Connect
Do you remember your favorite teacher? Was it someone who knew you could be a mathematician even though math was your weakest subject? Or was it someone who put on a funny hat and spoke in a silly voice to grab your attention? Or was it someone who pushed you to rewrite that draft...again...? Favorite teachers come in all shapes and sizes but the one thing they have in common is connection. We know that caring about our students, connecting with them, and making them feel heard and understood is essential to academic progress. It is always the first and most important step in any student/teacher relationship.
Engage
Molding letters out of playdough, singing songs about the seasons, building towers out of index cards? Fine motor skills, phonemic awareness, handwriting, sequencing, and science and technology in disguise. Research shows that 85% of learners are kinesthetic learners, which means they learn by doing. They need to touch, taste, hear, smell and see things in their environment to learn abstract concepts. We know that a multi-sensory, dynamic set of activities is necessary to make any skills based curriculum effective.
Learn
Our curriculum is based on training, pedagogy and experience.
Training
As Masters degree holding teachers from top universities, we have a foundation in philosophy and teaching. We also know the field of education is dynamic, and it is our responsibility as educators to continue to do professional development and training. The best teachers are perennial students.
Pedagogy
Traditional learning with quantifiable results happens when content and progressive teaching methods intersect. Problem solving. Critical Thinking. Executive Functioning. These are the arenas for skill acquisition.
Experience
With a combined 35 years of experience in New York City schools, we bring our best practices to the classroom. Put simply, we have many roads by which to reach a destination, whether that be the fundamentals of decoding or the varying layers of character development. Not every student learns the same way. It's our job as educators to figure out how to leverage your child's strengths to optimize the learning experience.