JV's Weekly Update

Team,  Can you believe it?!  We are online, on email, all up in Google Classroom, and TEAMS / Google chattin' our way back into technology integration!  What a wild few weeks.  Thanks for your patience, flexibility, #OneTeam spirit, and concierge-mentality that helped us navigate our way through tenuous challenging days. In all seriousness, cyber incidents have hit public school systems hard over the last five years and our experience represents a concerning trend.  Providence, RI, Scranton, PA and Highline, WA - districts similarly sized to us - all experienced an attack in the last month, yet if you were to read the headlines from those locales you'd notice how much faster we've progressed through a truly trying time.  Kudos to our technology team is well-deserved and we navigate getting back to full restoration (more on that below). Updates this week : New Jersey Charter Renewal :  On Tuesday, 9/24 we hosted a ten-person delegation from NJDOE , Cam...

Happy Friday (the 13th)!  I have a lot to update you all on this wonderful September morning, as the school year is well under way!  So far, I've had a chance to get into  about 16 of our schools, with my goal of seeing the remainder before the end of the month.  I am seeing bright, beautiful buildings, the use of technology (especially in our secondary schools), planned teachers, and positive school cultures.  Great examples of this are kids in Biology at Gratz (right) engaging in HMH and google classroom and kindergarten dual-language students at Molina (below)  What I am also seeing is teachers almost executing the Common Foundation, but not always fully meeting the mark.  I am seeing scaffolds - lots of them, both written (think:  graphic organizers) and verbal (teachers narrating kids through the thinking steps).  When I see these things, I worry - I think about the level of cognitive engagement that is expected at a given grade level t...

Happy Friday, team!  And a joyful TGIF! I am bringing back the "JV weekly recaps" as we start out the SY25 school year. They will be published every-other-week this year (in this jazzy new format) and I'm eager for your suggestions or insights on content.  For this edition, I'll summarize some timely network updates, team updates, share a few things I'm reading, and throw in a little personal / WLB update.  1. Network Updates: The school year has begun!   I was able to get into 9 schools this week and it has been absolutely delightful.  There is a lightness and ease to this school opening that I don't recall in years past.  A few highlights include:  officially launching dual language in Camden (I stopped by McGraw and got to see Heggerty in Spanish estar en plena actividad ), Chromebooks in secondary schools which look like a sea of red, and the most beautiful ELA and Biology lessons at Gratz which left me verklempt.  Ah, what is possible when we...