Good to Great

Four positions for which we are planning promise to catapult our school forward, adding significant services to students and enabling us to support very good teachers to become great and great teachers to become even greater.

Positions:

Enrichment Specialist: An enrichment specialist whose role will be to support teachers to design enrichment experiences for students will join our department of student services. This educator will work directly with students who, based on assessment, demonstrate the need for enrichment or acceleration exceeding grade-level learning. The enrichment specialist will be able to teach students in their classrooms and, as needed, pull students out of class to provide an enriched curriculum. In addition, our enrichment specialist will serve as a coach to teachers, assisting us to design enrichment experiences that will challenge and nurture the talents and passions of all our students.

Singapore Math Coach: As we implement a Singapore math curriculum in the school, we will benefit from the “gold standard” of professional learning in curriculum implementation for our teachers – an outside expert providing five days of intensive training for teachers as well as a workshop for parents, alongside a full-time in-house coach to provide ongoing professional learning and training for our teachers.

Library/Media Specialist: Leading the process of shifting our magnificent library into a twenty-first century library/media center is vital to our efforts to prepare our students for success in our rapidly changing media-rich world. We will be welcoming a library/media specialist to our faculty who will support our students to develop research and media literacy skills. Our library and media specialist will also coach our classroom teachers in more skillful integration of research, media, and literacy skills into educational experiences in the classroom.

Educational Technology Coach: Technology in the twenty-first century can no longer be relegated to a lab, but must be infused within classroom experiences. An educational technology coach will provide students with a comprehensive technology curriculum in the lab, but even more significantly, will support teachers to infuse daily learning experiences with technology in order to enhance and improve the quality of learning at our school.

Coaching Team:

What do the four positions described above share? You got it! Each of these positions includes some form of instructional coaching for our teachers. Our enrichment specialist, Singapore math coach, library/media specialist, and educational technology coach will join Ann Berlstein, our science coach, and Hadassah Wrightman, our Hebrew coach to form a coaching team. Jen Gensior, Chair of our Student Support Department, will also work with coaches and will be providing additional instructional coaching support to our faculty in literacy and learning strategies.

These instructional coaches or “teachers of teachers” will enable us to support very good and great teachers to become even greater. That commitment to the ongoing learning of teachers, not via outside workshops but through job-embedded learning experiences and collaboration among peers, is at the essence of what distinguishes the very best schools today.

Over the course of the next several months you will learn more about our curriculum enhancements, our hiring processes, and our instructional coaching team. You’ll have opportunities to meet our instructional coaches and gain greater insight into our commitment to continue to improve the quality of learning for our students. Please share with us your questions, insights, and ideas.

Another Day Off? Whatever For?

Jewish holidays in October, parent-teacher conferences in November, and a professional learning day for teachers in December; what’s a parent to do with so many days off from school? Not only do we want our children in school and learning, but many of us also struggle with child care. It isn’t easy to juggle all these days off. We understand.

So, first answers to the question – why these days off from school? Second, some thoughts on what we can do as a kehilah (community) to craft the best school calendar we can, remembering that our calendar reflects our core values. We must observe the Jewish holidays. Parents and teachers must talk about our children’s learning as well as their social, emotional, and religious growth. Teachers must continue to learn so they are able to support our children.

Jewish Holidays
Yes, parents understand that as a Jewish school we will be closed on those Jewish holidays on which Jewish law prohibits work: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, the first two days of Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah (as well as Pesach and Shavuot later in the year). Some who do not observe the holidays (particularly a lesser known holiday like Shemini Atzeret) might wish there was school. Still, parents understand.

But Erev Chag (the day before the holiday)? Why must we be closed? Because holidays require preparation – sometimes cooking, sometimes building a sukkah, and other times traveling. We embrace the wide range of observance of our families and faculty and are committed to making it possible for those who need to prepare as a family to be able to do so. Parents should know that in past years we were also closed Hoshanah Rabah (the seventh day of Sukkot or Erev Shemini Atzeret) but now have a regular 2:00 p.m. Friday dismissal. We have celebrations in school for Hoshanah Rabah, an interesting day on which there are special customs. Yet, besides the customs connected to Hoshanah Rabah, there are not more preparations for Shemini Atzeret than for Shabbat. Consequently, we were able to fit in an extra day of school. We hope parents are pleased!

Parent-Teacher Conferences
Yes, parents understand and appreciate the opportunity to meet with our children’s teachers.  But, why are there two days of conferences instead of one? And, why aren’t there evening hours?  We must have parent-teacher conferences on two days so Judaic studies teachers can be at conferences for both of their classes. We know, in Kindergarten conferences could be on one day, but having a day of school only for Kindergarten and not the rest of the school raises numerous complications.

As for evening hours, we are working on it. We know that many parents are finding it ever more challenging to take time off from work. During the March conferences we have two half-days of school and then have conferences from 1:00 to 8:00 p.m.. We are considering a similar structure in the fall, with conferences from 1:00 to 8:00 p.m. on two consecutive Thursdays. Why Thursday? Teachers are exhausted from conferences and need the weekend to recoup. We would then have school on Veterans Day and hold Professional Learning Day on Election Day. We do not like having students in the building on Election Day as we are a polling place. Although the White Plains Police Department provides us with security, we still prefer not to have students in the building on a day when there are so many unfamiliar adults present. There are some other options being discussed for parent-teacher conferences and we will do our very best to accommodate parents’ needs.

What about technology? Can’t we Skype for conferences? Well, maybe. We don’t yet have webcams in most classrooms, however moving forward we would love to know parents’ thoughts on video conferencing.

Professional Learning Day
Quite simply, in order for students to learn, their teachers must continue to learn. On this upcoming professional learning day our general studies teachers will be learning about Singapore Math (coming soon to our school) and our Judaic studies teachers will be continuing training in our Hebrew literacy curriculum. There will be other vital activities such as exploring “learning walks” in which faculty will visit each other’s classrooms in order to improve their own skills. There will also be a range of faculty driven professional conversations on topics that directly impact student learning. The benefits of this time as an investment in the skills of our faculty are profound, enabling us to continue to improve the quality of our school. Not only schools, but successful organizations broadly, need to invest in professional learning in order to continually improve, maintain excellence in areas it exists, and address areas in which we must be doing better. To serve our students, we must address in serious, substantive ways, the learning of our faculty.

What About Those Snow Days?
If we face a difficult winter, there will likely be questions about the snow days. While officially it is Dr. Spiegel, with input from the school’s senior administration, who decides whether to call a snow day, in practicality, it is the bus companies who decide. If the bus companies believe it is not safe to drive, we really cannot run school. If we have more than five snow days, we will begin to add days on to the school year. Hopefully, we won’t face this challenge, but we want to be prepared.

Finally, we want to assure you that there is a rhythm to the year. We know what we must accomplish by the end and pace ourselves so that we get there.

A Day In the Life: My “No Office Day” With Our Fifth Grade

I was exuberant on the morning of Tuesday, September 13 when my phone buzzed with the happy message: No meetings scheduled today!

That was the only “appointment” entered on my calendar. I spent our first No Office Day

Rabbi Leibowitz in class during "No Office Day"

with our Fifth Grade, engaged in their daily experiences from arrival through dismissal. Ilanit Curi-Hoory, our assistant principal, spent the day with the Kindergarten. We’ll have five more No Office Days during the year during which Ilanit and I will each spend an entire day with all of our grades. We will also have at least two No Office Hours daily.

What did I do on No Office Day? I joined Fifth Graders as they happily greeted our Kindergarteners and walked them to class, hung out with 5B during early morning independent reading, led tefilahwith 5B and talked about ways our feelings are reflected in the words of our prayers, facilitated a reading group in 5D focused on the reading strategy of asking questions as we read, taught a literacy lesson in 5A comparing  and contrasting a Jewish and an African tale which were both cultural retellings of Cinderella,  was interviewed in 5C’s chumash class, and then enjoyed listening to 5C students interviewing each other in their literacy lesson.

Rabbi Leibowitz davens with Grade 5 during "No Office Day"

I joined 5A for Hebrew and played a memory game with them in which we learned both vocabulary and sentence structure, watched a basketball game during recess and discovered a new location where some of our students who love nature could continue to explore. I ate lunch with 5B, enjoyed observing 5B and 5C’s dodge ball game in PE, listened to a read aloud of the book Holes in 5B, walked students to buses, and came back into the pick up room to wait with those going home by car.

It was a great day!

What is it that made No Office Day so special? I was engaged in our kehilah, our community, not to observe our teachers or our students and not to be “the leader” with a specific goal, but to be an engaged participant in learning and connecting. I was with the Fifth Grade not “to do” anything, but rather “to be” with them in kehilah.

Principals and other school leaders from across the country, and even some throughout the world, are participating in No Office Days this week and throughout the year. We are sharing on Twitter, in blogs, and in a No Office Day wiki the ways in which our presence can best make an impact on learning in our schools. We are connecting nationally and internationally for the purpose of connecting more meaningfully in our daily face-to-face interactions in our own school communities.

So, today, with only two hours scheduled for time in classrooms, I’m already feeling withdrawal pains. I think I need to post my blog, get away from the computer, and back into class! Looking forward to sharing more with you!

Bye for now. I’m off to class.

No Office Day – I’m Closing My Office And Going Back to the Classroom

Scheduled into my calendar for two hours every day – color coded in red, thanks to my assistant, Brianne Gioio’s ingenuity – is classroom time. During these two hours I commit to visiting classrooms. It’s not the only time I get out of my office (I’m with students and teachers at lunch and recess, at school-wide events, and for other programming), but despite my best intentions, classroom time often gets gobbled up.

What fills in its place?

You likely guessed it: meetings. Yes, the meetings are (mostly) important – curricular and programming meetings with faculty, meetings with parents who deserve to share their insights and concerns, and strategic meetings with professional and parent leadership.

Yet it is in the classrooms as well as “extended classroom spaces” such as our library, computer lab, science lab, and outdoor trails and gardens that true education happens. Teachers and students deserve to see me, their principal, in their places of learning, offering support, providing feedback, and rolling up my sleeves to get directly involved in teaching and learning.

I know I’m not the only educational leader who feels the gravitational pull of the office. Many principals and other school administrators, when speaking honestly with one another, share similar frustrations. It is from this place of deep commitment that I have embraced and have become involved in coordinating International No Office Day.

It is a day – actually several days during the week of September 12 – to accommodate different schedules. Educational leaders will close their offices and be with teachers and students in classes. Assistant Principal Ilanit Curi-Hoory and I will hold our first No Office Day next week, on Tuesday, September 13. It’s not the only day we’ll be in classrooms.

Indeed, the conversations among colleagues far and wide about how to spend the day are energizing us to consider ways of having many no office days and daily no office hours. The dialogue with colleagues is also stretching our thinking on ways to make our time in classrooms more meaningful.

School Without the Students: What Teachers Accomplished on Professional Development Day

Children cheer and parents wonder.   Why do we need a day off for professional development?

Last Monday, as children enjoyed a long weekend and parents rearranged childcare, teachers took giant strides in an ongoing and innovative curriculum review.  We looked at each subject area, considered state and national standards, and using the most current educational research available, determined which features of our curriculum reflect the best in education today. We also determined which features we can work on to improve the quality of the education we give the children.

As we explore new and richer ways of bringing science, social studies, and Chumash into the classroom, we are placing more emphasis on the essential core skills that go beyond subject areas. We are reviewing proven methods of teaching literacy in both language arts and Hebrew. We are considering several ways to bolster our math curriculum so that students will achieve even greater success.  In all areas, we are finding creative approaches to support learning with educational technology.

Your children have already begun to see the fruits of our efforts in subtle ways.  New tactics and approaches are being used in classrooms. You will see more obvious innovation next year as we roll out new units in each subject area.  Over the next several months, look for entries in this blog that will be full of specific details about our progress.

Getting Technical During Professional Day

Don’t hesitate to share with me your questions and areas of interest.  I look forward to a continuing dialogue with you.