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Principal's Message

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Dear Families,

 

On behalf of the P.S. 29 staff, I welcome you to the 2024-2025 school year that begins on Thursday, September 5th at 8:30 AM.  You can review our Arrival & Dismissal procedures here. As a reminder, please be sure to complete your Family Info Form so that our staff has all the information we need for dismissal today. 

 

I hope that you and your children have experienced a wonderful summer filled with exploration and relaxation. There’s nothing like the promise of a new school year. We are looking forward to reconnecting tomorrow and meeting all those students and families who are new to our community. And, we are excited to hear about all of the milestones and adventures from the summer.  

 

Like many of you, I was enraptured with the Summer Olympics and found myself relentlessly pursuing knowledge about the lives of these admirable athletes from across the globe. I wanted to know who they were and where they came from. What were their inspirations and motivations? I found that while the people and their sports were vastly different, the life lessons of these athletes were quite similar: persistence, flexibility, positive mindset, learning from mistakes. These are the same ideals that shape our classrooms and guide our practices at P.S. 29. With these values in mind, summer provided us with precious time for reflection and renewal of our goals for the upcoming year. We have been hard at work ensuring that our vision, values, and priorities are coherent and aligned across our grades and teams. 

 

Goals and Priorities

Ensuring that each and every student, family, and staff member feels safe, connected, and supported at 29 is at the core of our vision. We work hard for our students to feel understood and seen. With this vision in mind, here’s an overview of our goals and priorities for 24-25:

  • We pledge to continue our commitment to anti-bias, anti-racist (ABAR) practices within our school community. This year, we will continue the work of making our school community more inclusive and responsive. We ask you to engage in this work with us by sharing your heritages and identities with our community. Each month, we will honor heritages and identities through literature, activities, projects, and presentations. 

    • September 15th marks the beginning of Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month. We hope that families will join our Cooking Circle with Lourdes Balbuena, a parent who will share her Mexican heritage by doing a demonstration of tortilla making in our cafeteria at 8:45 AM on Tuesday, 9/24.

    • Please look out for the following:

      • ways that we will enlist your participation [LINK] across the heritage and identity months.

      • upcoming activities inviting families that identify with the heritage or culture to come together each month

      • details about a new partnership this year with Courageous Conversations for training staff and families in fostering dialogue with our students in school and at home.

 

  • We value Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) and understand that emotional health is necessary for academic and personal success. We will be implementing a new program this year called Second Step, a cohesive curriculum that centers growth mindset and goal-setting, emotion management, empathy and kindness, and interpersonal problem solving across all grades. We will continue to teach into our the core values of our P.S. 29 Code for Living (empathy, responsibility, integrity, and respect), as well as implement restorative practices, such as Circle Talks and Affinity Groups as supportive, thoughtful anchors for fostering brave conversations with our students. 

  • We recognize that the best teachers are lifelong learners, and we value professional development. We are proud to announce that P.S. 29 has been newly designated as PROSE (Progressive Redesign Opportunity Schools for Excellence) allowing our school to more flexibly implement professional learning practices that are innovative and individualized for our community. The following include some of the professional development opportunities and resources to support the teaching and learning for this school year: 

    • Understanding that systematic, explicit phonics instruction is foundational to the teaching of reading, we will continue implementation of Fundations in Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd grade, and 3rd grade. We will continue to receive professional development and coaching support in phonics instruction.

    • Consistent with district 15 and other districts across the city, we will be implementing a new knowledge-based, literacy curriculum, Wit & Wisdom, this school year. Our teachers will receive coaching support through our district. In alignment with Wit & Wisdom, we will continue to implement The Writing Revolution (TWR), a method that offers an explicit framework for teaching expository writing, which provides organization and structure for the development of ideas.

    • Advancing Literacy staff developers will continue to support us as thought partners as we refine lessons that are not only coherent, engaging, and rigorous, but also aligned with our ABAR work and rooted in the science of reading.

    • We will continue to work with G&R Inclusive Group, an organization that has supported our neurodiverse learning community. G&R has worked with our ICT classrooms and beyond to support us with differentiating instruction to meet the needs of our diverse learners. This year we will focus on instructional strategies that eliminate barriers to students with ADD or ADHD.

    • In Math, we continue to learn and grow with the leadership of our math coach, Kim Van Duzer. Last year, all grades K-5 implemented Eureka Math Squared, the enhanced and updated version of the Eureka Math curriculum we have used for more than 10 years.  This school year, with Kim’s support and guidance, we will enhance our implementation by using research-based teaching practices gleaned from the work of Peter Liljedahl (Building Thinking Classrooms), practices that encourage even more student agency, collaboration, and deep mathematical thinking. These practices include giving students “thinking tasks," and having them work in groups, standing up, at large whiteboards around the classroom to energize and engage them. As in previous years, Kim will offer workshops for families this fall on how to help your child with math homework, and host Math Coach Office Hours each week to answer your questions related to our work at school and your child’s mathematical development. Kim also looks forward to bringing back the lunchtime math club offered to each grade in three-week cycles last year; see the PS 29 Math website for photos of students having a blast with math games this past winter and spring!

 

  • Enrichment opportunities abound at PS 29! We thoughtfully curated a balanced program of arts, movement, and real world opportunities that deepen our students’ experiences beyond the classroom.  The school newspaper, drama production, ballroom dance, improv, Shakespeare, STEM, yoga, gymnastics, technology, music, garden, running team, and chess are some of the many learning opportunities that enrich our students’ lives at 29.

 

New Staff Members

It is an honor to introduce you to a few new members of our professional community: 

  • Janet (Jeehyun) Cavanagh will be our new parent coordinator. We are thrilled! Janet is a current member of our community, mother to Rielle in 6th grade and Lorelle in 3rd grade. Janet was previously a member of our PTA Executive Board as Co-VP of Class Parents and Volunteers. Born and raised in South Korea, she studied education and taught English in public schools before moving to Brooklyn over a decade ago. We are so delighted to have Janet on our administrative team at P.S. 29 acting as the liaison between families and our school. I have no doubt that Janet will do a phenomenal job in this new role. Please join me in welcoming Janet who will begin officially as our P.S. 29 parent coordinator on September 10th. (And, thank you for bearing with us as we continue to operate without an official PC until 9/10!)

  • Juan Morales is our new building custodial engineer. He is leading our custodial team at P.S. 29. This means that rather than having temporary building managers as we have had over the past year, Juan is with us permanently. This is amazing news! Also joining Juan and our custodial team is Steven Grullon, who you will often see as another point person around our building. I have had the pleasure of getting to know Steven over the past few weeks and he has a tremendous work ethic and is passionate about the job. We are so grateful to have a complete custodial team taking care of our building.

 

Gratitude and Acknowledgements 

  • Thanks to Tina Reres and Molly Dubow, our science teachers, and a small community of family gardeners for working tirelessly all summer long to ensure that our garden continues to be vibrant and beautiful.

  • Our custodians, Rafael, Janette, and Mervin under Steven’s direction have done a tremendous job with painting, moving furniture, cleaning and waxing floors around our building.

  • I am so grateful to our leadership and administrative team who have been engaged throughout the summer as visionaries for this upcoming school year. Susannah Sperry, our library & media literacy teacher and technology coordinator, continues to lead us with her sharp understanding of the world of technology and systems-oriented approach, undoubtedly making our lives infinitely easier and smoother. I also celebrate and acknowledge Kim Van Duzer, our math coach, whose innovative, organizational mind and attention to detail is reflected in everything that she sets out to do as a coach, communicator, and curriculum developer. Finally, Halee Hochman and Dawn Pender, our two assistant principals are detail-oriented, hands-on, selfless, and indispensable with the knowledge and understanding of the ins and outs of all things P.S. 29. I cannot ask for a more supportive and loyal leadership team than all of these individuals.

 

Finally, thank you for your partnership and belief in P.S. 29. While teaching and parenting may not be Olympic sports, as educators and parents we know that the work we do together can be just as challenging, and just as rewarding! Thank you for entrusting us with your children whom we promise to love, teach, support, and learn from every day. 

 

Here’s to a healthy and joyful 2024-2025 school year,

Rebecca

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