Historical November 1994 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Question: If McDonald’s served 98 billion people, how many cows would it take to make enough hamburgers (assuming that from the average 1.000 pound steer. 110 pounds of hamburger meat could be obtained)? Answer: 222,727,272 cows! Not your typical word problem—remember, if a plane left Philadelphia at 5:15 p.m. , going 450 miles an hour and another leaves Pittsburgh at 6:00 p.m. going 475 miles an hour, at what time will they pass each other somewhere over Pennsylvania? Such a problem sends many a child into a mild panic (this writer included) and most students, unless they have a burning desire to be air traffic controllers, consider the answer to be less than exciting.
However, the McDonald’s burger problem engages even the most mathematically challenged of us all. Such is the approach to math at The St. Michael School.
The fifth and sixth grades dubbed the exercise “Cowgebra,” and rose to the challenge of finding the answer as a collaborative class project. Teacher Chuck Stowers did not stop there; the children were then asked how much space all the cows would take up, how many miles would the cows extend nose to tail, how many gallons of mustard and ketchup would be needed, and how many gallons of coke and pounds of french fries would be consumed with these burgers.
Each child completed the project by making a poster showing the math and his/her depiction of how the answers to the question would look.
This is education as usual at The St. Michael School. Located just five minutes from Parkview and the Skinker DeBaliviere neighborhood, the school is housed in the Episcopal Church of St. Michael and St. George just over the city limits in Clayton. Established as a preschool by the church in the fall of 1969, elementary grades were added one by one beginning in the early 1980s.
The school is small, deliberately so, with a population of 103 students (capacity is 125).
The size allows for a student to faculty ratio of 7 to 1 and enables the entire school to function as a cooperative community.
In fact, the school refers to itself as a community of learners where children, faculty, parents, and physical environment combine to provide an education which balances traditional academics, the Reggio Approach, and collaborative projects. Understanding that education is an ongoing, elastic process, The St. Michael School’s theme is ‘where children learn how to learn.’ Headmaster Ashley Cadwell says that “the challenge is to engage our community of learners in the learning cycle—the process of inquiry and invention.” Ashley uses three interlocking circles to explain this learning cycle; in one circle is experience, another is reflection, and the third is expression.
To use traditional scientific terms, one would have experiment, hypotheses, and conclusion.
A student may enter the cycle at any one of the circles.
For a pre-primary student learning about color, the question may be’ what makes orange.
The experience of mixing yellow and red paint expresses itself with the new color; reflecting upon the fact that this will always be orange may require repeating the experience a second and third time. “Cowgebra” was also an expression of the learning cycle. Studies have shown that memorizing facts is not necessarily the best way to retain and use information.
While some rote work is always required, the ability to find out why something is the way it is will certainly hold that fact more firmly in the child’s mind. Studies have shown that memorizing facts is not necessarily the best way to retain and use information.
While some rote work is always required, the ability to find out why something is the way it is will certainly hold that fact and its processes more firmly In the child’s mind.
The skeptic might ask what teachers do at the school if they are not forcing children to sit in desks and memorize.
They help provide an environment which becomes the third teacher (the second teacher is the student, both to himself and his peers).
A teacher will Instruct in the many ways to communicate—writing, dramatic play, two or three dimensional art, giving an oral report, listening carefully to one’s peers and respecting what they say, and music. Since the key to the learning cycle is reflection and hypotheses, teachers provoke in-depth thinking and discussions; they guide inquiries and invention while allowing the student to initiate direction and appropriate subject matter.
All this is achieved through traditional academics: reading, writing, mathematics, music, art, and computer and environmental sciences. Because in the real world most disciplines are interconnected, they are at The St. Michael School.
The school serves preprimary and primary grades. Those in preprimary fall into one of three groups: the young threes who meet three mornings a week, and threes/fours and fours/fives who meet five mornings a week and as many afternoons as desired.
The preprimary works to develop social skills and to cultivate a child’s natural desire to investigate, create, and initiate.
In the primary grades, Spanish is taught four times a week and the children attend an ecumenical chapel service twice a week. Students spend some time in the HUB which is in the center of the school.
The HUB contains an environmental science area a computer resource center, and an art area.
The school’s library is adjacent to the HUB.
A minimum of three teachers are always in the HUB to challenge and channel students working on projects in small groups. Because it is an Episcopal school, grace is said at meals and snacks, prayers are offered for the world as well as for members of the school’s community, and God is celebrated as the provider and creator for all.
The largest group of students are Episcopal, followed by Roman Catholics, other Protestant denominations, and Jews.
While the image of the Episcopal church is often one of affluence, The St. Michael School has a diverse population. over 20 percent nonwhite.
The Board of Trustees tithes ten percent of its income for financial aid for the primary grades.
The school is committed to serving any student who is willing to meet the challenges of being treated as a critically thinking person, capable of learning how to learn the lesson of a lifetime.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, November 1994.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: Source repeats a passage about memorizing facts; repetition preserved rather than silently removed.
Original source: SD_Times1994_11.pdf, printed page(s) 4; PDF page(s) 4.
