The Blackboard Awards 2010: Anything but ‘Middle’ of the Road
This week we focus on some of the city’s best middle schools in our third of four Blackboard Awards special sections.
The Center School earned honors as outstanding public middle school. The school has thrown away the cookie cutter for public middle schools, and instead has found success by opening the school to grade 5 and letting those young students learn in the same classes as 8th graders.
We also take a look at the diversity efforts at Friends Seminary, which has built on its Quaker tradition to include students from all walks of life.
The Mandell School was the only middle school this year to win two Blackboards. One is for their community service work—the other is in the “new and noteworthy” category, as this “Baby Ivy” has expanded to middle school.
The Blackboards are selected by a panel made of people outside and inside Manhattan Media who are knowledgeable about education. The awards are meant to highlight some—but certainly not all—of the schools and principals that are doing extraordinary work in the city.
In June, we will once again be honoring some of the city’s best teachers. To nominate a teacher to be considered by the Blackboard Awards committee, please send an email of 400 words or less about the outstanding teacher to jrogers@manhattanmedia.com, and include the teacher’s name, grade and subject area (if applicable), along with the school name and address.
The Blackboard Award sections are taking a one-week break for Thanksgiving, and we will be back with our high school awards Dec. 2.
To read about the Blackboard Awards 2010 Middle Schools winners, visit our special section.
—Josh Rogers
Blackboard Awards
Special Section Editor
Principal Looks Beyond Test Results
Life Sciences leader has been at the helm for every graduation
By Max Sarinsky
Genevieve Stanislaus has worked under more than a dozen chancellors during her 30 years in the public school system, and said she struggles to keep up with all of the changes mandated from above. But perhaps no change has affected her approach to the job more than the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, less than six months after becoming principal of the Life Sciences Secondary School on East 96h Street. Read more
Working Toward Diversity for Over Two Centuries
Friends Seminary builds on the Quaker tradition of valuing equality
By Sara Dover
At Friends Seminary in Gramercy, diversity is more than percentages on a pie chart.
“Everybody has a story. You can’t just check off a box,” said the Quaker school’s director of diversity, Cynthia Chalker. “A piece of paper doesn’t tell me he splits his time between two homes, is an excellent concert pianist, or is on the verge of coming out gay.” Read more
‘Baby Ivy’ Is Now a Middle School, Too
Mandell students travel to Dominican Republic to help orphanage
By Sara Dover
The Mandell School’s new building, at 795 Columbus Ave., allows the school to expand from pre-school to middle school, but “building” is a loaded word.
There is recycled wood in the lobby, the sinks are solar-powered and the lights are on timers and sensors. There is a new hydroponics lab and a vertical garden panel in the cafeteria, where the children are catered only organic food. There are even plants in the stairwell. Read more
Arts School Doesn’t Tap Dance Around Academics
New Voices singing out loudly from Brooklyn
Perched in the narrow corridor south of Prospect Park and north of Brooklyn’s Greenwood cemetery is a 107-year-old school building, and in it, energetic middle-schoolers present drawings of complex machines in a science lab (one that stuffs turkeys for Thanksgiving). Nearby, a 7th-grade chorus sings harmonies in the Beatles’ “Ob-La-Di”; down the hall an art studio is silent except for the soft scratching of charcoal for still-life drawings; and around a corner, another class discusses the analysis of a passage in a historical novel. Read more
Mix of Old and Young Students at Center School
With grades 5-8, less bullying reported at this non-traditional middle school
Since its founding in 1982, The Center School and its director, Elaine Schwartz, have fostered a non-traditional middle-school structure focused on the needs of their students.
The school started after a joint project between Fordham University and District 3—which Schwartz directed for three years—shut its doors after nearly two decades. Read more
Tangled
By Armond White
The Disney machine kicks into gear once again with Tangled, a 3-D update of the Brothers Grimm tale “Rapunzel,” but developed for a generation that no longer reads (and, as Disney’s title-change implies, probably doesn’t recognize the name “Rapunzel” in their Hannah Montana world). Read more
Love and Other Drugs
By Armond White
Bryan Ferry’s classic Roxy Music song “Love Is the Drug” (if you don’t love it, you don’t love pop) used irony to admit his romantic obsession and bring it up to date with 1970s drug culture. Director Ed Zwick must not love pop because his movie Love and Other Drugs doesn’t take love as seriously as Ferry. Zwick’s drug metaphor makes a blatant, unironic literalization of love and drugs as placebo. Read more
The Importance of Vitamins
Micronutrients can help boost health
By Fred Cicetti
Q. What are the benefits of vitamins?
A. It’s very important to talk with your doctor before you take any vitamin and mineral pills, especially if you take prescription medicines, have any health problems or are elderly. Taking too much of a vitamin or mineral can cause problems with some medical tests or interfere with drugs you’re taking. Read more
Reasons to be Thankful
We must re-learn the art of communication
By Bette Dewing
We’d have more to be thankful for if a larger percentage of us believed that “what’s said over the plate is more important than what’s served on top of it.” There’d be less need to over-indulge, too. Thankfully, St. Stephen of Hungary Church, on 82nd Street between York and First avenues, is hosting their second Thanksgiving dinner for those who might otherwise be alone during the holiday, or who just want to share in a neighborly community gathering. Read more
