Weekly Information for February 13, 2026

Parker Weekly Family Email for Friday, October 23, 2026 Dear Parker students, families and staff, We want to recognize and celebrate three students who received Letters of Commendation from the National Merit Scholarship Program this week. We are very proud of Arlo Taylor, Chrys Olsen, and Andrew Roberdeau who were in the top 2% of all high school students who took the PSAT last year. We celebrated their accomplishment with a lovely breakfast with their family and friends. Thank you to those who joined us. It felt like a Gateway celebration, with everyone sharing reflections and words of support for Arlo, Chrys, and Andrew. It is a moment of pride for all of us. It was also an opportunity to reflect on Parker, a school committed to intellectual rigor, depth over coverage, and personalization. By challenging our students to use their minds well and engage deeply in real problems, Parker students develop live-long skills. They learn how to learn, not merely what to learn, and develop the habits of learning that set them up for an ever-changing world. We measure these skills through authentic assessments and public exhibitions, not standardized tests. That doesn’t take away from the success of our students on tests like the PSAT. It shows that we can do both – use our mind well and excel at external measures at the same time. One of our goals is to further measure student outcomes directly related to the Parker experience. For example, we are looking at revision data to better understand the rate and efficacy at which students revise their assessments. As you know, our teachers provide extensive feedback on student work with the hope and expectation that students revise. How often do students revise their work and what is the impact when they do? We are committed to telling that story as well. Thank you to everyone who contributes to the proven success of our students.  Brian

Parker Weekly Family Email for Friday, October 16th, 2026 Dear Parker students, families and staff, There’s a “slow hobby” movement that seems to have reached a saturation point in my online media algorithms. Some examples of slow hobbies are knitting, gardening, and reading, but there are many others. At this point, I feel like I see references to this topic or the benefits of slow hobbies relatively routinely, and it got me thinking differently about the upsides of taking time and slowing down, something that is actually quite counter cultural in our fast moving, technology-oriented world. One thing I have learned through all this recent exposure to slow hobbies and their benefits is that there are actually two kinds of dopamine, a key reward chemical in our brains that relates to not only motivation but also aspects of our physical health such as sleep regulation or immune system functioning. There is fast dopamine and there is slow dopamine—and these slow hobbies release slow dopamine, which results in longer lasting, positive effects. To get these longer lasting results though, we have to be willing to put in some time and effort. We have to stick with something and sustain it. As students and advisors wrap up their work documenting Personal Learning Plan (PLP) goals and strategies after last week’s conferences, it occurred to me that this goal setting work is an exercise in slow dopamine release. Students take time to identify real things they want to work on throughout the year, and they develop clear plans and strategies. These goals have the potential to help shape a student’s focus and attention on not just what they are doing in school but how they are developing as a person and learner through that process. At the end of the year, being able to achieve a long-term goal like those our students have just spent time setting in their PLPs also helps release slow dopamine. Along with that, we hope focusing on and achieving these big goals will also help students discover some personal reward in their learning experiences and the accomplishments that can only happen over time. Best wishes for a restful weekend.  Bex

Parker Weekly Family Email for Friday, October 9th, 2026 Dear Parker Students, Families and Staff, Thank you for joining us for today’s PLP meetings. We appreciate the hard work that students and advisors put into the day, creating goals and strategies for the year ahead. Many of our students were both nervous and excited to lead their PLP meetings. Congratulations on this important milestone. Why do Parker students write Personal Learning Plans and why do we dedicate one day in October and another in March to review PLPs with families? PLPs are an essential component of our personalized education, in direct partnership with families. PLPs provide a structured opportunity for students to develop the Habits of Learning – skills such as perseverance, organization and reflection. PLPs help students develop agency in their own learning, authoring their own goals and strategies that they personally embrace. Our mission is “to move the child to the center of the education process and to interrelate the several subjects of the curriculum in such a way as to enhance their meaning for the child” (Charter, October 1994). Thank you for helping us to do just that. We want to commend all the students and teachers who attended Nature’s Classroom this week. It was a tremendous opportunity for students to step outside their comfort zone and learn in a different setting. We are proud of you for embracing this opportunity. As Kalista and Matt wrote to Division 1 families upon their return, “we were really impressed by the resilience, good humor, and positive middle school energy our students demonstrated here.” Welcome home. Finally, thanks to teachers Anna, Alec, and Gale and students Lana, Lindsay, and Freddie for representing Parker at the CLEE Fall Meeting this week. They shared their work with educators from around the country, presenting our hands-on and reflective approach to learning. We appreciate the many ways that our students and teachers help to disseminate our work. We were recently rated by DESE as “exemplary” at dissemination, a responsibility of charter schools to serve as laboratories and share our learning with others. We are always proud to share our work and learn from others. Have a great weekend. Brian

Dear Parker Students, Families and Staff, Dear members of the Parker community, The start of something new often feels quite busy to me. Part of that is, I think, the very real number of logistics that need to be managed and the time it takes to get into a routine, and part of it is the emotion that comes with settling in—sometimes excitement, sometimes nervousness, sometimes other feelings—as we get used to how this new thing works and it moves toward familiar. This September has held true to that idea as we all settled into the new school year together and it has felt busy. This past Tuesday, we hosted three different events—Parker 101 for our new families, an event focused on explaining the way assessment and feedback works at Parker as well as how PLP conferences work; Support our Seniors Night, where families share a potluck dinner and hear about the important components of the Senior Project, Senior year, and the path to graduation; and Community Connections Night, where our Seniors share information about and gather resources from community members to support their year-long, individually-designed Senior Projects. In Parker 101, several of our students shared work from their Division 1 gateway portfolios and explained the assignment, what skills they worked to demonstrate, how the revision process works and what they learned by engaging in the work they did. They also talked about the Habits of Learning and how reflecting on their work and learning helped them to learn about themselves and grow. Some of our student presenters’ parents and guardians joined us as well to reflect on their own experiences as they have supported their students through learning at Parker, including helping new families understand how PLP conferences work and the important role families play in that process. As we closed out our Parker 101 session, families were invited to cross the hall and see what their students will be doing when they are seniors—designing a year-long, independent project that includes research, experiential learning, collaboration, developing a product, and presenting their work. I can’t think of a better way to explain what learning at Parker looks like than to let our students speak for themselves and show their real work. It was a gift to hear students reflecting on their learning in Div 1 and to see how all of the Skill Areas and Habits of Learning come together to help students work through their Senior Projects. We always hope that the pieces will come together in the end as we get things started, and this week reminded me not only that the pieces do come together quite nicely, but also of the many different ways they can do so here. That, I believe, is one of the strengths that help us as a school to support students as individual learners and that allows us to balance the Common Principles of goals applying to all students and personalization. Wishing you all the best as we move into October.  Bex

Dear Parker Students, Families and Staff, We are committed to ensuring that Parker is a safe and supportive environment for all students. Not only does this align with our common principles of democracy and equity and establishing a tone of decency and trust, we believe it is critical to support student learning and growth. We believe that Parker should honor diversity, demonstrate inclusive practices, and explicitly challenge all forms of inequity. We believe that families are key collaborators and vital members of our school community. Today, we reaffirm these values in support of immigrant students and families, many of whom feel unsafe in the current climate. On August 5, 2026, Governor Healey signed the PROTECT Act, a law that prohibits civil law enforcement, including federal immigration enforcement, on school grounds without a Judicial Warrant or Judicial Order. This law applies during school hours, student drop off and pick up windows, before and after-school programming and school-sponsored events, on and off campus. If you would like to read the full policy, please see the Parker Community Handbook… COMMUNITY HANDBOOK All children have the right to attend public schools regardless of their national origin or immigration status. We are committed to ensuring that students and families may come to school without fear and will comply with all applicable state laws to ensure protection. We continue to maintain open and timely communication with our students and families. We work together to support and live our core values. Please reach out with questions or concerns. Respectfully, Brian