are so proud of Ryan and all of his ongoing efforts and leadership in this area! Congratulations!

2014 Philanthropy Awards: Outstanding Youth Volunteer Fundraiser nominees

Ryan Thomas Woodhams
Middle-schooler Ryan Thomas Woodhams began his community service with Alex’s Lemonade Stand, a national organization that supports children with cancer. Woodhams has raised more than $25,000 for the organization since 2011.

“Ryan is just a sweet young man that just looks out for everyone else,” says Stephanie Sheets, assistant director of community events for Golisano Children’s Hospital. “It’s young men like Ryan who are making differences in that generation.”

Additionally, Woodhams raised money for the children’s hospital, part of Strong Memorial Hospital; he has raised more than $4,500. Woodhams’ efforts have grown into Roc-Ade, a fundraising organization dedicated to supporting non-profits.

Sheets says Woodhams is a natural leader.

“He gets his friends involved; he gets other students involved. When I went to the lemonade stand last year, he had more than 20 students helping him as he was leading.”

Woodhams intends to continue to host annual Lemonade Stands at the Harley School and raise funds for the children’s hospital—as well as continue a journalism internship with the Philadelphia Eagles.

“I’m proud that he’s one of our donors,” Sheets says, “and that we’re able to work with him in fundraising for the kids at the children’s hospital. And I can’t imagine how proud his mom and the school must be too.”