Editor’s note: To read a long-form story with profiles of all 15 2014-2015 Blackboard Awards honorees, click HERE!
BASIS INDEPENDENT BROOKLYN
PRINCIPAL: ROSALIND THOMPSON
K-8 (Eventually K-12)
15 Snyder Avenue, Brooklyn (Interim)
basisindependentbrooklyn.com
AWARD: NEW & NOTEWORTHY
Describe your school’s core educational philosophy.
BASIS Independent Brooklyn provides a Liberal Arts curriculum with a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) focus. We help students reach their full potential by raising our academic standards to higher levels for each grade, and then fully supporting students by hiring teachers who are experts in their subject areas, and who often have advanced degrees and real-world experience in that subject. We encourage students to love the learning process, and to appreciate the acquisition of knowledge not just as a means to an academic end, but for its own sake.
Tell us about a few of the school’s achievements or distinguishing programs.
We have a student body that truly loves school—and thanks to our teachers, that’s been the case since the beginning of the school year, our first in Brooklyn. Our students are engaged, and have developed a strong love of learning while building from scratch a student community and culture that belies the fact that the students are all new this year, and from many different neighborhoods and schools.
What’s new?
One of the things that I am most proud of during these initial months of operation is, indeed, our faculty. Our teachers are diverse in culture, background, and professional experience—and yet they share such a passion for their students. Our teachers have come together as a high-performing team, helping each other, discussing possibilities to the great benefit of the students, and expending effort and energy to reach and teach entire classes, or individual students, ceaselessly.
What do you love about your school?
I love to be in the classrooms watching the students… What is not to love about being a principal, when you can walk into a Kindergarten or 1st grade class and be bowled over with hugs and iterations of facts-just-learned or activities-to-come; when you can slip into a 7th or 8th grade classroom and watch a spirited, high-level debate amongst students? I love the students abuzz in the morning, through the day and at the final bell. I love all of my interaction and communication, the meetings about today and the planning for the future. I love the ideas, the pedagogy, the progress. I love the pure passion about what we do. I love this job!
