Schools

Monsieur Senderoff's Students Speak, Play, Learn

by | Dec 5, 2023 11:46 am | Comments (0)

Maya McFadden photo

Metro French teacher Dylan Senderoff (right) encouraging students to find "Algérie" and "Cambodge" on an inflatable globe.

Se lever,” Metropolitan Business Academy French teacher Dylan Senderoff instructed his students while motioning his hands for them to get up from their seats. 

It was almost the end of class, and time to play Jacques a dit” — a Francophone riff on Simon Says” that would help students identify their tête, nez, ventre, and cou, all while building their vocab through immersive play.

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Barack Obama Named "School Of Distinction"

by | Dec 4, 2023 12:34 pm | Comments (4)

Laura Glesby photo

Barack Obama students, recognized by state, cheer on their teachers.

Principal Jamie Baker beamed at the hundreds of Barack Obama School students seated before her in the cafeteria. How are the best scholars in the United States doing today?” she called out.

Good,” the students responded.

Just good or excellent?” asked Baker.

Excellent!” the children yelled in unison. 

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Ex-School Reopens As Winter Overnight Shelter

by | Dec 1, 2023 3:46 pm | Comments (11)

Thomas Breen photo

Inside the new warming center at the former Strong School on Orchard.

Forty-seven sleeping mats laid out in a shuttered school’s auditorium are now available to lie down on at night for those without a home, as the city opened a new overnight warming center” at the former Strong School on Orchard Street.

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Students Spotlight Need For LGBTQ Progress

by | Nov 30, 2023 5:34 pm | Comments (46)

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Baz Holmes Poynter, proudly trans and gay, after she told alders “how it is to be me.”

Kids will sometimes make mean comments when fifth-grader Wesley Bianchine uses the teacher’s restroom at school. But all the other bathrooms are designated for either boys or girls, leaving non-binary kids like Wesley without another place to go.

The world is not organized for transgender children,” Wesley said to a panel of alders and an audience of over 50 people. 

And as a stream of students, parents, and educators insisted, New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) should help change that.

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Student Absences Rise At Common Ground

by | Nov 29, 2023 2:55 pm | Comments (16)

Common Ground data

Common Ground's recent attendance report.

Nearly half of high schoolers attending a West Rock environmental charter school were chronically absent” during the first two months of the school year — an uptick that school leaders are working to address through everything from perfect-attendance recognitions to home visits and family meetings to recommended withdrawals. 

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Student Climate Activists Speak Up About What To Fear, What To Be Thankful For

by | Nov 22, 2023 8:29 am | Comments (3)

Maya McFadden file photo

Student composters at work in Cross's cafeteria back in June.

This Thanksgiving season, Wilbur Cross sophomore Manxi Han is thankful to have a home that is not routinely submerged in several feet of water as sea levels rise, for access to food despite climate change-related disasters destroying farm lands, for healthy and clean air year-round, for minimal heat waves as the earth’s temperature rises, and for biodiversity as rates of extinction increase. 

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Atwater Thanksgiving Brings Fair Haven Together

by | Nov 21, 2023 11:01 am | Comments (6)

Nora Grace-Flood photo

F.A.M.E. Middle Schoolers from dance Cumbia with their senior citizen counterparts in Fair Haven.

Fair Haven school kids filed into the Atwater Senior Center to keep their senior counterparts company in advance of Thanksgiving — and to dance cumbia with New Haveners like 73-year-old Yvonne Sheppard, who said the celebration was less a loneliness intervention than it was a special occasion among a vibrant city full of friends.

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Special Needs Meet "Life Skills" In Cross Class

by | Nov 17, 2023 9:22 am | Comments (2)

Maya McFadden Photo

Margaret Stevens in her "life skills" classroom.

When Wilbur Cross English teacher Margaret Stevens told her class of multilingual students that the word of the day was invent,” her students put their fingers to their bottom lips to feel the vibrations as they pronounced the word aloud with a va” sound rather than a ba” sound more familiar to Spanish speakers. 

That exercise took place as part of a new effort at the East Rock public high school to teach life skills” to students with special needs who are also still learning English, along with peer mentors, all in one class.

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NHPS: 567 Students & Counting Are Homeless

by | Nov 15, 2023 1:25 pm | Comments (37)

Maya McFadden File Photo

Gemma Joseph Lumpkin: "Homelessness can happen at any point."

There are currently 567 New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) students couchsurfing, doubling up,” sleeping in cars, living out of shelters, or otherwise without a stable home — a jump from 281 at this time last year — representing a spike in youth homelessness that district leaders attribute to increased family migration, domestic violence, and a broader housing affordability crisis. 

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Feds Seize Another $1.2M In Stolen City Funds

by | Nov 10, 2023 11:29 am | Comments (9)

Thomas Breen file photo

U.S. Attorney Vanessa Avery, with First Assistant U.S. Attorney Alfred Pavlis.

The hackers who stole roughly $6 million from city coffers earlier this year spent a month monitoring the compromised” email account of a school district staffer before impersonating the district’s bus contractor, convincing the city to send a fake company real funds, and then shuttling that money between a handful of different bank accounts — including one steeped in cryptocurrency.

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"Jobs You've Never Heard Of" Come To Class

by | Nov 8, 2023 12:11 pm | Comments (1)

Maya McFadden Photo

Nataly Magana with a doll she uses to help explain to child hospital patients what they're going through.

Nataly Magana told a classroom full of New Haven Academy students that she once considered becoming a teacher herself.

But instead she took a different career path — one that also involves counseling young people in need and helping them stay calm and flourish amidst challenging circumstances — as a certified child life specialist at Yale New Haven Hospital.

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Students Protest Book Bans

by | Nov 7, 2023 11:26 am | Comments (11)

Laura Glesby Photos

Teens protest outside the New Haven Free Public Library.

The Amistad Wolfpack Drumline (including Alanah Wali on the cymbals) performs outside Beinecke Library.

When Alanah Wali joined a hundred of her high school peers to protest a national surge in censorship of literature about race and sexuality, she thought about the American laws that forbade enslaved Black people from learning how to read. 

Our ability to read should not be taken for granted,” she said.

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Furnishing Day Readies Rent-Free Homes For Early Ed Teachers

by | Nov 6, 2023 12:54 pm | Comments (3)

Lisa Reisman photo

Volunteers, including Stacey Smith and Eva Bermudez Zimmerman, assembling a child's dresser.

No light bulb,” a volunteer called out on a recent afternoon at a two-story, one-family home in Fair Haven Heights. 

The lamp that needed a bulb was among the community donations at the first-ever Furnishing Day, which saw a revolving group of 60 friends, neighbors, and board members assembling furniture, hanging pictures, and stocking the pantry in the newly-built structure.

They were preparing the house for two early childhood educators at Friends Center for Children to move into, and live rent-free, with their children later this month. While sharing the kitchen, each family will live on one floor.

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GED Classes Come To The Q House

by | Nov 3, 2023 2:31 pm | Comments (1)

Maya McFadden Photo

Toni Thorpe, Royce Hatfield, Richard Cowes, Sara Gonzalez, Latoya Armstrong, and Stephanie Paris-Cooper.

Every day last spring, Latoya Armstrong dropped her daughter off for camp at the Q House. 

One day in April, on her way out she scanned a flyer QR code to learn about the programs at the Dixwell community center and found a perfect fit for herself: GED classes by the New Haven Adult & Continuing Education Center.

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Student Artists Run Like Aliens & Bankhead Bounce

by | Nov 1, 2023 8:16 am | Comments (1)

In Ty Scurry’s advanced drama class …

…and Carissa Kee's dance class, at New Haven Academy.

In a dim and costume-filled drama classroom at New Haven Academy, time slowed down as an alien ran away from two space cadets looking to capture it.

Time then sped up, and back down again, as theater educator Tyheed Scurry gave the student actors a lesson in tempo. 

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Hispanic Heritage Celebrated At Wilbur Cross Panel

by | Oct 25, 2023 4:40 pm | Comments (4)

Maya McFadden Photo

Wilbur Cross' Hispanic heritage panel Wednesday.

What do a retired educator, the city school district’s superintendent, an information technology director, a nonprofit program manager, a former New York City Councilman, and a social justice activist all have in common?

For one, they all love their Hispanic heritage.

They also all visited Wilbur Cross High School Wednesday morning.

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Childcare, Early Ed Get $3.5M City Boost

by | Oct 25, 2023 12:50 pm | Comments (4)

Thomas Breen file photo

At Georgia Goldburn's Hope Child Development Center in October 2022.

More early childcare providers, higher wages for those teaching the city’s toddlers, and better help for parents struggling to find the right daycare or pre‑K for their kids.

Those are some changes that could happen here in New Haven, now that the city has committed $3.5 million in federal funding from the American Rescue Plan Act to help its struggling childcare system — so long as providers come through with proposals about how to spend the money. 

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Ex-School To Become Winter Overnight Shelter

by | Oct 24, 2023 4:35 pm | Comments (21)

Thomas Breen photo

The ex-Strong School site at 130 Orchard.

The vacant former Strong School on Orchard Street in the Hill will reopen its doors to the public this winter as a 47-space warming center — thanks to a Board of Education vote in support of creating more cold-weather shelter options for the city’s homeless.

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In Ms. Chambers' Class, "Math Is Everywhere"

by | Oct 23, 2023 1:58 pm | Comments (11)

Maya McFadden Photo

Math teacher Charity Ann Chambers helps students "embrace mistakes."

As her ninth-grade students puzzled through box and dot plots, Achievement First Amistad High School math teacher Charity Ann Chambers urged them not to be discouraged. Sometimes, she said, trying is more exemplary to me than accuracy.”

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