Dear Parents,

I like to keep up on current education news and research as much as possible and the other day I came across an article that caught my eye. It was from the Associated Press and was titled, "Confident Students Do Worse in Math; Bad News for U.S." Needless to say, with a title like that I had to see what was up. It seems that a researcher by the name of Tom Loveless studied the results of a standardized test that was administered to students in a number of different countries in 2004. What Loveless found was that when compared to each other, countries whose math students had higher levels of enjoyment and confidence didn't do as well in the subject as countries in which students were the least happy and least confident in math. I asked myself what is more important, higher math scores than The Netherlands or happier and more confident children? Well, you can imagine my answer to that.

While the rest of the country (or perhaps the world) may seem to be obsessed with high math scores, I must say it feels great to belong to an island of sanity. While the Swan School community does value a strong understanding and foundation in mathematics, we don't think that education should be so unbalanced as to devalue the happiness and self-confidence of our children. School should be fun and enjoyable, and yes we should help all our students to learn to value happiness and self-confidence, it's okay for school to be fun.

Well, along the lines of fun, don't forget that our annual all-school field trip to the pumpkin patch and corn maze in Sequim is just around the corner (October 31). We still have plenty of room for drivers and chaperones so please sign up. Remember, Explorers and Navigators will follow up the pumpkin patch experience with swimming at the aquatic center in Sequim ...my own goal is to make it down the slide this year :-)

Before that the Navigators will be traveling to see "Jason and the Golden Fleece" at the Seattle Children's Theater on the 27th (hey, that's next week already) and there is still plenty of room for some drivers for that trip as well.

Next Tuesday, the 24th, is our October parent meeting. Although perhaps not sounding quite as fun as a play, a corn maze, or a pot-luck celebrating families (the Explorers had a wonderful time doing this just a few days ago), I'm sure it will be! The focus will be on safety issues and Carrie Muellner will host the "gala," I'm positive it will be an event filled with many smiles :-)

I couldn't resist ending with one further quote from the Associated Press article... "'In essence, happiness is overrated,' says study author Tom Loveless."

Russ