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Events

Teachers Have Impact

by NYC Private Schools on March 12, 2010

Finding the best educational opportunities for a child goes well beyond choosing the NYC Private School that looks like a perfect match or the NYC Public School that has a great G&T program. A school is more than the sum of its facilities and the philosophy that is written on its homepage. A school is very much a family of dedicated officials, teachers, families and students. When looking at simple graphs of graduate profiles, it can be easy to assume that a certain school is better than others or that a specific area has a better crop of young minds. While it seems obvious, the truth is that many people don’t really consider the impact of the teachers, no matter what school they are in.

A great teacher will be a huge influence in a student’s academic career and help shape their love of learning well into the future. For some students with difficult backgrounds, a teacher may be the only person in their lives who cares and is involved with their education.

In a recent CNN article on education, former and current students rallied in support of teachers in their failing school.

93 teachers, support staff and administrators at Central Falls High School were fired for the low performance of the school, which graduated just 48 percent of its seniors last year.
Sindy Alvisures, said, “The teachers are literally like our family. When I went through high school, I went through a lot of personal problems and my teachers were always there for me.”
Of the 800 students who currently attend Central Falls, 65 percent are Hispanic; English is a second language for most. Half the students are failing every subject, with 55 percent skilled in reading and 7 percent proficient in math, officials say

As darkness fell at the school, the graduates who had come back said the problems at the school have been oversimplified and that the rest of the nation can’t understand the importance of the teachers in the tough environment they live.

So often the success and failure of students is measured in ways that don’t take the whole picture into account, and the students at this school have chosen to take a stand for those who appear to be the only educational influence in their lives.

When you and your child are researching and visiting with your potential NYC School, take special care to meet with and observe the teachers at the school. They may be the influence that changes the course of your child’s academic career.


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New School for Celebrated Principal Shimon Waronker

by NYC Private Schools on March 3, 2010

New American Academy Principal Shimon Waronker plans to open a trilingual elementary school in Brooklyn this September and the news has the whole city talking. Some of the discussions are about Waronker’s past achievements in New York schools, while other talks focus on the model of school that is planned on.

In an article carried by the New York Post, education reporter Yoav Gonan, the story about Waronker’s new school emerges.

Waronker, a Spanish-speaking Hasidic Jew who earned his stripes turning around one of the city’s most violent middle schools in The Bronx, will open a trilingual elementary school in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in September. The kids will all graduate fluent in Spanish and French, in addition to English.
The innovative public school will put 60 kids in a classroom with four teachers, who will stay with those same students from kindergarten all the way through fifth grade

Waronker, who hopes to open as many as 50 replications of the school by 2012 if the model takes off, believes the unusual set-up will help build deep relationships among teachers and students and will allow instructors to target their lessons to kids’ specific learning styles.

Many NYC residents are familiar with Rabbi Waronker’s work and his success in taking a failing school in a tough neighborhood, Junior High School 22, in the South Bronx, and turning it around. Waronker, a member of the Chabad-Lubavitch sect of Hasidic Judaism, is a former intelligence officer in the United State Army. The school he took over, Junior High School 22, was listed as one of the 12 most violent in New York, with active gangs, attacks, drug use and alcohol on campus.

The future of Waronker’s new school and its very progressive methods of group teaching to an essentially large student body with multiple teachers in open classrooms.


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Finding Haitian Students a Place in NYC Schools

February 21, 2010

There have been so many reports and wonderful stories about courage and survival in Haiti after the devastating earthquake that many longed for the good news in stories. Many felt that the good news was found in the stories of those children who made it to NYC to live with relatives and friends and [...]

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Handling Conflict in School

February 18, 2010

The relationship of a student with their teachers and school faculty are a vitally important link in the quality of that student’s education. We stress so often that one of factors that enables Private Schools to be so incredibly effective is the simple fact that they choose students who are a good match for [...]

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Athlete and Student Excels in Two Worlds

February 16, 2010

Sports figures and Private Schools are not always discussed in the same sentences, mostly because an academic focus is usually thought of as a separate thing altogether than an athletic focus. Because of the rigors of each, it is commonly believed that to be a true player on either of those fields requires a [...]

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More Words on the Library Debate

February 14, 2010

Back in the fall of last year, we reported on the Cushing Academy, the first school to officially changeover its library to all digital. The transformation of this school’s library, complete with big screen TV’s and a $12,000 coffee maker, began to stir up more and controversy not because if its singular decision but [...]

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Private Schools and Education Itself a Luxury for Some

February 9, 2010

The high volume of excellent NYC Private Schools and the many excellent educational choices offered in the city often creates the illusion among families that education is always available if you just work hard enough to find it. The truth is, however, that there are many places around the world where the educational systems [...]

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Private School Financial Scrutiny Important

February 3, 2010

In a raw example of how an economic condition affects schools, students and communities, one Private School in Indiana is deciding whether or not it can continue to operate throughout the rest of the year due to the fact that it is just plain out of money.
NewsChannel 15’s Chris Hopper discovered the financial [...]

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NYC Teachers and Potential Layoffs

January 31, 2010

The overall picture of Education in NYC Schools was laid out as bleak at the beginning of last year. Economic concerns, increases in Private School Tuition, more competition for Financial Aid, all of these items that factor into Private Schools were coupled with the loss of thousands of Public School teachers and massive budget [...]

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Political Asylum for Educational Choice

January 30, 2010

America tends to be much more open-minded when it comes to educational choices for children, and a recent ruling has upheld one family’s desire to home school their children even if it mean leaving their own country behind.
A German family fled to America in 2008 after they were told that they could not home school [...]

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