Student Support
Advising at PutneyAt the core of the Putney experience are the strong relationships that form between students and teachers. On a campus as open and interactive as ours, connections between students and teachers are constant and familial, with faculty taking on a range of mentoring roles as classroom teachers, coaches, Dorm Heads, farm workers, and activity sponsors. Most of our faculty and some staff are also advisors, working closely with five or six students to help them (and their families) navigate through the trials and triumphs of life at Putney. The advisor-advisee relationship is perhaps the most important at Putney, often lasting far beyond a student’s time at the school. Advisors and advisees meet regularly, often daily, sometimes just casually to check in at lunch or assembly, sometimes with a more focused agenda during our weekly advisory block. As the primary link between the school and the family, advisors are quick to call or write home with updates, and also write semester-end letters in December and June, and meet with families during Parents Weekend twice a year. Although we sometimes make perfect matches from the start, students do not generally stay with the same advisor for their entire tenure at Putney. After an initial period at school, students are encouraged to approach teachers with whom they feel they can learn and grow most from and to establish an advisory relationship with them. As students and alumni alike will tell you, the advisor-student relationships at Putney are real, substantive, and lasting. The Learning CenterThe Learning Center provides academic support in the form of organizational help, study skills and math workshops. The Learning Center Director is available to provide advice to students having specific challenges meeting the demands of their academic work. Located adjacent to the Computer Lab, the center serves as a resource for all students, not just those with particular learning differences. Students who require additional tutoring on a regular basis may arrange this through the Learning Center Director. The center will open in the summer 2009. The Putney School understands that we have students with a variety of learning styles in every classroom, and we do not treat those with learning differences as "other." Our assignments and assessment tools embrace multiple styles of learning, and our teachers provide specific accommodations for students with academic testing on file. LibraryBibliographic instruction and library skills are integrated into the existing curriculum at The Putney School, so that students gain varied and authentic experience using the library. Because of the project-oriented nature of much of the Putney curriculum, students are required to design research strategies and make informed decisions about the types and quality of resources used.The Faculty expect students to be able to understand and use a variety of resources: The Library's Online Catalog and subscription services, quality Internet sources, as well as the Library's book and periodical collections.
Instructional Technology CenterThe Instructional Technology Center (ITC) is located next to the library.The ITC serves as a central site for teachers and students to learn new technologies and to improve their skills on the programs they already use.The center provides the equipment and facilities so that they can create with and incorporate technology into an assignment. Among the equipment housed in the ITC there is equipment for use in the center as well as equipment that will be available for loan. Here is a partial list: video production equipment, digital video cameras, digital still cameras, laptops, scanners, and color and black and white printers. The computers in the ITC have a variety of software titles suited for video production, web page design, graphics, digital photography, video conferencing, document scanning and publishing. College CounselingCollege Counseling classes College Planning (second semester)Required of all juniors. Juniors will learn about the elements of the college application process. Topics covered include identifying suitable colleges, the role of the transcript and standardized testing, recommendations, communicating with college admissions offices and visiting college campuses. Students will register for the ACT (with Writing) and the SAT Reasoning test, and will learn how scores from these tests are reported to the colleges. They will also review the Common Application, and use the Internet to research colleges. At the end of the semester, each junior should have a tentative list of colleges to investigate over the summer. The course meets once a week. College Applications (first semester)Required of all seniors. Seniors will finalize the list of colleges to which they will apply, identify recommenders, prepare portfolios and auditions as applicable, take any standardized tests needed to present themselves well, and write essays. The Putney School dedicates a weekend each October, with the help of the English department, to generating two personal essays suitable for applying to college; faculty come to campus on the Sunday to give an initial read of student drafts and the English teachers review the essays, which are the only assignment given seniors that weekend. Seniors also review mock admissions files, in simulated admission committees, to experience the viewpoint of an admissions reader. Individual meetings with the college counselor are always encouraged, and are more important than ever this semester. The course meets once a week.
|
|
