For those of us in the Southeast, the snowball of summer has crested and is headed downhill towards the start of another amazing school year! Teachers report on August 13th and the first day of school is August 20th.
Really!
A housekeeping note before diving into this week’s post:
We are fully staffed for the 2012-2013 school year. I am pleased to introduce our “final four” who will round out the faculty of new and returning teachers I introduced here:
- Cathleen Toglia will be teaching Sixth Grade Math & Seventh Grade Pre-Algebra. She comes certified for teaching math in both elementary and high school and a has a wealth of excellent teaching experience.
- Kara Alford will be our First Grade Assistant Teacher. She comes certified for teaching elementary education and has experience as a lead First Grade Teacher.
- Ryisha Flowers will be our Fourth Grade Assistant Teacher. She is currently a student at the University of North Florida where she is working on her degree in Special Education.
- Megan DiMarco will be our Kindergarten Assistant Teacher. She is finishing up her Florida Teaching Certification at the Educators Preparatory Institute and has held a similar position at a school in South Florida for the last two years.
We welcome our final four and look forward to great things in the year to come!
Segue.
Well, it took a great deal of time to plan, plot and format, but as promised, I want to share the new schedules for Grades 1-5. Similar schedules for K & 6-8 are being finalized, by the way, but for those grades it is more a work of translation. Although I do not believe there is much new in these schedules, our desire to publish them stems from two places:
- The desire to break down “General Studies” into “Language Arts”, “Math”, “Science” and “Social Studies”. It is important that we have accountability for a complete secular academic schedule, particularly for Science and Social Studies.
- We want to dismiss once and for all the idea that students in (at least this) Jewish Day School have a “less than” secular academic experience than our friends at other secular independent schools or public schools. With our extended day, careful scheduling, and mission-driven choices, we believe our students have similar time on task with regard to secular academics as anyone else. To repeat – families who choose the Martin J. Gottlieb Day School are not sacrificing secular academics for the sake of Jewish Studies. They are choosing a full secular academic program (and a pretty excellent one at that!) with the benefit of a world-class Jewish studies program.
The proof is in the pudding…or, in this case, the schedule.
[Now this is our first go around with the new format so there are some kinks that need to be worked out. Not every teacher included every activity (recess) on the schedule. And a few teachers have some features unique to them. So please don’t sweat the small stuff or make assumptions…if you have a specific question about your child(ren)’s schedule, go right ahead and shoot me an email or make a call.]
Without further adieu…
I will be off next week on a family vacation, but back working and blogging the week after. Enjoy these last weeks of summer…but be excited by what will be waiting for you when you come back (I wonder if they did any work on the second floor this summer)!
