 |
|
|
Uncommon Schools
E-Newsletter |
|
|
|
|
|
Issue 03
November 2007 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Roger Wilkins, far left, and Kati Haycock, far right, flank Juliann Harris
(holding award) with North Star Alumni and Parents. |
North Star Receives Education Trust Award for Closing Achievement Gap
In a ceremony earlier this month in the nation’s capital, the Education Trust bestowed upon North Star Academy its prestigious “Dispelling the Myth Award,” which honors schools in the United States that have demonstrated success in closing the achievement gap for low-income students and students of color. The award has existed for five years and has honored 20 other schools since its inception. Three other schools join North Star this year: P.S./M.S. 124 Osmond A. Church School in Queens, NY; Lockhart Junior High School in Lockhart, TX; and Keith L. Ware Elementary School in Fort Riley, KS. Established in 1990 by the American Association for Higher Education, the Education Trust works to help schools and colleges “close the achievement gap.” The organization highlighted “common themes” that are manifest at North Star and the other 2007 award-winning schools: “having high expectations for all students, improving instruction, analyzing data to track student progress and individual student needs, providing a rich curriculum that is aligned to state standards, and using purposeful professional development to improve teachers’ skills.” Each year, Daria Hall, Assistant Director of K-12 Policy Development at the Education Trust, analyzes data from schools around the country to winnow the list of potential recipients. “Our criteria are more stringent than the blue ribbon criteria,” Hall said, referring to the No Child Left Behind-Blue Ribbon Schools program which honors public and private schools that outperform schools in their state or demonstrate gains in student achievement. “For example, it is very important to us that schools not have any specific or exclusionary selection criteria. We want to figure out what’s happening to schools that take all of the students that come to them, and have much more success with them.”
Click here to read more...
|
|
|
924
The average number of phone calls each teacher makes home to parents per year, to discuss homework and attendance, offer praise for recent work, invite families to school events, and address any parental concerns. |
|
Though Constantly Fidgeting,
They Shall Not Be Moved
Janna Genzlinger, Fine Arts Director at Excellence Charter School, looks down at the 24 first-grade boys sitting on the rug below her and says, in her best serious tone, “OK boys. It’s time. It’s time to get your frog on.”
In a blink of an eye, the boys have assumed “frog position”— crouched, hands on the floor, primed for hopping — and on her cue, begin to belt out a Puerto Rican song about el coquí, a Puerto Rican frog, accompanied by a wild jumping and general flailing of limbs. At the end of their song, they collapse breathlessly onto their carpet squares, and happily listen to the applause of their audience – parents, teachers, guests, and their principal, Jabali Sawicki, who claps with great drama and laughs loudest of all.
Inspirational quotes from musicians adorn the walls around them – “Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong,” Ella Fitzgerald – and these young gentlemen, who are in the middle of their first music recital at Excellence, make the quotes hum with life.
The boys sing songs in Spanish, French, and English in the “Caribbean” unit of the first grade curriculum. Genzlinger explains, “We use the Kodaly method here, which suggests you start with the child’s own culture.” Genzlinger’s first-graders begin with the Afro-Carribbean experience and then move around the world, stopping at different countries and cultures throughout the year.
Zoltan Kodaly, inventor of the method Genzlinger uses in her classroom, once said, “Often a single experience will open the young soul to music for a whole lifetime. This experience cannot be left to chance; it is the duty of the school to provide it.” The boys pronounce the foreign words and translate...
Click here to read more...
|
|
|
Spotlight on a Teacher: George Davis
Chances are, statistically, that George Davis is probably the only person he knows who regularly belts out Aretha Franklin’s “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” on Thursday afternoons. Sober. To a classroom of 30 kindergartners. But he does so with all the zing he can muster, and his young charges happily follow his lead, unwittingly learning to spell as they sing about one of the school’s core values.
A more jarring – and quantifiable – statistic applies to Davis. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, he is one of only 2% of male Kindergarten teachers in the country. Though Davis did not originally plan to teach elementary school, after meeting John King, a managing director at Uncommon Schools, during his senior year at Harvard, learning more about Uncommon Schools, and interviewing, his path greeted him with neon lights.
After one year learning the ropes, he is now in his second year at Leadership Preparatory Charter School in Brooklyn, a school he praises for its “amazing and incredible” support, a support his teacher friends do not necessarily receive elsewhere. It is this support that has directly helped Davis evolve from a teacher who “didn’t know what to anticipate” to one who seems built for the classroom. He teaches reading, math, social studies, science, and physical education during a day that starts, for him, at 6:45 a.m. and rarely ends before 5 p.m. He cuts each lesson into tiny, kid-sized segments...
Click here to read more...
Build Great Schools.
Get Results. Change History.
Uncommon Schools is a nonprofit charter management organization that starts and manages among the most outstanding urban college preparatory charter schools working to close the achievvement gap in the Northeast. Uncommon Schools is always looking for talented teachers, leaders, and builders to help us close the achievement gap. To learn more, visit www.uncommonschools.org or contact our Recruitment team at recruitment@uncommonschools.org. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
