The Mary Lyon School is located near Oak Square in Brighton. Founded 25 years ago as a full-inclusion K-5 school, it added middle school grades in 1999, and in 2009 the Mary Lyon Pilot High School opened. This year the schools serve approximately 300 students and occupy two buildings a short walk from one another.
Signs outside several Upper School classrooms give the name of the teacher with information about where they attended college, their favorite or most challenging college experience, how they prepared for college, and a few personal words of advice.
In ELA, Katie McGuire‘s 10th grade students were reading an article about a student whose idea helped food banks connect electronically with restaurants. Anthony Luu and Brian Novosone were working with 9th graders in their Engineering class. A large bulletin board featuring famous mathematicians from around the world caught my eye. Seniors in Bob Tobio‘s AP Calculus class were using graphing calculators to plot equations, while 11th graders were doing a learning experiment in Chemistry with Nicola Sumner.
Middle school students attend classes in the Upper School building, where Jennifer Lambertz‘s seventh graders were learning about positive and negative numbers. In Madeline Leckle‘s “Enrichment & Intervention” ELA class, 8th graders were reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, learning to identify “Aha!” moments in text and film.
In the Lower School, K2 students in Megan Condon‘s class were working at literacy centers, while Erin Gallagher was reading aloud to her second graders. Students in the fifth grade class were practicing soccer moves with PE teacher Curtis Sherman. Fourth graders were lying in a circle on the floor, learning to breathe deeply and relax in art teacher Debra Manley‘s Mindfulness class. Scott Larivee‘s sixth graders were taking a history test using desktop dividers to enhance privacy.
I enjoyed reading a first grade bulletin board featuring individual student goals for the year, such as: “Be nice.” “Be happy.” “Read books.” “Make new friendships.” A couple of children just said, “ROAR!” – reflecting the school’s core values of respect, optimism, achievement, and responsibility. The second grade hallway display had a line of paper buckets, one for each student, with “I like how you…” notes from classmates – here’s hoping your bucket* is full!
Amika Kemmler-Ernst, Ed.D.
amika45@gmail.com
*How Full Is Your Bucket, by Tom Rath, is a popular children’s read-aloud about “invisible buckets” that are filled or emptied by our positive/negative interactions throughout the day.