Founded 1933 • Grades Pre-K-9 • 336.724.5811 • 2100 Reynolda Road • Winston-Salem NC 27106

N E W SS c h o l a r s h i p at Its Best

Academic excellence is more than an abstraction at Summit. It lives and breathes in our mission, in the personally meaningful work of our students, in the vigorous challenges and remarkable support of our program, in the connections our students forge between what they learn and how they live, and in our shared commitment as a community to helping students reach their full potential.

Academic excellence is not simply a destination we reach but a journey we undertake every day. As teachers of young children through early adolescents, we strive to cultivate an environment in which our students excel—in which, as the

origins of the word excellence suggest, our students surpass or move beyond where they begin each day. Ours is an environment in which we meet students where they are and guide them, through challenge and support, to where they are able to go—often places neither they nor we can imagine when a school year begins.

What enables our students to excel? How are our students able to move beyond their initial limits and to grow? First and foremost, our teachers challenge and support them. As lifelong learners themselves, our faculty are committed to exploring two fundamental questions: What is the relationship between teaching and learning? What do we know about the ways students learn that can and should inform the ways we teach? In exploring these questions we at Summit

embrace a number of key principles that guide our practices with students, colleagues and parents as we all strive for academic excellence:

With a primary focus on enhancing student learning, our teaching and learning methodologies reflect this principle: We learn not simply (or solely) by doing but by thinking about what we are doing. In short, curricula capitalize on the fundamental and profound role of students’ active participation in their learning—on their natural curiosity, their passion for discovery, and their innate drive to create.

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Defining Academic Excellence

I S S U E I I o f V I

Michael Ebeling, Head of School

Scholarship at its Best Summit News, ISSUE II of VI, Summer 2011 Summit School • 2100 Reynolda Road, Winston-Salem, NC 27106 • 336.722.2777 • www.summitschool.com • Editor: Mary Horan • Design: One Hero Creative

Summit School admits students of any race, religion, color, and national or ethnic origin.

Scholarship at its best, one of the Six Promises of Summit School, is a pledge our students grow into daily and throughout their years at Summit. It’s a safe bet that most parents want great scholarship for their children, but what that means varies a lot from person to person. Does scholarship mean being able to name all the state capitals? To recite the multiplication tables through 12? To dissect a frog and identify all its parts? To write a term paper with proper citations?

All of these are part of scholarship, to be sure, but Scholarship at its Best is much more than reciting facts and figures. It is characterized by thinking, questioning, and understanding that leads to more thinking, questioning, and understanding. At Summit, that means experiential learning that encompasses the traditional disciplines of math, science, reading, writing and history, but delivered in a way that goes much further than mere rote memorization. Scholarship at its Best molds students who think creatively, reason systematically and work collaboratively.

Scholarship at its Best is practiced every day at Summit, not just by teachers and students, but by everyone on campus. “Everyone at Summit is an educator,” said Head of School Michael Ebeling. “We don’t miss an opportunity to help children learn here, from what goes on in the classroom to our Director of Facilities duWayne Amen making sure

children had the chance to watch the construction process unfold while we were building the new Arts and Technology Building.”

Summit students are scholars from the earliest ages. In Kindergarten, children’s curiosity makes them natural scholars. “At this age, students are very interested in the process of learning, as well as the product. They have fun figuring out what they are learning,” said Deanna Moss, Kindergarten teacher. She said that teachers take every opportunity to make children aware of the enjoyment of the learning process.

For example, children learn how to ask productive questions in Kindergarten, and learn where to go for information. Critical thinking is one of the Seven Survival Skills delineated by Tony Wagner in The Global Achievement Gap. In fact, Wagner says that the ability to ask good questions, in one form or another, was a recurrent theme in his conversations with leaders across a wide range of industries. Wagner says that asking good questions, critical thinking, and problem solving are inextricably linked in the minds of most employers and business consultants. Moss says that teachers encourage children to recognize what they want to learn and where to go for answers. “We talk about looking for answers in the library, at the computer, from our parents, from our teachers and from each other,” Moss said. “This makes students aware that they are part of a community of learners, and they see everyone’s part in that.”

S c h o l a r s h i pat Its Best

Summit’s campus is rich with opportunities for learning, and none of them are ignored. Summit’s gardens and natural areas provide living laboratories where students can learn firsthand from nature. Attention to the cycles of nature starts early, when Kindergartners watch the pupae of Monarch butterflies wrap themselves into chrysalises and later emerge as butterflies. They also follow the life cycles of plants. This learning continues in First Grade as children become intimately acquainted with bees and how they contribute to plant life.

“Children at this age are fascinated by nature,” said Marty Spry, Kindergarten teacher. “We learn about respect for nature and the environment, and this helps students learn respect for others.”

As children move into the elementary grades, they begin to use problem-based learning. “We teach content,

but we are intentionally showing how content helps us solve problems,” said Roanne Ornelles, head of the Elementary Grades. “By moving from facts, to using the facts to solve a problem, we help develop critical thinking skills.”

Ornelles says that scholarship is embedded in everything that faculty does. “Every moment is teachable, and we take advantage of that. We have conversations about real topics.”

For example, when the First Graders study bees, that study becomes a vehicle for studying other living systems. The colony translates into a community. The topic becomes a vehicle for broadening the conversation. Students are able to learn at all levels through activities that lead to a deeper understanding of the world around them and of their own lives and relationships.

As students move through the grades, scholarship becomes more thoughtful and reasoned. “If students can learn how to do scientific research, think critically, separate fact from opinion and apply mathematics to the world, that is what Scholarship at its Best means,” said Danette Morton, head of Upper School.

“Creativity is at the root of scholarship at Summit,” said Morton. “Through creativity, students find joy and purpose to their studies, and that is what creates lifetime learners.” In addition to thinking creatively, Summit students also reason systematically, and work collaboratively—three skills essential to success in the 21st Century. The path students follow through the Upper School helps them discover how to pursue studies beyond mere surface understanding, and to add personal meaning and value to what they are learning.

A perfect example of integrated scholarly pursuit is found in the Ninth Grade speech process. At the beginning of the year, students carefully select a research topic that is meaningful to them. Often, they have a personal or family connection to their topic such as fighting an eating disorder or being adopted from another country. They research their topic and compose a research paper. The process doesn’t end there, however. Students distill their papers down to a ten-minute speech, including visuals, and present it to the entire Upper School. Speech day for most students is a highlight of their Summit career. Most students agree that the confidence they gain from speaking passionately to an audience of three hundred is worth all the research, thought, hard work, and practice that go into the process. In high school, college, and beyond, Summit graduates have the confidence and training to present their ideas publicly—in a classroom, a boardroom, or wherever their Summit education might lead them.

At Summit, scholarship is about more than citing

the work of others. It is the capacity to join a larger conversation that is informed by research and driven by a desire to understand and to see beyond the literal. Scholarship, at its best,

is more than learning the answers for the next test, it is learning to anticipate

new questions and to pursue complex answers

in ways that are personally meaningful and socially

responsible.

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Summit Converts STEM to STEAMWe are tenacious about teaching fundamentals and committed to seeing our students translate proficiency into discovery, expertise and impact. – Six Promises of Summit

Perhaps nowhere else at Summit is the idea of integrating and translating fundamentals into real-world applications more evident than in the STEAM efforts currently underway.

STEAM–meaning Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math– is a new twist on a concept that has been around for about ten years. The idea of including art as an integral part of learning technology and math is natural for Summit, where curriculum weaves concepts together naturally, and builds on learning from one grade to the next.

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“STEAM has been going on at Summit since 1933, really,” said Chris Culp, director of Technology. “The technology has changed; we’ve incorporated the latest into learning to make it new and exciting.”

STEAM, and its root STEM, is in the news more and more as funding and attention are devoted to increasing American students’ proficiency in math and science. Nationally, funding and programs like the Department of Education’s Race to the Top are putting resources behind improving math and technology performance of American students.

The way robotics have been used in the Summit curriculum is a perfect example of integrating technology into learning from the earliest ages. Chris Culp has been using robots to teach for about ten years now, beginning with Kindergartners.

Take a look at this presentation by Summit’s Writer in Residence Charlie Lovett as he talks about how the arts weave into education and contribute to learning in concrete ways on our website.

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In Fifth Grade, students compete in the Math Robotics Challenge. When students in Tom Shaver’s Fifth Grade Math classes come to the Robotics Studio, they are challenged to work in teams to program a robot to draw a perfect square. They work on the project for a week, programming, testing, and reprogramming until their robot can draw the square.

“In this challenge, students learn in a different way than in the classroom. We see leaders emerge, and students working together to make their robot perform,” said Tom Shaver.

By the time these students reach the upper grades, they are comfortable with technology and working on advanced projects. This year, Chris Culp and Tim Perry, Eighth Grade science teacher, worked with Eighth Graders on a STEAM project during their studio time. The project involves solving a real-world problem: unidentified rattles in the air conditioning system. Students are tasked with programming robots to navigate through the ducts and gather data by bouncing sound waves off surfaces to identify what may be causing the noises.

“This project integrates science and math in a new way for these students. They will have to test and analyze data that they have programmed the robot

to gather,” Perry said. “They have had to come up with creative solutions to solve problems.”

It isn’t clear yet whether this studio class will solve the mystery of the rattling air conditioning vent, but it is clear that students will learn in a new way through the process by thinking creatively, reasoning systematically and working collaboratively.

“What they are doing helps them make good decisions and begin to understand how things influence each other. It opens their thinking

process to what they want the 21st-Century world to look like,” Perry said.

Find out what life is like inside Summit’s Arts and Technology Building by watching A Day in the Life of the A&T Building. Both can be found at:

Tom Shaver

Chris Culp

Tim Perry

Why add Art to STEM?

Karen House, a Summit teacher since 1985, is on the forefront of integrating technology into the Summit curriculum, but she also believes that students must develop their own sense of design and creativity through real-world concrete experiences before stepping into the virtual world of modern technology. Karen works in the Design Center, on the second floor of the Arts and Technology Building, where she teaches design to Kindergartners and First Graders. A lifelong learner herself, Karen went back to school and earned a master’s degree in Educational Media in 2006. In addition to teaching, she is Summit’s Webmaster. Summit News talked to Karen about integrating technology into learning for young children.

Summit News: What kinds of things do you do in the Design Center with small children?

Karen House: We do a variety of projects that introduce students to intentional design. Students learn to create simple layouts (like when we design flags or shoebox houses) or draw and cut out patterns (like when we make tooth fairy pillows). The Design Center gives a student the freedom to be creative, make his own choices and take pride in his work.

Summit News: What concepts are students learning in the Design Center?

Karen House: Our focus is on the particular project: creating your own dinosaur, coloring a design so that it is symmetrical, designing a holiday card for your Big Friend. All projects have a creative component that allows the student to make it his or her own. We emphasize pride in our own work and respect for each other’s work. I think of all of the six promises, Intellectual Independence is the one the Design Center most exemplifies. At this early age students are learning that we approach things in different ways with different results, but everyone’s work has value. At the end of each class I encourage the students to literally step back from their own work and look at everyone’s work, look for the differences.

Summit News: How do you begin to incorporate technology with these young students?

Karen House: It’s significant to note that only about half of the projects we do in the Design Center involve students actively using technology. I think it’s important to strike a balance: there are times when we want to use technology, and there are times when we don’t. As technology infiltrates more of our lives and culture at large, we need to set aside time to be unplugged. This is so important with younger children because they need those concrete hands-on experiences before they move on to more representational activities they often

Summit Teacher Uses Technology to Teach Young Students

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Summit Teacher Uses Technology to Teach Young Studentsencounter with technology. In the Design Center, students are not passive users of technology. They are active creators who are simply using technology as a tool, just as they would a paint brush or a set of blocks. At Summit, young students have lots of opportunities to use real paint brushes and real blocks before they begin to use those same tools on the computer.

Summit News: How does using technology in the classroom support Scholarship at its Best?

Karen House: I think at Summit we all realize the power of technology in bringing the world to our fingertips. So in addition to giving students these active, creative experiences, technology can also bring the world into our classrooms. In these times, establishing global connections even in the early years is very important. We want our students to have rich, hands-on experiences but we recognize what technology has

to offer in developing and broadening our students’ young minds.

Summit News: How does what children are learning with you tie in to their learning in later years?

Karen House: I look at our work in the Design Center as laying a foundation. It is true that through our projects, students develop better mouse skills, basic drawing techniques, even spatial relationships and sequencing (using GollyGee Blocks in First Grade). But the real take-away from the Design Center isn’t so much about design or technology. The real take-away is students taking pride in their own work and valuing the work of others. Summit students learn this every day in all sorts of opportunities from physical education to math class. It is no wonder that Summit students grow into such creative, compassionate, intelligent adults!

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While Summit has many long-term traditions like Pioneer Day and the Medieval Feast, our longest running tradition is providing progressive education that helps students develop their full potential. Constant attention to curriculum means that students remain challenged and well prepared. Curriculum Coordinator and Ninth Grade Dean Pat Capps outlined recent initiatives in curriculum at Summit.

The focus on 6+1 Traits of Writing continues across the school. This model provides a common language for teachers and students to communicate about the characteristics of writing and establishes a clear vision of what good writing looks like. The traits are: ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions and presentation.

Starting this year, a writing portfolio will travel with students from grade to grade. Teachers will select one piece of writing that shows a student’s progression from draft to finished piece to include in each student’s portfolio.

Fourth Grade teachers expanded the Living Biographies unit by adding afternoon experiences. Activities taught students the history of the arts (photography, math in quilt-making, movie making or animation, and dance and music). After watching the students perform as their historical characters, parents and grandparents had the opportunity to participate in these experiential activities with the children.

Fifth Grade teachers refined their social studies curriculum to include a focus on North Carolina’s history and government within the context of key time periods in overall American history. Fifth Graders pioneered an overnight trip to Raleigh to visit government buildings, museums and landmarks.

For the last two years, a math committee made up of elementary teachers, Roanne Ornelles and Curriculum Coordinator Pat Capps studied the most widely used math programs in independent elementary schools. They visited schools that used these programs. As a result, the committee recommended continued use of the Everyday Math Program (researched and published by the University of Chicago) in Grades 1 through 5. To strengthen our use of this program, a representative from the University of Chicago will present a workshop on the new edition and conduct advanced training with our math teachers next fall.

Curriculum Initiatives Keep Summit Students Competitive

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A compacted math curriculum through Fourth and Fifth grades for gifted math students will begin during the 2011-2012 year. With curriculum compacting, students will be able to move at a faster pace, delve deeper into concepts, and move on to higher-level work during the Fourth and Fifth grades. Gifted math students will now be able to take pre-algebra in Sixth Grade and algebra I in Seventh Grade. With this change, Summit students who are gifted in math will have the same math and science choices in high school as current HAG students in the public school system.

A STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Math) project was piloted this year during the studio period for Eighth and Ninth graders. It will continue next year as a studio choice for these grade levels.

The World Language Curriculum Review last year resulted in Summit adjusting its language offerings in the Lower School to concentrate on Spanish only. Beginning next year, students will rotate through experiences with Chinese, French and Latin in Fifth Grade, so they can choose the language they want to study during their Upper School years.

This year two new courses, Art I and Theatre I, were developed for Ninth Graders with a special interest in delving deeper into those subjects.

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Eight curriculum meetings were designated in 2010-11 for work within each division. Upper School disciplines and the Lower School had various goals:

• The social studies team, after consulting state standards as well as those from the National Council of Social Studies, is working on skills that will be developed throughout Grades 6 through 9.

• The language arts team has analyzed ERB scores in writing and mechanics and will add a handbook resource to supplement the 6+1 Traits vocabulary and framework.

• The math team adopted a new textbook series last year that was used in Sixth Grade and implemented this year by Seventh and Eighth grades. Upper School math teachers all use Sympodiums that connect with Smartboard technology software. For the past two years, the math team has attended Teachers Teaching with Technology sponsored by Wake Forest and Winston-Salem State universities. Skills learned are used with our students.

• The science team has worked to integrate new texts adopted last year in Sixth, Seventh and Ninth grades into their curriculum plans. Next year, Eighth Grade will use a new introduction to physical science text.

• The Lower School focus for this year has been on language arts, especially integrating 6+1 Traits of Writing and studying problem-based learning.

• Faculty will review the science curriculum in the 2011-12 school year.

It’s impossible to be at Summit for long without feeling the influence of Loma Hopkins. You might see her hurrying through the halls to her next class, or visiting with parents whom she taught years ago, or hugging a child who has made her smile. She seems to be everywhere.

Loma, who has taught at Summit for a remarkable 51 years, will retire at the end of this school year. She was hired in 1960 by then-Head of School Doug Lewis, who said, “Our first meeting was casual. She walked in unannounced while I was painting classrooms that summer. She didn’t realize who I was, and I certainly did not know what a gem was being added to Summit’s crown. Her husband, Baxter, who became my dentist, assured me she would be leaving after one year to tend their kids, Jane and Mary. Thousands of people are delighted Loma had other ideas.”

Loma is legendary for her imagination, her drive, her dedication to children and their families, and most of all for her energy. A colleague who worked with Loma on productions for more than 20 years captured what many of us see as a quintessential quality of Loma: “Loma has more energy than you, me, and 20 other people.” That energy combined with vision, love of children and a tireless work ethic, has led generations of students, their families and colleagues (both within and beyond the Summit community) to hold dear Loma’s special gift for orchestrating experiences that are transformational—and that live in one’s memory for a lifetime.

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Julie Crotty Giljames, teacher and parent

“Thanks Loma - for teaching us about the human spirit most of all. I know I speak for countless generations of Eagles everywhere: you will be loved, missed, and never forgotten.”

Legendary Music Teacher Loma Hopkins Retires

In his letter to staff and friends, Head of School Michael Ebeling said “For more than five decades, Loma has embraced the vision of Summit founder Louise Futrell: ‘I had a dream school in mind where everybody could be a somebody.’ And, indeed, the children who have worked with Loma in a class or in one of the countless performances Loma has directed, have experienced being somebody—and contributing to a larger whole that magically and meaningfully engages each individual.”

Loma embodies the Summit promise of A Sturdy Confidence, making certain each student reaches his or her full potential. As one alum, whose sentiments speak for the hundreds of students whose lives Loma has touched, put it: “No matter your talent level, or singing capability, Mrs. Hopkins will inspire you and make you feel important. Whether you’re the lead, or an extra for one scene, she’ll convince you that the entire play hinges on your performance.”

Former Head of School Sandra Adams, who worked with Loma for 41 years, reflected on Loma’s tenure “Before Loma there was a Summit, but very few souls remember it. When Loma walks out the Summit door, much history will leave with her. Luckily, her imprint on the school is so strong that she will be a presence for many years to come. When alums remember their days at Summit, many of their memories are Loma-related … she has simply given herself to Summit, and we are a better school because of her.”

Loma is anticipating her retirement with a sense of possibility and vintage ‘Loma enthusiasm:’ “I’m leaving my options open. I’ve been looking around for years, and I still have enough energy to reinvent myself. My friends say that they’d like to see me reinvent myself as their friend, so we can spend more time together. I’m also very close to my daughters and my grandchildren and we get together a lot.”

Bowman Gray, parent and alum “you taught me and you have taught my son, not to mention countless other members of the family. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

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Michael Ebeling, Head of School

Defining Academic Excellence continued from cover

Children learn from those they love and respect and by whom they feel loved and respected.

Children learn differently. As teachers, we are obliged to examine the implications of current research in the areas of cognition, learning style differences, social-emotional development, neurodevelopment, and learning theory. Further, we seek to translate theory into practice in appropriate and professionally responsible ways—that is, in ways that honor the needs and characteristics of the children in our care. As educators, we bring the same level of studied commitment to deepening our understanding of teaching and learning that we bring to our content areas.

Our curriculum is developmentally appropriate, matching (and always recalibrating) the challenges we set before children and the skills and interests each child brings. Further, we recognize that the concept of developmental appropriateness has two dimensions: age appropriateness (i.e., knowing the typical social, cognitive, physical and emotional development of children within an age range) and individual appropriateness (i.e., understanding that each child is a unique person with an individual pattern and timing of growth, as well as individual personality, learning style, and family background). In short, we must know both the predictable sequences of growth and change in broad ranges of children and the particular strengths and struggles of the individual child.

We value the concepts, skills and ways of knowing that individual subject areas or disciplines offer young children through young adolescents; consequently, our curriculum involves the study of mathematics, science, world language, technology, physical education, social studies, the language arts (reading and writing), and the arts.

We connect and interweave these disciplines through thematic studies and experiential learning within and across grade levels because we know that such hands-on/minds-on learning deepens children’s conceptual understandings and hones students’ skills.

We recognize that it is as partners with parents that educators are able to act in the best interest of each child. Teachers, administrators and parents need always to work together in the interest of children—to offer each other support, insights, expertise and commitment and to communicate openly, honestly and with good will to create the best possible environment for learning.

It is hard to imagine a more exciting or more engaging time to be involved in education—or a time more conducive to cultivating academic excellence: to helping our children excel by moving beyond their perceived limits. The world in which our children will take leadership roles is markedly different from that which has preceded it. A host of complex issues (ranging from the changing roles of technology in our lives to the way neurodevelopment is reshaping our notions of intelligence and understanding) are recasting how we envision our roles and responsibilities as educators as well as how we understand the intricacies of students’ learning and the relationship between their learning and our teaching. At our best, we as educators inspire in children, colleagues and parents the confidence that comes from competence, the engagement and enthusiasm that come from commitment to worthwhile goals, the understanding that comes from empathy and good will, the respect that comes from appreciating differences, and the joy that comes from life-long learning. This is work that matters. And it is work we at Summit are proud to do.

Where can we find you?

We’d like to keep in touch with you. Please send us your email address and

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Catch Head of School Michael Ebeling’s latest musings on his blog, Peak

Experiences, at http://summitschool1.blogspot.com/

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S i x P r o m i s e s o f S u m m i t

S c h o l a r s h i pat Its BestWe are committed to seeing students move from mastery of the fundamentals to discovery, expertise and impact.

Intellectuali n d e p e n d e n c eWe give children the tools to meet challenges, take risks and be successful in a complex world.

A Fertile LearningE n v i r o n m e n tOur curriculum develops fluency, creativity and competency in every area of a child’s life.

S t a t e o f t h e A r tFacilitiesDesigned to inspire, illuminate and connect, our facilities provide spaces for memorable exchange and individual learning.

A SturdyC o n f i d e n c eThe best foundation for confidence is the development of real competence.

E d u c a t o r sWho Engage the Whole ChildWe equip each student for the rich journey of lifelong learning.