When I was young and adults asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my simple response due to my love of Christa McAuliffe, Princess Diana, and the aunt I still look up to today was: princess/astronaut/teacher. In 1986, my elementary teacher rolled a TV into the Science Corner and my classmates and I tearfully watched Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher trained to go into space, die in the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion. Due to the early development of a strong case of self-preservation, I narrowed my future career choices to just princess/teacher. In 2011 Prince William got ma
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Summer reading does not have to be a compensatory list of books that students dread reading and save for the last possible second. Summer can (and should be!) the perfect time to explore new genres or to revel in old favorite genres. Some of my favorite genres to read are memoirs, biographies, and autobiographies. I particularly love reading about people who have left a lasting impact on the world. Sometimes, like Darwin, these figures are well known, but I also love to read about lesser known people like Irena Sendler and Bryan Stevenson.
Over the years while teaching at The Beekman School, I’ve come across a common misconception my students have about meditation. They see it merely as a passive act of relaxing and letting go of all thought. While those may be aspects of the end result of the practice, historically there is nothing intentionally passive about meditation.
“Did you watch it?”
The Beekman Science Department attended a professional development workshop at Rockefeller University this week. The gorgeous East Side campus boasts 82 research labs and 200 graduate students. It is also home to the RockEdu Science Outreach program.
Most students I’ve encountered in my teaching career have profound anxieties about writing. As a teacher of English, I have wondered about how to crack this problem. Over the summer, I had a transformative experience with the New York City Writing Project, a for-teachers, by-teachers organization that has writing at its center. Working with the Project caused me to question many things about my own teaching and beliefs about writing.
We feel more empathy towards people with whom we have something in common, and what more could you have in common with someone than a shared language? Could learning a foreign language increase our empathy towards speakers of that language? It’s certainly possible. But I want to focus on a different question about language learning and empathy. Can learning to use the indirect object—an important grammar structure in Spanish—increase our sensitivity to how our actions may affect others, thereby making us more empathetic?
I’ve been thinking a lot about respect lately. In a survey of long-lasting life partners, it came up as crucial to maintaining a relationship. Communication was important too, but respect was moreso:
The Beekman School is a coed, college preparatory high school that opened in 1925. We offer small classes averaging 6 students with one-to-one classes and distance learning available so that students with a myriad of specific requests are able to create an academic program. Our dedicated faculty returns year after year to encourage and support teenagers on their individual paths toward achieving personal goals.
Applications for private high school admissions may vary slightly from school to school, but there are several components that will remain constant regardless of where you apply. Making a personal statement is one of those basics, so my first advice is - don’t cheat.