I was delighted when Director of Operations Sarah McLaughlin gave me maps of both buildings, showing rooms and teacher names — a first, in my experience! As I walked through the halls, I noticed the message “Work hard. Work together. Panther Pride” just about everywhere. A variety of community service organizations provide support during the school day; City Year and Tenacity members were noticeable in almost every classroom I visited. In case you’re wondering, it can cost up to $50,000/year to have one of these groups in a school.
I started my visit at the Upper School, where students arrive two hours earlier than at the Lower School. A class of seventh graders was learning how to use microscopes; across the hall a colorful display of student-created “Life Maps” decorated one wall of the Social Studies classroom. Student groups had college names! Long strips of blue painters tape marked hallway floors and I wondered if this visual reminder helped students stay in line during transitions. Reading, writing and math activities dominated most classrooms. At one end of the second floor was the Specialist cluster, where I reconnected with Theater Arts teacher Stephanie Marson-Lee and Marlon Forrester, a Visual Arts teacher I’d met at the Hennigan Elementary School a few years ago. I enjoyed watching Susan Jarvis lead her students in a short performance on their violins, some with bow, others with fingers. There were beginners as well as experienced players in the same class, and I was impressed by how seriously each student took his or her performance. Clearly they had all learned a lot in the first few weeks of the school year!
At the Lower School every class is taught in two languages, an innovation supported by former Hernandez teacher and now assistant principal Christine Cronin. Every other week is taught in English or Spanish, requiring an amazing degree of cooperative effort and shared responsibility on the part of teachers. I liked the big map of the world outside third grade classrooms featuring photos of students and showing the countries from which they or their families came. I enjoyed seeing children reading books selected from classroom libraries rather than a Reading Street text, which is simply an updated basal reader program. In one class students were annotating text with sticky notes, while down the hall others were using highlighters to mark passages in a story being read aloud by their teacher.
As I write this, meetings are being held to determine whether or not the Dever will be taken over by the state for low test scores. I can only wonder what they would do differently, if anything, and how that would affect current staff efforts to create an integrated K-8 community.
Amika Kemmler-Ernst, Ed.D.
amika45@comcast.net