Da Vinci Design

Hello Design families!  It’s hard to believe Exhibition Night is already here! We so are so excited to see all of the hard work and projects that the students have created.  This week:

• Coffee & Chat with the Counselors @ 8:15 am on Tues., 4/8; topics will include senior college decisions, wait lists, financial aid awards and  parent resources.
• Parent Workshop Speaker Series #2 @ 6 pm on Tues., 4/8; Technoproofing Your Family! This workshop will focus on how parents can preserve quality time with their children in the fast paced world of technology.  Parents will discover positive ways to utilize technology yet stay connected through authentic face to face time.  The event will provide parents with tools to encourage their teens to become self-reliant, effective, and safe users of technology. The discussion will be facilitated by Fay Van Der Kar Levinson, Ph.D., Child Psychologist, Julia Hobbs, M.A., C.C.C., Communication Specialist, and Caroline Packman, Parent in the Trenches.
• Exhibition Night at DVD @ 6 pm on Thursday 4/10 – we look forward to seeing you there!
• School Site Council: We will meet 4 times a year to discuss and vote on various school programs and topics. We are looking for parent and student nominees! If you are interested in being nominated for the council, please send a brief bio as well as the reasons you are interested to Kate Parsons, Principal, at kparsons@davincischools.org by Monday April 7th.  Voting for the council will take place at Exhibition Night at Design on Thursday, April 10th.

 

 

Da Vinci Design will hold Summer Art & Design Camps for elementary age students who are entering grades 1-6 this summer.  The camp is run by Da Vinci Design staff and we are looking for DVD student interns! The application is below and must be turned in no later than Monday, May 5th, 2014.  Please contact Maigon Buckner (mbuckner@davincischools.org) or Jessica Jones (jjones@davincischools.org), with any student intern questions!

Click here to download the application: Summer Camp Internship Application

DV Parent Workshop Speaker Series #2 – “Technoproofing Your Family”

• Tuesday, April 8th at 6 pm
• This workshop will focus on how parents can preserve quality time with their children in the fast paced world of technology.  Parents will discover positive ways to utilize technology yet stay connected through authentic face to face time.  The event will provide parents with tools to encourage their teens to become self-reliant, effective, and safe users of technology.

  The discussion will be facilitated by Fay Van Der Kar Levinson, Ph.D., Child Psychologist, Julia Hobbs, M.A., C.C.C., Communication Specialist, and Caroline Packman, Parent in the Trenches.

Coffee & Chat with the Counselors

• Tuesday, April 8th at 8:15 am in the board room
• Senior college decisions, wait lists, financial aid awards and  parent resources.

Exhibition

• April 10th at 6 pm

 School Site Council

In addition, Da Vinci Design is looking to elect a School Site Council composed of school staff, teachers and students.  The council will meet 4 times a year in the evenings to discuss and vote on various school topics.  We are looking for parent and student nominees! If you are interested in being nominated for the council, please send a brief bio as well as the reasons you are interested to Kate Parsons, Principal, at kparsons@davincischools.org by Monday April 7^th.  Voting for the council will take place at Exhibition Night at Design on Thursday, April 10^th.

Supporting Your Creative Student: Understanding Collaboration

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

– Isaac Newton, physicist and mathematician

Collaboration is more than a skill for today’s workplace; it’s a creative behavior. Collaboration has the potential to take the ideas of different individuals and combine them in new and unique ways. Even elaboration, the process of building on someone else’s idea, is a form of indirect collaboration.

At the Da Vinci schools, collaboration is a normal part of the school day. In order to support your student, there are two important things to remember about collaboration: it’s typically both slow and challenging.

Group work involves complicated social interactions, which often leads to conflict. As a group becomes larger in size, this potential for conflict increases. Working with just one other person is relatively simple, but working in a group of several students is complicated. Students must learn to resolve conflict, and this takes time, energy and practice.

When you consider all the trouble that comes with collaboration, it’s tempting to say, “Why not just work alone instead?” And while working alone tends to be faster and more straightforward, you lose the ability to combine your ideas with the ideas of other people.

“The trick to having good ideas is not to sit around in glorious isolation and try to think big thoughts. The trick is to get more parts on the table,” suggests Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From. He suggests, “This is not the wisdom of the crowd, but the wisdom of someone in the crowd. It’s not that the network itself is smart; it’s that the individuals get smarter because they’re connected to the network.”

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Claudia Bear is a Da Vinci parent, with daughters attending Da Vinci Design and the Innovation Academy. She has a background in both science and the visual arts. In addition to practicing optometry, Claudia is a department manager with Kaiser Permanente, where she manages projects, develops leadership training for managers, and serves on the medical center’s Innovation Design Team.