Staffing

Each year we say good-bye to some colleagues and welcome new members of our community. Working from early childhood grades up and ending with office staff, below is an overview of our staffing changes:

This year, we are pleased to welcome back two early childhood teachers. Lucas Rotman was on sabbatical last year studying the role of music in how children acquire literacy. He will be teaching kindergarten. Jackie Wong returns to first grade after spending the last couple years as a Reading Recovery teacher leader.

We also bid farewell to several teachers.  Katie Mullaney has decided to return to Brooklyn. She is joining the staff at the Children's School where both her children are enrolled.  Sonia Bicocchi has taken a job much closer to her home.  Ryan Elias and MaryJo Stallone both are returning to their pre-kindergarten roots.  Jennie Cohen decided to take a job as an ESL teacher at a District 2 middle school.  Audra Benjamin is transitioning to a career in school counseling at the high school level.

It is a big task to fill the shoes of these professionals.  We are fortunate to welcome new staff members to join our team.

Shirley Shum will be co-teaching in a third grade class. Jessica Kuhl will be teaching science to grades 4-6.  Jessica has been working in our middle school and collaborating in science teaching with Youngjee and Shirley,

Our fifth grade is expanding to four classes this year.  Mollie Gross and Rachel Hacker will be working with fifth graders.  Both of them have taught upper elementary grades.
Pooja Shekar, who worked in first grade last year, will be our Spanish teacher for upper grades. Pooja has excellent Spanish skills and has a degree in teaching Spanish from NYU.

Natalie Delmonte will be working with middle school students in ELA and Social Studies.  She comes to us with a degree in special education and history education.

Stevie Latham has worked in our middle school for the past three years. This summer, Stevie has taken the courageous step of transitioning to her preferred gender identity. I am honored that she feels safe in taking this step as a member of our school community.  It is a testament to the welcoming and respectful tone in our school community -- a community that values diversity.

As many of you know, MaryLou Imbornone has retired. Erica Weldon will be taking her place. We welcome Susan Townes as our new parent coordinator.  Susan was an active PTA member at NEST+M while her daughter was a student there. She brings a strong skill set to our community.

Back to School Welcome

September 2015 

The staff at 276 has been busy getting ready for the new school year.  Teachers have started coming in to set up classrooms and work on planning.  Anthony and his custodial crew have been polishing and cleaning.  Nico, Claudine, Erica, Lorraine and I have been hard at work through the summer with registration, classes, and first days of school procedures.

The first day of school this year is Wednesday, September 9th. School starts at 8:20 each day. The school building will open for breakfast in the 5^th floor cafeteria at 8:00 am. School lunch will be served starting the first day of school. 

Class assignments will be announced for K through 5^th grade on September 8, 2015. Middle school students will find out their class assignment on the first day of school.

First through Fifth graders will go to the gym to line up with their class. Please make sure your child knows their class number before coming to school. School staff will be in the gym to help them to their class line. Teachers will pick students up from the gym and take them to their classrooms. Parents will say good-bye in the lobby.

Kindergarten families are invited to escort their children upstairs to their classroom. We ask you to take the stairs to the third floor to improve traffic flow in the lobby. At the beginning of October, parents will drop students off in the lobby. More information will be forthcoming on this transition.

Middle School students will go directly to the auditorium for their class assignments on September 9. On Thursday, September 10, they will go straight to homeroom.

Please remember that NO SCOOTERS, SKATEBOARDS OR STROLLERS ARE ALLOWED IN THE BUILDING at any time.

Dismissal

At 2:40 pm teachers will bring students downstairs for dismissal.  There will be signs in the first floor windows indicating where your child’s class will be dismissed. Parents/caretakers should wait outside on the sidewalk to greet classes by the sign for your child’s class. Please stand in back of the trees so that children can have access to line up. Fifth grade students are dismissed on the corner of First Place and Battery Place.

Kindergarten students will have a half day on September 9^th.  They will be dismissed at 11:30. All other school days kindergarten is dismissed at 2:30 pm.

Middle School students are dismissed on their own at 2:40 pm. Please make arrangements with your child if you plan to meet them after school.  

After school begins on Thursday, September 10th.  You can register through the Manhattan Youth website. 

Please visit our website for up to date information and calendar of events.

March 2015

Social Media

Click here for a link to a power point presentation on social media usage by adolescents.  This powerpoint is adapted from Common Sense Media.

November 2014

Reading Passions

As a kid, I read a lot: historical fiction passed down from my older sister, Hardy Boys mysteries from my brother, and titles I found on my own during weekly trips to the library. Those fiction stories have stayed with me. But what probably had the most obvious influence on my life were the National Geographic magazines that arrived each month in the mail. I remember curling up with them on the sofa, pondering the pictures and captions and occasionally dipping into the articles themselves. These magazines opened the world to me. In my twenties, when I was traveling around the world, those magazine images came to life as I rode on top of a bus in India, watched Balinese women gracefully carry towering offerings to temples on their heads, and Cameroonian women walking along the road with their babies tied to their backs in multicolored pagnes.

I continue to read non-fiction – online and on paper – because by the world and the different perspectives I gain from informational texts fascinate me. One blog that has really captured my attention is Out of Eden. Journalist Paul Salopek is walking the route of our ancestors from Ethiopia to the tip of Chile. He expects it will take about 7 years. As I read his dispatches, I draw upon the knowledge of geography, history, myth, and culture that I have gained from reading widely. Take a look at the blog and read an entry or two. As you read, think about what specific skills and knowledge you are using to understand what Salopek is writing about. What disciplines do you recognize? Economics? Politics? Science? History? How does he engage you as a reader?

At 276, we recognize that strong readers and critical thinkers need to have a well- rounded education and deep knowledge that they can draw upon when they encounter new experiences. At their best, the Common Core Learning Standards can help us achieve this objective. The Common Core in English Language Arts asks schools to engage in several instructional shifts: We are tasked with providing our students with a greater balance between fiction and non-fiction reading and writing. This allows our students to understand the unique features and structures of informational texts, to build knowledge about the world, and to increase their academic vocabulary. We also are required to teach our students how to engage with increasingly complex texts and to reflect on the ideas in these texts through writing. Students are expected to use evidence from the texts to provide evidence for their thinking and to apply this evidence in the construction of arguments.

These shifts are important for our students’ achievement. Research shows that a strong foundation of content knowledge can account for as much as 33% of variance in student achievement on standardized tests. More importantly, the discipline specific vocabulary students acquire through in-depth studies is needed for success in middle school, high school and beyond. And engaging content provides increased incentive for reading. We want our students reading – a lot – every day. Students who read on average 21 minutes a day encounter 1.8 million words a year while those who read on average 1 minute a day (the bottom 10th percentile of readers) are exposed to only 8000 words in print a year.

I am proud of the units of study that we create for and with our students that help them build a solid foundation of knowledge and the skills needed to engage with it. Our students are expected to integrate knowledge across texts from kindergarten on. They analyze ideas, ask probing questions, and construct their own understandings through reading a variety of texts. Whether they are constructing arguments about important social issues in grade 4, integrating ideas about history through crafting historical fiction in grade 7, or learning about the adaptations of dinosaurs in kindergarten, our students are building the content knowledge and the literacy skills needed to be engaged life long learners.

Inclusive Schooling

October 2014

One of the educational perspectives that binds our faculty is our common commitment to creating an inclusive educational environment. This commitment to inclusivity is based on our ability to see human differences as valuable and that recognition that one of our jobs is to create a learning and social environment that celebrates and builds upon the varied abilities, perspectives, and experiences of our community.

Often, when referring to inclusive schooling, people refer only to special education services.  At 276, we broaden that definition to include English language learners, diverse learning styles, social emotional development, cultural diversity, family structure, race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, home language…. Each of us has multiple identities that have diverse influences on our lives. By recognizing this diversity, celebrating it, and helping children navigate it, we enrich the learning experiences of our children and work towards a more equitable and just community and society.

Articulating what best inclusive practices look like is one of the goals I have for the year. I would like to share some of the ways, obvious and not so obvious, that we have in place to create a more inclusive environment.

Class names. In past years, we have referred to classes by the teachers’ names. This year, we are making a serious effort to refer to classes by their numbers.  We are doing this for a number of reasons. First, the classes belong to children, not the teacher/s who lead that class. Additionally, some classes have multiple adults working with our students. These teachers are general education or content specialists, special education teachers, ELL teachers, speech and language teachers, occupational therapists and paraprofessionals.  In many schools, these different teachers are identified as working with certain groups of students.  Often, this results in teachers who are equal partners being perceived as having very different roles. Students report that one teacher is the classroom teacher and the others are assistants or only works with certain students.  In our school, we have our teachers work with all students in the class not just a certain cohort. This helps disrupt the impression that that teacher works with those students.  Our teachers view all students as their students.

Curriculum We also continue to work to ensure that our curriculum is inclusive, accessible and appropriately challenging for all our students.  We do this by planning lessons and learning experiences that have multiple entry points and different ways of expressing learning. We are also taking into consider different types of diversity from learning styles and preferences to gender to culture.

Gender: School is typically is seen as more user friendly for girls. There is a lot of sitting still, reading and writing, and talking – tasks that girls are more likely to do well at than boys. Our teachers build interactive lessons, opportunities for collaborative learning, hands on projects, and inquiry – strategies that have been shown as beneficial to boys – into their units.  We are also making sure that our students have adequate time for recess.  Our younger students have time for exercise every day in addition to lunch recess and many of our middle grade students head to the park for outdoor play at least weekly.  Our middle school students have a lunch recess option in the gym most days.

We also work to be respectful of children who have non-gender conforming behaviors.  Our faculty strives to consider ways that our actions and words reflect gender-typical expectations and work to create an environment that is respectful of all children.

Multi-cultural. We are also examining our curriculum to make sure that our students with diverse cultural backgrounds can see themselves in the topics being studied at school. In 7^th grade social studies, our students learn about the role of enslaved and free black Americans in the Revolutionary war in addition to the more traditional founding fathers narrative. When our kindergarteners study families, we celebrate the different ways that families are formed.  And teachers are working on shifting our third grade social studies curriculum on world cultures away from a heroes and holidays, tourism-type curriculum, to one that studies the lived experiences of children in different parts of the world as well as the environmental challenges faced in different parts of the world.  Access to clean water and clean energy are challenges that many communities face around the world, and our third graders are studying wind and solar energy as possible solutions.

Teaching strategies Just as our teachers recognize that the curriculum needs to address diverse cultures and life experiences, they are also attuned to the learning profiles our students bring to school. To that end, they plan for diverse groupings and help students become self-aware of their own learning styles.

Diverse groupings during small group instruction. Throughout the day, our students work in a variety of groups.  Sometimes our students engage in whole class lessons. Other times, they receive individualized support from teachers.  Teachers also plan for students to work in heterogeneous grouping.  In this situation, students are not grouped by skill level. Instead, teachers group students by interest. In fourth grade for example, during the biography unit, students work in topic based groups. The group studying Sojourner Truth have multiple biographies that are written at a range of readability levels from less complex David Adler picture books, to middle grade chapter biographies, to Truth’s autobiography. They discuss how the story of Truth’s life is told, examine the anecdotes of her life that authors deem relevant, and consider how that information helps to frame the story being told.  Teachers also draw upon the strategy of homogenous, small group instruction. In this model, students with similar skill levels and goals, work with the teacher in a small group on a focused lesson. Flexible use of these grouping strategies allows the teacher to meet the different needs of our student across the school day.

Push in services v. pull out services. We want all our students to be part of the whole class community and to engage with the same curriculum as their classmates. Some of our students receive additional support in speech, OT, or learning English as an additional language. While occasionally, these services are better provided in very small group or individual settings, we strive to include support staff in classrooms as much as possible to encourage all children to be fully included in the classroom community.

Self-awareness of learning styles and building self-advocacy skills.

Executive function. One important skill learned in grades k-8 is how to organize our thoughts, our materials, and our bodies.  We teach these skills through a strong PE program, handwriting and keyboarding lessons, and time organization.  As adults, most of us know the value of planning ahead to achieve our goals. We do this through writing lists, keeping a calendar (or multiple calendars), and taking notes.  At school, we explicitly begin to teach these organizational skills through teaching students how to write down homework in their planners and plan out time for assignments on calendars.

Sensory smart. Many of us find that our senses get overwhelmed when we are in certain situations. I am not good at really loud or crowded events.  (I plug my ears often in movies so that I can feel more comfortable.)  Like us, our children also have different levels of tolerance for sensory input.  We work to have a sensory smart school environment.  This means that we recognize the continuum of sensory input experienced by students and work to have resources and tools in place to help children be successful.  Students are encouraged to try out different writing tools, movement breaks through yoga, and a variety of seating options in our classrooms -- from rocking chairs and cushions to desks that are separated from groups to allow for concentration.  We also make sure that our students have opportunities for active out door play and we provide lunch clubs for those kids who don’t handle loud, energetic environments such as recess. These children prefer to have quiet down time, so they can go to the library, play chess, engage in writing work, or other club options.

Empathy  In order to be truly inclusive, we need to be empathetic to the different experiences our students bring to our community.  Our students also need to develop empathy for their classmates.  We take the responsibility of the social curriculum seriously.  In addition to class meetings in lower grades and grade level community building experiences such as the 6^th grade trip to Frost Valley, we have a structured curriculum in place. 

In grades K-5 teachers use the materials in the Second Step program. This is a nationally recognized social skills curriculum that helps students learn about their own feelings, apply that understanding to the feelings of others, and learn to communicate and problem solve effectively. In grades 6-8, our students have a weekly advisory class where they engage in communication and social skills lessons in addition to learning about their learning styles.

This year, teachers are also engaging in study of Restorative Justice approaches to supporting positive behavior. Through this approach to discipline, students are asked to reflect on their actions, the impact their actions have on themselves and others, and to identify strategies for doing the right thing. We want our students leaving our school knowing how to make wise choices for themselves and for others.

There are lots of strategies we use to create an inclusive school environment. From our language and actions, to books and resources we have in our classrooms for teachers and students to use, we want to make sure that all our students feel fully valued as human beings. It is a big goal, and a complicated one. But it is a goal that all our staff feels very passionately about accomplishing.

September 2014

Five years ago we were excitedly moving into our new building. We had many empty classrooms and the whole 7th floor was left unused. Our 20 teachers were getting to know each other as new colleagues and were preparing to welcome 270 students in 4 new grades. Today, we have 879 students and a staff of over 90. We have gone from an empty school building to one that is very full with students often spilling out of classrooms into the hallways to work in groups. We have just completed our first year with a full complement of grades K-8. One of the things I am most proud of about our school community is that our school mission statement really drives our work. Our mission statement says: 

The mission of PS/IS 276 is to provide a public education for grades pre-kindergarten through 8 that fosters the intellectual, social, creative, and physical growth of each student in a safe and nurturing environment. We strive to empower each student to achieve his or her greatest potential and inspire students to use that potential for the benefit of others and the world.

To fulfill this mission, we have built a strong curriculum that engages and challenges students and our classrooms are filled with resources. We also have a number of great programs supported by the PTA that allow us to expand on this commitment. Some new initiatives this year include a math coach, Ariel Dlugasch, to support our teachers in providing an outstanding math curriculum for all our learners, and a drama teacher on staff, Kailey Larkin, who will work with all grades to enrich our social studies and literacy curriculum.

School success is measured in multiple ways – some more valid than others. Yes, we get good test scores. More importantly, I can see we are successful by the enthusiasm of students as they come in the door each morning, by the quality of their work, and by their involvement with ideas. We can measure our success by the commitment of our teachers who have spent the summer studying, traveling, and preparing for the new school year. This year promises to be a year filled with learning and adventures, new friends and exciting opportunities to come together and grow as a school community. 

Terri