Melissa Bailey Photo
Schoolteacher Jenny Clarino led eight kids to “silent admin lunch” at Amistad Academy — then considered bringing that practice back to the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) when she returns as the leader of her own school next year.
The no-fun lunch detention took place the other day in Clarino’s third month of an official residency at the newly revamped school at 130 Edgewood Ave.
Clarino is one of five “residents” in a pilot program that seeks to be a national example of how a charter school company can work with a public school district to share best practices. (The official name: “The New Haven Public School-AF Residency Program for School Leadership.”) Residents are spending the first half of this year at schools run in the Achievement First (AF) charter school network, and the second half paired with strong principals at New Haven Public Schools.
Clarino and company are the first wave learning a new language at a new model of public school.
The $941,000 program aims to move past historic charter-district tension to create strong leaders who will drive transformations as leaders of their own schools in New Haven’s district next fall. Most of the funding comes from a $575,000 grant from the Buck Foundation—Click here for a breakdown of the budget; and click here for a grant application outlining the program.
Last Thursday morning took 30-year-old Clarino through a series of classroom and hallway scenes, where she sought to try out new techniques, learn from successful practices, and consolidate those into her vision of what her future school might look like.
Her day began at 7:15 a.m., at the entrance to the elementary school, where Clarino is working as one of three deans of students serving grades K to 4.
Clarino, who was raised in East Haven public schools, stood tall in 4‑inch wedge heels and greeted students as they poured into the hallway. As they passed by, she stopped one boy to slip off his hood, which is part of a strict dress code. She counseled another about a pushing incident on a bus: “Don’t let it ruin your day.”
“Good morning, scholars,” Clarino sang in a sunny tone, using the charter school’s lingo with ease.
Before joining Amistad this year, Clarino spent eight years teaching at the New Haven Public Schools, first as a classroom teacher at Worthington Hooker, and most recently as a literacy coach. Like fellow residents, she has some leadership experience and an administrative certificate that qualifies her to be a principal. At Amistad, she’s picking up a new set of tricks, and a new form of communication.
Besides calling students “scholars,” Amistad has a system of hand signs, claps and chants to build motivation and control behavior. It’s part of a “common language” that Clarino sees as one of the strengths of the school.
The day starts with “morning motivation.” Students channel positive vibes with slogans like “We control our destiny” and pumping their fists in the air. (Click on the play arrow to watch teacher Francis Giesler lead her class through the ritual.)
Clarino has been studying these rituals and rules as part of her project for the residency. Along with two other deans of students, she’s working on updating The Amistad Way, a guide to how the school handles everything from bad behavior to attendance.
And she’s creating her own guidebook of sorts of to how she’d like to run her school. If the residency goes well, Clarino and her fellow aspiring leaders will be tapped as principals or assistant principals at one of New Haven’s new “turnaround” schools next fall. Those are the few schools each year, such as Brennan/Rogers and Wexler/Grant, where the district calls for a major staffing overhaul after years of poor performance.
Clarino has an online binder in which she puts ideas she’d like to bring to her own school, as well as those she wouldn’t. The aim of the residency is to figure out what goes in that binder, as well as develop broader leadership skills.
The second quest took Clarino to the ground-floor classroom of Sara Lang around 9 a.m. As part of the residency, Clarino is coaching two classroom teachers. So after four years of coaching teachers in literacy, she’s branching out to coaching in math. She visits Lang’s class a couple times a week. Clarino had two goals when she sat down behind the rows of 19 students in the 4th grade. First: Make sure the teacher tests kids’ level of knowledge before diving into a subject. Second: Try out “scripting,” transcribing dialogue as a way to better observe a class.
Clarino sat in the back of the room and opened a laptop computer as Lang, a dynamic 36-year-old math teacher, taught the lesson. First Lang went over one student’s homework on a projector in front of class.
Lang held the class’s attention with a powerful stage presence, a dash of humor, and a demanding pace.
“Shakira! My heart’s pitter-pattering!” Lang declared as she turned over the homework page. She commended the student for setting up a “fact triangle” of numbers — then asked the class to help correct an addition mistake.
Clarino later commended her for creating an environment where a student feels safe to take a risk — even if she gets an answer wrong in front of 18 peers.
“Giraffe necks!” the teacher exclaimed at another point. That’s a code word for “turn your head around and look at a poster in the back of the room,” which states the aim for the day.
Clarino typed out the dialogue. She kept typing as Lang led the class through a lesson on the Venn Diagram.
“I’m going to write something on the board, and you tell me if it’s something you’ve seen before,” Lang said before drawing two overlapping circles.
That later earned her a check mark for her teaching goal: “pre-assessment” complete.
Lang rolled through the Venn Diagram, then paused when a student declared, “I’m confused.” She went back and explained the concept in a way that’s slower but easier to grasp, using pictures instead of numbers.
Clarino later sat down to look over the notes she transcribed. They gave evidence for a “great joy factor” in the class. When the two meet for a coaching session, she’ll discuss those high points — as well as a strategy for how to give students a bit of relief from the intensity of the lesson.
Transcribing the lesson is one tactic Clarino is trying out as part of her own professional development. As part of the residency, she’s being coached by Matt Taylor, a former Amistad principal. She’s also being coached by the current principal at Amistad Elementary, Amanda Alonzy.
“It feels like you have a team rooting for you,” she said of the program. Residents also meet weekly as a group for professional development.
Clarino stops to chat with non-silent students in the cafeteria.
From Lang’s class, Clarino headed down the hall to the classroom of a teacher who’s new to Achievement First. That teacher’s focus is classroom management, specifically: Making sure 100 percent of students comply with directions immediately. And making sure “silent means silent.” Clarino found herself stepping in to model how to give clear directions, as well as how to “break the plane” of the front of the class and check in with students by walking near their desks.
When it came time to grab a reading book and sit on a rug, one student ignored three commands to do so. When students got to the rug, some kept fiddling. Clarino interjected.
“I’m going to give everyone a second to rest,” she said. Students took a breath.
After she left the class, Clarino said she’s working with the teacher on how to give very clear directions with time limits and clear consequences.
Just an hour later, she found herself practicing what she preaches. At Amistad, all administrators also teach. Clarino fills in for other teachers and also runs two daily groups for students who need to work on reading aloud.
At the end of a lesson, she counseled two students who had acted out at lunch that week. Both students would be sent to “admin silent lunch,” a consequence for acting out in the lunch room two times in a week.
“It makes me sad to see your names on that list,” Clarino told the duo.
Using a style she calls “warm demanding,” Clarino expressed her disappointment as well as love. And she strategized with the kids about how they can avoid getting into trouble in the future.
While lunch detention is not a new concept in New Haven Public Schools, Clarino said silent lunch is something she’d consider implementing if she becomes a principal in the district.
In general, she said, she’s learning from Achievement First about the big picture — how systems are managed with consistent rules and maximum accountability. For example: When a classroom teacher has a question for an administrator, there’s a clear mechanism for getting it answered. The grade level teachers meet together and pass on the questions to a team leader, who passes them along to administrators at leadership meetings. The whole process is well-defined and well-documented.
After studying at Amistad for half a year, Clarino will transfer in February to the Davis Street Magnet School, to learn from the example of achievement gap-busting Principal Lola Nathan. Davis Street is a top-performing “tier 1” school under the city’s new grading system.
Gemma Joseph Lumpkin (pictured with Matt Taylor), executive manager of leadership development for the New Haven Public Schools, said that second half of the year is crucial to the residency. When she presented the program before the city school board, she was hit with a criticism from teachers union Vice President David Low: Why are we looking to Amistad when there are so many great things happening in our district?
Lumpkin (who serves on the board of the Online Journalism Project, which publishes the Independent) said the residency also aims to study the things that are working well at some top-performing NHPS schools and spread best practices throughout the district. And she emphasized that the city isn’t looking simply to replicate the methods of Amistad. The school operates under its own charter, outside of the governance of the district school board and outside the bounds of union contracts. Some methods may not work at New Haven Public Schools.
The program is funded by private funds, in large part through a grant from the Buck Foundation. In the grant application, NHPS and AF pitched the idea as a first-of-its-kind-in-the-nation partnership. The application was successful, with three years of funding to seat yearly classes of new residents while continuing to support the past years’ classes.
Taylor, who’s directing the program, comes to the job with 10 years’ experience in non-charter public schools, and eight years with Achievement First, where he most recently served as principal at Amistad Academy middle school. He spent two years teaching with New Haven Public Schools, at Wexler/Grant.
Taylor said he’ll be returning to NHPS schools as the five residents begin their stints there in February. He said he looks forward to what Achievement First can learn from best practices at New Haven Public Schools. He said AF will also get a rare chance to “pressure-test” its own best practices, when new leaders bring them to a non-charter school setting.
“There has been very little cross-organizational exposure,” he said, “and we’re excited to get that started.”