Math Is Strategy: Grade Four Students Make the Decisions
Milton’s fourth graders learn three core tenets of working with numbers: flexibility, efficiency and accuracy. In other words, their teacher Randy Schmidt says, finding the right answer is important, but it’s not quite enough. “Students often come in with just the accuracy part,” Randy laughs, “and that leads to the other important work that we do.” They begin the year reviewing addition and subtraction strategies, as Randy reexamines or introduces multiple strategies for each operation. “Being open to a new strategy when they already have one down is challenging for some...
Read MoreThe Opinion Department Invites Yours
When Jason Spingarn-Koff ’92 headed for Brown University after Milton, he thought he would get involved in storytelling somehow, and perhaps in medicine. “So maybe I’d become a doctor who writes plays,” Jason laughs in hindsight. “I wanted to integrate my creative side with caring about the world,” Jason says. “I wanted to make an impact.” He did pursue filmmaking, science and journalism. A video journalist and filmmaker, Jason directed the feature-length documentary Life 2.0, about people consumed by a virtual world, which premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and...
Read MoreThe Listing Wars
The blue whale swimming in the waters off the California coast, the Houston toad hopping around the woodlands of Texas, and the piping plover skittering around the dunes of Cape Cod. Three species share one distinction: They are officially endangered. You’ll find them among more than 1,000 animal and plant species on the Endangered Species List. The list is a storied point of contention among political, business, environmental, and scientific groups, and Ben Jesup ’82, an attorney with the Solicitor’s Office of the Department of the Interior, happily deals with it every day. “I...
Read MoreCan We Talk about Solutions?
Be part of the conversation driving economic policy. Heather McGhee ’97 argues from a national pulpit for an authentic conversation about shaping economic policy. She is talking about policy that will yield deep, comprehensive economic growth and strengthen every sector of the population. Heather urges everyone to move past ideological standoffs and to face the fact that underlying policy does affect who the winners and losers are, over time. Determination and hard work alone aren’t sufficient. She argues that the exponential expansion of lobbyists, and the dollars they contribute, means...
Read MoreThe Public Meets Imagination’s Cutting Edge
What do today’s artists and viewers make of one another? “My work is more diplomatic than transactional,” says Molly Epstein ’00 about her role as a director for the Gladstone Gallery of New York and Brussels. The Gladstone Gallery represents a host of contemporary, internationally celebrated artists. Five of those artists know Molly as the fulcrum between ongoing artistic production and the public. “Serving as a connector and translator,” Molly says, “is a way to characterize a lot of what I do.” Molly’s introduction to art history came during senior year at Milton in Larry...
Read MorePursuing a Dream All the Way to Brazil
It was my first day of practice with Santo André and I sat quietly on the team bus, staring out the window as we rode to a practice center. I had no idea where we were going or what kind of soccer I was in store for. As the bus veered through the winding hills and favelas of São Paulo, one of Brazil’s largest cities, I wondered what was ahead of me. Having graduated from Princeton in 2006, I was now in the second year of my quest to become a professional soccer player. I spent most of 2007 in San Francisco, playing in the United Soccer League’s Premier Development League, a...
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