Salk Open House Video

Salk Open House

hello my name is Rhonda Gary and welcome to the Salk School open house I've been to principal since 2001 we have a wonderful staff and it's a great school have invited a number of the staff to be here today to talk about this I will be the moderator I'll ask a couple of questions that I think parents are always interested in and staff will get on and answer those questions if you would like to have further in and please go to ourselves School website and look at our FAQ for prospective parents we also have a number of links there so that you can learn more about our school with the three biggest things to take away I talked about our school are that we're warm environment we are rigorous school and we like to have a lot of fun you say is the cultural climate here at Salk hi I'll jump in my name is Jake Weisner I am the 8th grade Humanities teacher and I am also the resident dinosaur lactinex talk since it opened this is my 2050 or at the school and one of the things that I love about the school is the culture and just to ask her what Rhonda said before we are a warm nurturing collaborative environment it is an academically rigorous school without being an overly stressed will school we try to keep things fun give kids a lot of Opera I need to express themselves creatively so to speak directly to the culture it is a school you walked in you would see kids maybe sprawled in the hallways and book clubs other kids working collaboratively on a science project people strolling into Rhonda's office to say hello and borrow a buck students and teachers on a first-name basis together and so I think that it is a place that feels like home staff as well thank you Jake what would you say about our classroom practice hi everybody. My name is Amelia and I'm a mess T-Rex talk everything we do it song it's very collaborative we do lots of projects lots of experiments and we try to make connections between subjects so strong to hear yours that's all you're going to do a lot of collaborative interdisciplinary math and science project do you may set up an experiment in science and then come over to math class and gather some data and then go back to science to analyze the results you may develop a project in math collecting data and science may be how fast is your your car going how fast is your rocket you make out of straw going and then come back to Mass to analyze the results expect a lot of collaborative interdisciplinary projects throughout your years here it's all hi I'm Jessica and I'm a 6th grade Humanities teacher at Salk a Donna and reiterate what Amelia just said just with some more examples of interdisciplinary collaborative projects in 6th grade in Humanities we do both social studies and reading and writing in 6th grade we study ancient Egypt write a storical fiction stories that take place in ancient Egypt and then return those stories into readers theater scripts with our Drama teacher that we perform in front of our class and parents and it's a whole Egypt cell patience with just another opportunity to work together with our classmates across subject areas and it's always a really fun experience that kids and parents remembered throughout their time at all my name is Marcia Wallace am leading specialist in science teacher here I love what Malia and Jessica share because that really embodies what we are at so very neutering in Byram do we do have iced tea classes where you'll have two teachers in every room and a lot of times even though I gen Ed classes you're going to have to teach as you may have student teachers who are there you know so you always have an adult you can move it with especially small groups Jake mentioned earlier that we used to kiss products in the hallways we can visit each other and they would want to be working together with another adult students so that they can reach out to that teaches that you just are very supported by a email usually during lunch time hours you have teachers working with students sometimes even after school some teachers will stay in and wait with small groups so please know that you will always be supported or right hand never be afraid to ask any questions 7th grade teacher for Math and I work a lot with both Rhonda the seventh grade math teacher and Daniel 8th grade math teacher 2 support RI City students in the classroom and we often do small groups both while we're doing remote small groups and also in person we do all small groups to I work with the students in so I spend a lot of time Rana and Daniel and I spent a lot of time and supporting the students that have I need some extra supports and yeah so I require a lot I used to be a high school math teacher as well so expertise that we bring that I bring to the table to help out the kids that need extra help in that what a typical day would look like student hi I'm Jennifer Goodwin on the assistant principal at Salt so it's six graders come in as a salt you would have Humanities which is a combination of English language arts and social studies and we have that for 10 hours a week you have it 10 hours a week in 6th 7th and 8th grade so you have it about 2 hours every day sometimes it's a little bit more sometimes it's a little bit less and you would have math for an hour every day and then you have science four times a week so twice a week it's for an hour and twice a week for an hour and a half and the balance of your schedule would be with Arch would be with physical education and we often have a stem class in sixth grade so that in 6th grade that would be an additional class you would have a stem and for 7th and 8th grade we had in Spanish and we've been having drama every year for in every grade Sol Del Sol be drama each year buddy we would start the year off with advisor and adviser has a time that we come together to support people both in particular and sixth grade to make that transition back into a new school and to get to learn what how to navigate 6th grade and the way it may be different from elementary school at his 7th and 8th grade we talked about different topics and I thought you might be talking about social skills you may be talkin about having difficult conversations about the world around us and what's going on your advisory will be there to support you and to answer questions you may have about academics as well so really is just as great covid of students that you can rely on and you can use as a support system in the school advisory you might be practicing some mindfulness or meditation or doing any activities that can get you better prepared for the day ahead or the week ahead and your advisor is also somebody that you can lean on if you have any do you and your family kind of like your primary Point person at the school yard visor is somebody that you'll get to know really well and they'll always be able to help you at the school I'm not a question that I'll put out there that I think a lot of parents are interested in is about high school and anybody want to address where a lot of our students may go to high school I can start to talk about that as someone who has talked for 25 years I've certainly been at this time terrible out of the high school discussions are kids do really well and have really great options the vast majority of our students take the specialized task for the specialized high schools and in most years close to 60% of our kids get offered a spot in one of those schools we have a really Rebecca Start program so and Trauma program so many of our kids audition and got accepted to Laguardia a handful of schools that have just been really popular with saw kids over the year so over the years we have spent many many kids to be kin to Eleanor Roosevelt to Bard the lab and Millennium to Baruch to have tended to be visible as they've been most popular with our students over the years and eighth-grade we do a fair amount of support with the kids at the high school process our guidance counselor Leslie works with all the families in our 8th grade we talked to the kids about transition to high school all we've done practice interview stuff with them when I supposed to interview but generally that's that's what happened since all maybe you could just say a little bit about eyes out lunch and homework I'll start with the with the homework thing we managed to be an intellectually rigorous high school so we don't equate call Mark we get with having to actually regress the school as their stock is a place where we really want to help the kids do you want to know to then help him develop and turn them into critical thinkers but not send them home every day having to do the hours at work so so that's what I would say at homework we allow our kids starting in the middle of 6th grade usually it depends year-to-year to start with parental permission going out to lunch as we think that's like a really nice part of the day for kids be able to go out with friends in the neighborhood and just get outside and have him deal with their friends between classes so that's that's another piece of it in terms of class size are classes are big you know we have 32 to 33 kids per class and the way we try to balance that and still give kids a lot of individual attention is that we have a lot of student teachers working with us we have America reads tutors we're in the building and that allows us to keep a student teacher ratio more reasonable line and allows us to give kids a lot of support in the classroom what is our relationship to the NYU School of Medicine why do I have that information in our brochure I think it's important to know that our school was started in 1995 by a group of doctors on the NYU school of medicine and so we continue to a number of activities between the salt school and the NYU School of Medicine faculty I'll have Marsha and Patty talk a little bit about some of the other ways that we work with and why a lot of the times we met at students from the school of medicine or from the College of Dentistry who will come in and do sessions with a student during 6th grade we've had them come in to do HIV lesson so they do that lessen whole series of license expedia's about HIV in Ethiopia education in 7th grade they have come in when we've done the human body activity and they tend to teach kids about cardiovascular health and the yard I didn't eat grade attempt to come in for an especially with helping out gym teacher out with  education so I'll students get a chance to interact with those students and then we also have a mentoring program that he's going to share hello everybody I'm Patty the parents Gatorade song I'm also a dinosaur along with Jake starting my 17th year I believe in reference to our NYU participation to programs that coordinate one is find NYU Mentor program that is teacher and recommended students that have academic emotional or social issues so I can match them up with medical students in NY and they come in once a week or once every two weeks and meet with the students are we for Nate about 12 to 15 medical students have come in an addition of another problem we have is a Pash and science day when we bring in roughly 12 to 15 medical professionals who I talk to students about their various careers in the medical field mainly active parent involvement from middle school we have many events throughout the year we have you no class parents that meet monthly and they communicate with your class all the time different events in the in a regular school year during the fall we have a meet and greet we have a field day where we have Community Builders cross braids lines with the neighborhood field we have a international night of potluck we have a Yankee game where students and parents to watch the Yankees we have given some celebration it's in the beginning of the year we have a sixth grade movie night we have a lot of different events that we we host during the year and the parents are very supportive in and take care of almost everything with these have been we have a long nine nights we bringing the 9th graders for pizza in January we have a normal alumni night where we have 7th graders who me high school students and asked questions about their high school we have a welcome T in June for incoming families and a graduation NYU medical school at the end of the year so we have I would say a major parent involvement here at salt that I'm very proud of him so hopefully you will be part of it someday words about incredible after school program James Adam Shea I'm the program director with Manhattan use at the salt School of Science for the after-school program at is my fourth year at Salk and I've been very lucky to be a part of this program with the song This Old School of Science we have the variety of activities for the kids we meet right after the end of the day and the kids get to decide whether or not they're going to do a Science Olympiad with the science competition are strong be 18 or drama which will play we do different sports throughout the years on Patty's heavily involved in baseball we have on Jake doing tennis we have soccer we have like football we have basketball it's a great activity for the students to come together and cross grades and just find the activities that they like I'm now as we're seeing a lot of the 8th graders teaching the sixth graders different activities in Science Olympiad bring them along in the bay and kind of teaching the other ones so if you can join us with that talk I hope to see you in the after-school program in some way shape or form thank you what do you love most about being here so I've never wanted to work anywhere else as much as I love being at a community is such a warm and welcoming place I just love coming to work at so I can I think all the teachers do too and that's probably because of how curious and inquisitive the students are on students are always asking questions to clarify and deepen their understanding and we're just finding an all subjects that students find topics that they're interested in and they do additional research they find books to read they ask for extra problem solving just to try to make the our sense of the world and our community around around us Spirits all surrounded by people both teachers and administrators and all the students are just like they work so hard and just the best all the time and said that the all the teachers I know I can trust in them to like work the hardest all the time and they can trust me and I can also see that with the students who is that no matter where the students at like I know they're trying really hard to do there steak and it's really great to see all that and be in that energy if that's cool it's a place where you know the people I work with are people that I love to spend time with that work but also people that I left to spend time with outside of work students are really wonderful and young Gotti just when you walk around Sauk and paper feels like home but it also feels like a place that that values kindness and values created is risk-taking and values collaboration and all those good things that we wish you know what and where schools I'll just add to that by saying to me I've been here since 2001 and one the amazing that stayed this long is because we've always had such high caliber teachers at the school for Learners and willing to model what it mean used to be a compassionate decent curious individual in the world and it certainly Feels Like Home to me and it's been an honor to work with such professional and decent human beings one of the things I'd like to save to parents out there is that by coming to Salk I think you're putting your children in the hands of some incredibly talented people and teachers here are quite expensive is an odd people who are just beginning their career they've been here at Salt for over 10 years and there's a reason they stayed and we've learned a lot from each other and think that has tremendous benefits and it's allowed us to continue to provide high-quality instruction even during remote learning and Blended learning as of the caliber of the staff I think the 20 things parents need to think about and choose the school is that what happens when there is crisis can the Falcon T pivot and still deliver high-quality learning and I would stay about salt that I'm very proud we been able to do that and we continue to do that we're warm rigorous fun-loving group with some top-notch indicators compassionate who are critical thinkers and who care immensely for young people thank you and enjoy the rest of your evening have a good day bye bye