Oliver wraps up his third grade year this week. This is a big transition year in Montessori from “Lower Elementary” to “Upper Elementary.” Oliver has spend the past three years in the same classroom. At this point, he is one of the leaders. Next year he will enter a 4th, 5th, and 6th grade classroom as one of the newcomers. He is, of course, both ready and excited for the change.
The final days of school have dress up themes. Wednesday’s theme was “Fancy.” Alas, Oliver discovered that he had outgrown his suit, but we think he came up with a pretty good substitute. And the hat! Love the hat.
It’s hard for me to believe that someone wrote this copy with a straight face. It seems like a mockery of AI — a dystopian satire of the robot apocalypse. Humanizer? Really???
Screen shot of an email advertisement received from Grammarly on September 8, 2025.
It’s that time again! Maggie enters eighth grade today while Griffin begins his junior year. It’s an orientation day at both grade levels, so there won’t be any real classes until tomorrow. (For the teachers, orientation is far more work than a regular class day, so I’ll definitely earn my meager keep today!)
Today was the last day with students at my middle school. Five teachers and spouses went out for an evening on the town, culminating in an outstanding Chinese feast at Shuang Cheng in NE Minneapolis (owned by the parent of a former student and serves the best Ma Pao Tofu I’ve had since leaving Oakland).
It was a bittersweet occasion because Shannon is retiring and Matt is taking a sabbatical next year. The middle school won’t be the same without them.
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve chaperoned our annual seventh grade trip to Camp Widjiwagan in northern Minnesota. This year was special, however, because it was Maggie’s turn to join the adventure. She’s heard about the trip for years, so she was greatly looking forward to it.
Camp Widjiwagan is on the north shore of Burntside Lake in northern Minnesota. It’s about four and a half hours from the Twin Cities. This is far enough that it is noticeably colder and snowier than the central part of the state. We left early on Monday morning and returned on Friday afternoon, spending four nights in rustic cabins in the woods.
Camp Widjiwagan is just south of the Canadian border in northern Minnesota.
This gives you a sense of the way the lakes are laid out in this region.
The only downside to the trip was that Maggie caught a stomach bug on her final day, keeping her up for much of the night. A thousand thanks to my colleagues, Cat and Mackenzie, who took good care of her in her cabin. They brought her over to the impromptu infirmary in one of the admin buildings where I was able to be with her for the rest of the night. By morning, she was over it, though I did sit with her on the bus home to try and reduce the spread of any germs to her friends. (The final pic in the gallery below is our selfie on the bus… we don’t look as sleep-deprived as we were.)
Most of the following pictures were taken by the ever-talented Bobak Razavi.
Maggie is taking her first computer science class this year. The seventh grade course meets every other day for half a block (45 minutes) during the first trimester. This isn’t a lot of time for learning and practice, but students usually dive in with gusto and Maggie is no exception. Although I do teach a section of the class, I don’t have Maggie. She’s with my brilliant colleague, Chris Collins.
At the mid point of the first trimester, we ask students to create a short project using the code that they’ve learned thus far. They are using the Python programming language. Here’s what Maggie created:
Maggie’s program uses the turtle to create a campsite scene.
To create this scene, Maggie wrote 170 lines of code using Python’s default text editor (known as IDLE). If you’re curious, the code is appended below.
It is Oliver’s first day of second grade at Cornerstone, and the first time that he won’t have any siblings on campus. Still, he’s a veteran of the place after something like six years (preschool + K-1) and has no qualms.
It’s the first day of school at SPA. This is Griffin’s fourth year on campus, and his second year in the upper school. It’s Maggie’s first time, joining the seventh grade. (This is Andrew’s 15th year.)
Each student at Maggie’s graduation ceremony had a series of slides that showed them at different points during their years at Cornerstone. I’ve extracted the pictures from Maggie’s slideshow as a gallery below, or you can see the slides as they were originally presented at this link.
Maggie’s graduated today from Cornerstone Montessori Elementary School which she has attended since kindergarten. It was a beautiful ceremony on a perfect day. Next year, she will attend SPA (where Daddy teaches) as a seventh grader. She will be on the same campus with Griffin (entering 10th grade) but most of their classes are in different buildings. We are enormously proud of her!
