Improv for Middle Schoolers Back at the Burgdorff

Local teaching professional Lulu French to lead kids' workshop

Returning to bring the rollicking art of improv to Maplewood this month is local improv performer and teaching artist LuLu French, who brings an impressive resume to Maplewood’s “Performance Classroom”, this year sponsored by the Theater Project. Lulu has developed a dedicated student following, and regularly performs with some of the best improv groups in New York. “Improv is important on so many levels — it really teaches you to listen and work together, which aren’t just theater skills, they’re life skills,” said French. This winter’s offering will be a 10 week program for those in grades 6-8, beginning Friday February 17th. French started teaching improv at Gotham City Improv in January of 2000, and has represented GCI on numerous …

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SOMA Seventh Grader Attends Leadership Conference in D.C.

People to People's World Leadership Forum drew attendees from around the world; they visited sites including the Smithsonian, the Holocaust museum, and Arlington National Cemetery.

A wise man once said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” My journey began with a stumble. Perhaps it was because I had been anticipating for so long my People to People trip to Washington, D.C., the journey and new experiences, and the friends I would meet along the way. This was a journey that began with a letter of recommendation from my sixth grade Language Arts teacher Melissa Williams at South Orange Middle School. Now, 10 months later, I had finally arrived at a World Leadership Forum. But when we stepped into the hotel that would be my home, the only faces I saw were unfriendly and only made me more sensitive. Slowly I began to see that those unfriendly faces were nervous students like me. They were from all …

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Presentation Given on HSPA Results at BOE

The reporting showed test results by race and the amount of time the 11th grade students were enrolled in the district.

The district's chief information officer, Paul Roth, reported on 11th grade HSPA results from the 2008-2009 school year at Monday's Board of Education meeting. The full report is available here. Roth's analysis of test data showed that students who had been in the district for seven years or longer fared significantly better on both the language arts and math portions of the test than students who had just enrolled that school year. It also pointed to a continuing achievement gap, which Superintendent Brian Osborne recently formed a class leveling task force to address. According to the data, 38.9 percent of African-American test-takers scored partially-proficient on the math portion of the exam, compared to 6.5 percent of white students, …

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School District Reports on Violence and Vandalism

The number of reported incidents in the 2008-2009 school year declined over the previous year.

The district's chief information officer Paul Roth gave a presentation at Monday's Board of Education meeting on the incidence of violence and vandalism in schools to comply with state and federal (No Child Left Behind) reporting requirements on criminal behavior in or on school property. According to Roth, the number of reported incidents in the 2008-09 school year was 94, a decline of 27 over the previous year. The data also shows that there were 47 incidents involving violence, vandalism, weapons and substance abuse at Columbia High School and 43 at Maplewood Middle School, but just four at South Orange Middle School. View his complete presentation here.

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Schedule Change For District Middle Schools

Core academic classes will meet daily in the 2009-2010 school year, according to the superintendent.

Superintendent Brian Osborne announced that he's working with the administrations of South Orange Middle School and Maplewood Middle School to implement schedule changes that would cause classes in core academic subjects to meet five times a week instead of four in the upcoming school year. At the final Board of Education meeting of the 2008-2009 school year on Monday night, Osborne explained that increased classroom frequency is especially critical for students who have fallen behind—for whom the irregularity of having four classes per week may exacerbate problems. "There are some big advantages, we believe, for student learning," said Osborne, who added that about one-third of district eighth graders aren't able to pass both parts of the…