We have a guest writer for the second consecutive blog post. You may remember that earlier this summer, I announced a new innovative approach to teaching some new subjects at BBS entitled “The 4 C’s”. The first "C" is coding. BBS students had their first coding class with Mr. Chambers yesterday. I have asked him to briefly talk about how our students are learning this critical new skill at Brainerd Baptist School. Although Taylor Swift has been all over the news this last week, our "swift" is different than what you might be thinking! 

We just kicked off our first coding class this week and the students were really excited. The programming language we are exposing the students to is Swift. This is the new language for Mac, iOS, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.

The curriculum we are using is Swift Playgrounds that was developed by Apple for the express purposes of schools helping to expose students to entry level coding.

In our first class, we looked at the differences between "commands and functions", and then worked through exercises on implementing them into code form. To finish up, the students were given a block of code, and they had to “fix it”. We discussed the difficulty in troubleshooting your own code vs someone else’s code.

Next we will be looking at the coding terms of "functions and loops".

I am excited that we are offering this class to our students. I've already received a number of emails inquiring about the student continuing to develop coding skills at home as well. I will be providing some additional resources for those students that want to continue learning coding more in-depth at the end of the quarter. If you have questions, or would like to learn more, please feel free to contact me. 

From time to time asked various members of our faculty to write guest posts here on the Bobcat Blog. Today's post is by Director of I.T. Bradley Chambers, who discusses why we have begun using this new software. Bradley has worked very hard to establish BBS as a leader in educational technology instruction not only in our area, but in our region. He is always available to answer technology related questions for our parents as well.  We first heard of this software at the NAIS annual conference this past spring. As we explored it, it just seemed to make a lot sense and be a good fit for our school. In the post, Mr. Chambers explains how this new software works. 

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We are very excited about the launch of Kinderlime’s Sign In-Out program at BBS for After School Care. 

In keeping with our commitment to continual growth and improvement, we are making changes to the pick up process that will feel will not only be easier for parents, but will also increase our safety procedures. This new program will allow parents to sign in-out their children using an app that captures and organizes ASC data. 

Your entire interaction with the Sign In-Out app  only takes seconds! We know it can be frustrating walking through our hallways from the gym to the library to the playground trying to find your child. Another feature of this software is that you will be able to see (via the app) where your child is in our building. One of the main changes is that all parents now enter through the Kindergarten hallway to check your children out of ASC.  We will have a dedicated staff member just inside the doors and each caregiver will be given a unique 4-digit pin that will be entered into an iPad there.

All parents were emailed PIN and app registration codes. If you'd like to add more people, we can do that as well. Please email me at bchambers@brainerdbaptist.org to request additional PIN codes, or if you have trouble signing into the apps.

So far we've heard extremely positive feedback from our parents after the first few days of school. We hope your are enjoying the new software as much as we are!

I have often said that hiring teachers is the most important aspect of my job as Head of School. I am convinced that teachers have the single greatest impact on the over-all quality of a school. To that end, I am excited to announce the following new faculty for the 2017-18 school year. We are confident that these teachers and assistants will have a positive impact on our students and school.

From Left to right: Linley Baugh, teacher assistant; Suzanne Breedlove, music; Chad Owen, Bible/Chaplain; Becca Merrion, teacher assistant; Darla Walker, teacher assistant; and Susie Haddock, 1st grade. 

For those of you who have been around our school any length of time at all, you have probably heard me talk about the fact that when it comes to our academic approach, we are driven by two questions - what is best for our students; and is it supported by research? These questions are the filter we always use when we consider making changes to our curriculum, teaching strategies or pedagogy, or  even our something as simple as our schedule. Our desire is to regularly take a critical look at our program and to always be looking for opportunities to improve the experience our students have at school each day.  

It is with this mindset that I am excited to share with you some changes for our 4th and 5th grade students. In education, the battle of the ages is time! Everyone wants more of it, but we are limited in the amount of time we have with our students each day. Over the years, we have crammed more activity into this space (all with good intentions). The result is that often classroom teachers do not feel like they have enough time to adequatly cover the basics and to offer the "extras" that all good teachers like to do. Conversely,  fine arts teachers can also feel the same way about their subjects since students do not have as much time in their classes as they do with their classroom teachers. There is plenty of researchthat shows that a robust fine arts offerings are also very important to the overall development of children. Balancing time between the core academic classes and the fine arts can become a difficult obstacle when a school is considering offering something new. We have spent the last few weeks working through these issues. 

Through the years, I have had the opportunity to lead many SAIS accreditation visits to some really good schools across the southeast.  One of my favorite things about this work is the opportunity to see and learn from other the schools that I get to work with.  I find the entire process rewarding because it often affirms what our teachers are doing every day here at BBS.  It also provides me the opportunity to see different instructional strategies in action. Back in April, I was conducting a visit for SAIS to an excellent school in Atlanta. I was excited to see their appoach to some unusual (and really cool!) fine arts classes at the elementary level.  This visit led me to begin envisioning doing our own version of these classes at BBS. So the question is, what am I talking about, and how does it affect our students? In August, we are introducing what we are calling "The Four C's" to our 4th and 5th grade students fine arts rotation.  They will still have art, music, library, P.E., Bible, Spanish class, and spend time in our amazing STEM lab each week, but now will also have  coding, cooking, chess, and carpentry! There is research(see below) that specifically supports the critical thinking development of students as they experience each of these classes. Students will begin the first quarter with coding, then will have cooking/culinary in the 2nd 9 weeks. They will begin the second semester with chess, and will finish the year with carpentry. More details will be coming soon, but we are extremely excited to be able to provide these unique learning opportunties to our students.  

Want to learn more about what research says about each of these topics?
Coding 
Cooking  
Chess 
Carpentry