Bluewolf Representative Gianna Scorsone presents a new tablet computer to The New American Academy students

The New American Academy welcomed the innovative IT company Bluewolf into our classrooms on Friday, February 3rd, for our curriculum celebration.  brought gifts of iPads, netbooks, tablet PCs, and illustration tablets. We are excited to partner with Bluewolf in bringing new technology and opportunities to our classroom!

From left: District 17 Superintendent Buffie Simmons, Master Teacher Lorraine Scorsone, Commissioner John King, Headmaster Shimon Waronker, Master Teacher Elizabeth DeAngelis, Master Teacher Lisa Silva, Intern Lake Coreth

The New American Academy at Lincoln Terrace Park was honored to welcome New York State Education Commissioner Dr. John King and Regents Research Fund Senior Fellow Amy McIntosh for a school visit on Thursday, February 2nd.  Our teachers and students were excited to meet Dr. King and show off our school community!

a. District students whose verified siblings will be enrolled in grades K-5 in the school at the start of the following school year in September;

b. Out-of-district students whose verified siblings will be enrolled in grades K-5 in the school at the start of the following school year in September;

c. District students other than those in (a) above;

d. Out-of-district students other than those in (b) above.

How do you free them? The authors suggest this four-step process:

1. Excite employees about your vision for the company to the point where they “own it.”

2. Eliminate “all the symbols and practices that prevent your people from feeling equal.” If employees feel subservient, they won’t give their best efforts.

3. Stop trying to motivate employees. “Instead build an environment that allows people to grow and self-direct — and let them motivate themselves.”

4. Once the new culture is in place, maintain it at all costs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/business/smallbusiness/28toolkit.html?_r=1

We are thrilled to announce our partnership with Opportunities Development Group (ODG). From their website:

Opportunities Development Group  is a strategic consulting firm that enables leaders in the business, non-profit and government sectors to meet their core objectives and maximize impact in a rapidly changing and competitive global market.

 

Our team of multi-disciplined, seasoned professionals has proven track records in the U.S. government and military, and as global business leaders. Over the past 45 years, our managing directors have worked extensively across 6 continents, as high-ranking members of 7 U.S. presidential administrations, as leaders of the U.S. military, as advisors and consultants for Fortune 100 companies and as entrepreneurs. We are experts in diverse and complementary fields, including foreign policy, legislative affairs, finance, marketing, entrepreneurship, national security and intelligence.

Our most sincere thanks to ODG, who will be supporting The New American Academy in a variety of ways, including our plans for fundraising and scale. Look out for exciting announcements in the coming months!

http://www.uft.org/feature-stories/humble-masters

“Throughout history, and in cultures all over the world, education rightly conceived has had two great goals: to help students become smart and to help them become good.”

–Thomas Lickona & Matthew Davidson, Smart & Good High School

Character education is a multifaceted concept—based on moral and self-actualization, social-emotional learning, and civil treatment. Etiquette training therefore plays a major role in character development by fostering values of human dignity. It allows children to see how their behavior affects others; to understand social responsibility; to have respect for the self and others; to practice tolerance and acceptance; to appreciate altruism; and to become competent members of society, who care about the greater good. Best stated by our friends at P.S. 69, the goal is to “educate minds and hearts.”

Regardless of a lack of consensus in the scientific community, character education is based on the following core values: self-control, social intelligence, commitment (that is, valuing close and lasting relationships),gratitude, kindness, optimism, humor, independent learning, integrity,citizenship, fairness, leadership, forgiveness, and modesty.¹ These strengths are significant because they have been widely affirmed across all cultures, ethnicities, and religions. So, the beauty of character education lies in its ability to transcend human differences—building character in today’s children is giving tomorrow’s leaders a universal key to success. 

Ensure that your child’s school is a school of character with the following checklist:

• Qualities of character are present at both the curricular and extracurricular levels. In a caring school community, the total atmosphere—including playgrounds, sports fields, hallways, classrooms, cafeteria, buses—is imbued with a climate of concern for others.

• Staff and parents serve as positive role models, demonstrating the continued application of character enrichment in adulthood. They too must follow a code of conduct for appropriate social behavior, social skills, and performance (for example, hard work, diligence, positive thinking, self-evaluation, humility, gratitude).

mature social habits such as emotional regulation, consideration of peers, “giving back” or service-learning, and harmony among students—within and across grade levels—and between students and staff, staff and families, etc. For this reason, bullying, teasing and acts of cruelty are infrequent (see Bullying Prevention).

Honesty and academic integrity are regarded highly, with strategies to resist plagiarism and cheating, and honor systems/pledges/councils.

Mere compliance is not enough. Rather, staff implement meaningful opportunities to help students benefit from their mistakes such as reflection, perspective taking,empathy, reversibility [“Would you want to be treated this way?”], conflict resolution and apology. By encouraging students to create their own conflict resolutions,  students then view their actions in light of the character traits and realize where the problem arose.

Why teach character education in our schools? Permeated throughout school walls and curriculum, character education is actively engaging; it has therefore been shown to nurture growth, autonomy, and self-confidence at an early age.² Take, for example, The New American Academy, Brooklyn, where students follow a unique model of character education developed at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This includes multi-cultural sensitivity (with the goal of tri-lingual proficiency by fifth grade) and comprehensive etiquette training beginning in Kindergarten. The product: high-achieving, resilient students despite extreme adversity.

In the ethical as in the intellectual domain, the building blocks of character are essential to child socialization. Teach character in your school with our specially designed enhancement program. “Rich or poor, privileged or disadvantaged, every child deserves the chance to excel beyond all expectations. The aim is to touch one life at a time, and in turn transform the world.” said Lyudmila Bloch, Founder of EtiquetteOutreach.com and etiquette expert in New York.

If you have enjoyed this blog, please click on Tweet button to share it with friends and family members. If you would like to comment, feel free to leave your feedback!

¹ Peterson, C. & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues. Oxford, UK:

Oxford University Press.

² Character Education Partnership. (2010). A framework for school success. Retrieved from    http://www.character.org/11principles

http://www.etiquetteoutreach.com/blog_new-york-etiquette-guide/

“MR. MULGREW: If you’re in New York, I’d love to bring you to the school. It’s exciting. I mean I got very excited sitting and speaking with them. They’ve done a lot of different things, they’ve done change of format, but the excitement and the level of actually meeting with these teachers in a group with their master teacher, and the master teachers truly enjoy helping, and they’re inside of the classrooms, they’re dealing with instruction, they’re making sure that the student’s data is being analyzed in a way, and they’re then aligning the instruction to it, and the conversation is just all about how we can enhance instruction and help our students move, and it’s very exciting. And anyone who could ever – I’ll be more than happy to try to, anyone who wants to come down, to take a look at it. But you’re right, and that’s the first time –  (p, 19)”

http://www.brookings.edu/events/2011/0927_k12_education.aspx

“A great teacher can literally change the course of a student’s life.They light a lifelong curiosity, a desire to participate in democracy, and instill a thirst for knowledge. It’s no surprise that studies repeatedly document that the single biggest influence on student academic growth is the quality of the teacher standing in front of the classroom—not socioeconomic status, not family background, but the quality of the teacher at the head of the class.” – Arne Duncan

Important facts to know about teachers

• Studies prove that a great teacher can impart a year and a half’s worth of learning to a student in one year. source
• 46 percent of teachers in public schools leave the profession within five years. source
• Teachers make 14 percent less than people in other professions that require similar levels of education. source
• In the next 10 years, more than 1.8 million of the 3.2 million teachers will become eligible for retirement. source
• 14 percent of teachers leave the profession each year; in urban districts, the turnover is higher: 20 percent.source
• High turnover of American teachers costs our country over $7 billion every year. source
• Teachers are priced out of home ownership in 32 metropolitan areas. source
• Only 4.7 percent of college juniors would consider teaching at the current starting salary. 68 percent of college students said they would consider the teaching profession if it paid 50 percent more than the current occupations they were considering. source
• The average starting salary for teachers in our country is $39,000; the average ending salary—after 25 years in the profession—is $67,000. source
• In 1970 in New York City, a starting lawyer going into a prestigious firm and a starting teacher going into public education had a differential in their entry salary of about $2,000. Today, including salary and bonus, that starting lawyer makes $160,000, while starting teachers in New York make roughly $45,000. source
• Teachers work an average of ten hours per day. source
• 92.4 percent of teachers spent their own money on their students or classrooms during the 2007-2008 school year. source
• 62 percent of teachers have second jobs outside of the classroom. source
• 61 percent of adults think teachers are underpaid given their level of training and importance to society. source
• 77 percent of U.S. adults feel teaching is among the most under-appreciated professions in the U.S. source
• 76 percent agree that many of the smartest people in society don’t go into teaching because being a teacher doesn’t pay enough. source
• Good teaching over a sustained period can [help students] overcome the disadvantages of poverty. source