Newton Rotary Meeting Tuesday Nov 19, 2013

Posted by Marie Presti

on Nov 19, 2013

Mary Kern started the formal part of the meeting at 12:30PM.

Tom Keery started us in the pledge of allegiance
Mary Kern gave us a nice service Invocation
Susanne McInerney led us in song with God Bless America

Visitors were Nancy Johnson, from the Newton Public Library

Announcements

Paul Harris Day Feb 11, 5:30 Vechia Roma instead of regular meeting

Thanksgiving Day Luncheon, 11/26/13 next week!

Sue: ran out of pens and mugs to give to our speakers. Instead, we decided we're donating a book to the library in honor of each of our speakers. This week's book is Masterminds and Wingmen donated to the library on behalf of our speaker Mr. David Stettler, Headmaster of The Fessenden School.

Nancy Johnson

Mary will send out another rescheduled meeting time for our board meeting.

Next board meeting in Dec will be meeting at the Barry Price Center.

Bert turned 101 this past week.

Paul Kerrissey won the raffle draw again this week. did he win the pot? He needs to pull the right card. Oh, too bad. Next time.

Happy Dollars:
Indira Desai: just because of being in Rotary
Sue Peghiny: to Nancy for working on this project
Chris Chu: for the 3 visitors
Paul Kerrissey: banner is now filled with new banners
Bill Lowry: for arrangement of the books and for Paul
Dick Bowen: Sue
Peggy: Happy to be here
Paul Sullivan: Happy to be here
Tony: for his old Newton sweater from 1950. still fits. his high school reunion.
Amanda: book arrangement and happy to be here.
Justin: results of fundraiser. broke records and did well this year.
Susanne: thanks Sue, vacation and her birthday, and her sister is home after 8 months of being in the hospital
Marie: for Sue and all she does for
Jeff: Tonys sweater, new book program, and for winning $1100 at Vegas

David Stettler from Fessenden:
Fessenden is a Day and boarding school

He asked what we knew about the school and here is what people said:

Ted Kennedy is an alum
Tom Keery knew one of his friends went there.
red/grey are their colors
They have nice tennis courts
They have 2 swimming pools

Then he gave us more information:

1903 as a boys school
500 students (pre k-9th grade)
The Boarding part of the school houses about 100 boys ages 7-9 who live there on campus. The rest are day students.
40 acres
12 buildings (40 faculty live on campus)

He talked about education and boys (time magazine did a cover). a crisis: lack behind girls in reading and writing. boys get most d's and f's and minority of a's. They are most likely referred to a psychiatrist. Many boys diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. A majority of them with learning disabilities. Boys have most of the violence caused, the most suspensions, the most dropouts. Females earn 57% of BA degrees and 60% of all master degrees. 57% of all AP classes.

Girls tend to do better multitasking

Girls organize life

Boys take more risk

Language center develops more in girls

Girls don't go into rest state

Visual Systems - Girls more texture and color Boys movement and direction

overlay bell curves

1) overlap profounding

2) peak for girls more in one direction.

3) tail for boys is longer so outliers tend to be males

3/4 boys more physically active than any girls

Here's the reason:

When you put boys in an all boys environment, its not a narrowing experience,

its broadening. if you put boys and girls together boys are focusing on where they are in the pecking order.

Boys tend to shy away from: arts, do well in school, leadership opps, chess, singing

What can we do? bring back recess, free play, respect boy imagination, more project based learning, allow movement in classroom, use competition, skills like time management, attend to something that matters.

Michael Thompson, Raising Cane.

David Stettler

Respectfully Submitted by Marie Presti