Setting Up For Failure
How Many Weird Experiments Need To Go Wrong Before the Berkeley Heights School District Corrects Its Approach to Teaching Our Kids? During the pandemic, when our schools were shut down forcing our children to learn and educators to teach remotely, I became hyper-aware of the implementation of a new literacy program, “The Teachers College Reading and Writing Project.” This program,...
Thoughts on Thinking Classroom and Proficiency Scores
It’s a late-summer tradition, not only for us, but for many in town: finding out which teachers (or team, for CMS) your students will have for the upcoming year, and texting friends and neighbors to compare. This year has been no different in that respect, but this time it led to some concerns and a look back at last year....
Natasha’s Comments During the 03/13/2023 BOE Meeting on Building Thinking Classroom and the OPRA Custodian Position
In this merge of two clips from the 03/13/2023 Booard of Education meeting, Natasha Joly challenges Ms. Stanley’s continued invalidating spin on Building Thinking classroom. In addition to parents having to subsidize the District’s failure by paying for outside math tutors, Natasha discusses her concern in hearing feedback from parents that students are simply dropping out of math or taking...
Berkeley Heights Administrators Remain a Wall of Silence
Parent’s continue to face an Administration that is short on answers concerning the Districts Difficulties with Math In this clip from the 01/05/2023 meeting, a parent faces yet another wall of silence after expressing a coherent fact-based commentary connected to the District’s continued difficulties with teaching math. Dr. Varley, responsible for this disaster, did not offer a single explanation, rebuttal,...
Thinking Classroom: Where Are We Now, What Happens Next
Building the Thinking Classroom (BTC), on paper and in theory, sounds like a wonderful way to teach. Who doesn’t want their child to be a critical thinker, able to come up with independent, creative solutions to problems? In reality, as parents either know now, or are coming to realize, there is nearly as wide a range of success with this...
BTC – The Struggle is Real
It’s been just over a month since the November 1st information session on Building Thinking Classroom. It was at this session that I became aware of this approach to teaching math and that there were parents who were very upset over the implementation of this approach. Since then: 1. The administration took less than one day to re-evaluate and moved to a more...
Berkeley Heights Public Schools BTC Parent Survey Final Results
The BTC Math Survey has reached 107 responses. Here are the FINAL results. 107 responses for 135 Children 82 Parents (77%) Agreed or Completely Agreed with the Statement:“My child has expressed feeling more confused in math classes. 82 Parents (77%) Disagreed or Completely Disagreed with the Statement:“My child has maintained or improved their math grade without having to complete extra assignments since...
Renewed Parent Frustration and More Poor Decision-Making from District Administrators
Implementing new teaching methods can be a wonderful way to spark a student’s interest or create a better and more thorough understanding of material. It can just as easily lead to confusion, frustration and lessened motivation for learning, which is what we have seen over the past two to three years in our district with the move first to the...
Berkeley Heights Public School BTC Parent Survey Results-Preliminary
This is a preliminary reporting of results on BHCW’s parent survey of BTC. WE are still collecting responses. If you have not yet completed the survey and have a child in a BTC Class, you may do so here. Update 11/23/2022 on data as of 8:51am 100 responses for 126 Children 78 Parents (78%) Agreed or Completely Agreed with the...
Tisha’s Comments To The BOE on BTC
Several parents attended the 11/17/2022 BOE Meeting to express their concerns about the impact the District’s new model is having on their children’s learning experience. Tisha Mannino has shared her comments with BHCW for publication. At the end of Tisha’s article is a survey BHCW is offering Berkeley Heights parents as a means of informing the District on parental opinions...
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