Kingsley’s Head of School, Steve Farley, talks Practical Life, good books, and standardized testing.

What does the Head of School do during March Break? 

The Head of School recharges on the beaches of St. Kitts during March Break. We did undertake a little exploring by visiting St. Kitts Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park. A UNESCO world heritage site, the fort provided stunning views of the island and a compelling, often painful, opportunity to understand the impact of European colonial expansion and the African slave trade in the Carribean.

What have you been reading, watching, or listening to? 

March Break was a great time for beach reading—literally! On the fiction front, I tackled The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley and Richard Powers newest, Playground. On the non-fiction front, I have travelled back in time to one of my youthful passions, the Hartford Whalers, as I read Christopher Price’s Bleeding Green: A History of the Whalers.

It’s ERB season! Kingsley students in Third through Sixth Grade are taking standardized tests to measure their learning progress. How do you think about data collection and standardized tests? 

There are several important reasons why we incorporate the ERB's Comprehensive Testing Program (CTP) assessments into our program. They provide…

• An Objective External Benchmark. The CTP provides an objective measure of student progress compared to peers nationally, which complements our internal observations without disrupting our core Montessori approach.
• Preparation for Educational Transitions. For students who almost exclusively transition to traditional schools after Kingsley, these assessments provide familiarity with standardized testing formats without making them the focus of our program.
• Targeted Support Identification. The data helps us identify specific areas where individual students might benefit from additional support that might not be apparent through observation alone.
• Program Evaluation. The assessments help us evaluate the effectiveness of our Montessori and complementary curricula and allow us to make refinements while staying true to our philosophy.
• Parent Communication Tool. The results provide an additional way to communicate student progress to parents who may be accustomed to more traditional assessment measures.

That said, at the end of the day, it’s important to note that we use these assessments as just one data point among many, administered in a low-pressure environment. They inform but don't drive our curriculum, and results are discussed privately with families rather than being used for comparison among students. 

If anyone would like to discuss standardized testing at Kingsley in greater detail, I encourage you to connect with our Associate Head of School, Tara Hofherr. She has also created a handy slideshow about our approach the ERBs, which you can review here. 

Talk to us about Practical Life: What is your go-to chore? Did you have a favorite “work” in the home as a child? How did you encourage your children to develop life skills when they were growing up? 

As an adult, my go-to chore every week is taking care of washing and folding the laundry. There is something about seeing the colorful, hodge-podge of dirty laundry transformed over the course of a Sunday into neat stacks of folded clothing that helps me get my mind ordered and set for the coming week.  

As a child, helping my mom cook meals was probably my favorite Practical Life activity. As one of eight children, though, I was expected to take part in many other Practical Life activities that I didn’t enjoy quite as much in order to keep a household of ten running smoothly.

With my own children, as soon as Sam and Elise were able, helping out was simply an expectation. My favorite example of my children learning a Practical Life activity was when I convinced my then ten-year old son Sam that shoveling snow would now be his job. I still remember how excited he was when we went to the hardware store to pick out his very own shovel. He soon fell in love with shoveling and, to this day, is the first to head outdoors when it snows. (I think this might even be why he has decided to live in Canada!)

If you had to take one of the creatures in Ms. Malloy’s science lab home for the weekend, which would you choose and why? 

Tough call, as each creature has its merits! I could gaze at the frog’s vivid colors all day, and who wouldn’t want to host a feigning death beetle? My choice, though, would be the hedgehog. I think Franklin would be the most interactive and social of the menagerie.

During Giving Day, your role of Head of School was raffled off to a student for one day only. Who is the lucky winner?

Phyllis in Grade 2! She will be your new Head of School on Wednesday, May 21. Make sure to give her a wave as she makes her Head of School rounds. 

Thanks for reading! Check back soon for another installment of "Qs with the HoS!"