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School Problem? Problem Solved: Beekman!

Authored by George Higgins, Headmaster

I speak with a lot of people: on the phone, in interviews, and around town.  They’ve heard bits and pieces about our unique program and want to get the story “straight from the horse’s mouth.”  Given our rolling admissions policy, our philosophy of “interview today start tomorrow,” and our focus on student-centered learning, I am frequently asked a number of questions about our student body. One that I often hear is, “Don’t some of the kids there have problems?”  My answer is always the same: “Absolutely not!”  There are students here who have a particular need that their previous school was unable to accommodate.  Is that a problem?  It might be for others, but not for Beekman.  We’re the most flexible, most individualized, and most accommodating private high school in NYC. Beekman has been creating personalized academic programs for students with a variety of requests for over 85 years.  Our college prep courses successfully prepare our students in an environment that is...read more

Topics: private school, New York City private schools, personalized learning, transfer, George Higgins

Love and Mathematics

Authored by Charlie Sitler, Math teacher

Ah!  It’s Valentine’s Day, and a young man’s fancy turns to…mathematics? Not really.  But mathematics, or at least the language of mathematics, can be useful in discussing helpful advice to promote love in your life.  In fact, I encourage you to consider matters of affection stated in terms familiar to any calculus or precalculus student. (And you thought you wouldn’t use calculus in “real life”!) First, however, I want to discuss an idea attributed to Michelangelo that I have always cherished: In describing his methods as a sculptor, Michelangelo said his practice was to simply take his block of marble and remove the extraneous material, thus revealing the beautiful work of art that, although initially obscure, was always there. In a similar manner, a true vision of our significant other can be obscured by thoughts and expectations about how he or she should be, or needs to be…especially in our love’s relationship to us.  Not only does such a viewpoint engender resentment when the...read more

Topics: valentines day, mathematics, infinity, Charlie Sitler

Beekman: Not Just Better - Distinctive!

Authored by George Higgins, Headmaster

Virtually no other school in the New York City metro area provides the myriad of educational solutions that we provide.  Between The Beekman School and The Tutoring School (a program within Beekman), we can create an academic schedule that supports most students who are college-bound.  Whether you want to start your day late, finish your day early, study Swahili or increase your course load to graduate early, The Beekman School can tailor a program that fits your unique requirements. Each day, students from as far away as Westchester, New Jersey, and Long Island come to Beekman to earn credits toward their high school diploma.  We are open year-round, offer two summer sessions, and also offer an after-school program for students who want to remain enrolled in their current school.  Credit earned at The Beekman School is universally transferrable.  Short-term visitors have even enrolled for intensive English language classes during their holidays! For over 90 years, Beekman has been...read more

Topics: private school, New York City private schools, individualized learning, transfer, George Higgins

You Know What the United States is Missing? An Adjective

Authored by Anastasia Georgoulis, History teacher

Those of us who watched the Super Bowl (or tuned in just for the highly-anticipated commercials) probably saw the Chrysler ad featuring Bob Dylan. If you were able to rebound quickly enough from the idea of the master of folk music hawking a car – despite previous instances of “selling out” – you heard his opening question: “What’s more American than America?” My high school history teacher would reprimand us every time we referred to this country as America. Apparently it was reflective of an imperial past and connoted an unquestionable hubris. After all, the U.S. is but one country in the two vast continents home to all Americans. Now I’m the history teacher explaining to students how referring to the U.S. as America won’t earn them friends in Canada, Mexico, or South American countries. BUT, if you take the question “What’s more American than America?” and attempt to make it more politically correct, you will find yourself in the midst of an incomplete task. Go ahead, fill in the...read more

Topics: Bob Dylan, Super Bowl, America, U.S. History, teaching, Anastasia Georgoulis

Beekman: The Best Value for Your Education Buck!

Authored by George Higgins, Headmaster

Choosing a private school is a complicated task.  School websites are a great resource in aiding that choice by pointing out a school’s attractive features such as location, curriculum, and class size.  However, skillfully-crafted messages can also be misleading.   Parents encounter well-spun descriptions of programs and professionally-captured photos.  But what is often a major concern to parents is tuition.  It’s also important to learn just how small those “small classes” are and how many hours students really need to spend with a tutor/teacher to adequately cover a course’s syllabus when it’s not part of a fixed class schedule. Let’s consider the popular topic of small class size.  If you’re coming from a public school (which are frequently overcrowded), 15 or 20 students in a class sounds small.  At Beekman, the average class size is 7.  That difference may not seem great, but a student in a class of 7 gets twice the individual attention from the teacher than in a class of 15. If...read more

Topics: private school tuition, small classes, choosing the right school, George Higgins

Teaching Faulkner: A Snopes You Can Believe In

Authored by James Vescovi, English teacher

For me, the best way to teach William Faulkner is to begin with the Snopes, that ornery, duplicitous, barn-burning family of itinerant farmers, blacksmiths, bigamists and bank presidents.  Faulkner does not come naturally to most high school students, and he can be particularly hard to decipher for born-and-bred urbanites, too many of whom see his backwoods people as little more than players in a freak show. The key is to get students beyond a character’s eccentricities to his or her nobility. Faulkner imbued in his people (even the dishonest ones) with a commendable ability to endure the tragic. If you can get students to cross that Rubicon, you’ll find they’ll begin to get Faulkner, even laughing with the characters as opposed to at them. My introduction to the Snopes family begins with two handouts: (1) a map of Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County; and (2) the Snopes family tree, both of which will help students find their footing in Faulkner’s world. Next, I show a 40-minute...read more

Topics: Faulkner, literature, English, teaching, James Vescovi

Teen Creed

Authored by Vanilla Macias-Rodriguez, Science Teacher

Teen Creed Don't let your parents down, They brought you up.   Be humble enough to obey, You may give orders someday.   Choose companions with care, You become what they are.   Guard your thoughts, What you think, you are.   Choose only a date Who would make a good mate.   Be master of your habits, Or they will master you.   Don't be a show off when you drive, Drive with safety and arrive.   Don't let the crowd pressure you, Stand for something- Or you'll fall for anything.   Stored somewhere in my parents' garage is the corkboard that used to hang in my teenage bedroom and later in my college dorm room.  On that corkboard, pinned with a pink thumbtack, is a 3 x 5 paper card.  Printed on this card is the Teen Creed you read above.  It is misshapen and discolored from being close enough to my mirror to be repeatedly coated with Aqua Net as I fixed my hair each morning. Now in my 30’s, I see that if I had only heeded these words instead of giving them a passing glance every now and then...read more

Topics: teenagers, life lessons, Vanilla Macias-Rodriguez

When Students Tire of the Written Word

Authored by James Vescovi, English teacher

New Yorker essayist Joseph Mitchell once wrote, “When things get too much for me, I put a wild-flower book and a couple of sandwiches in my pockets and go down to the South Shore of Staten Island and wander around awhile.” It is the first line in “Mr. Hunter’s Grave,” which relates Mitchell’s discovery of an old African-American burial ground still lovingly tended by a local minister.  In the same way, when reading and interpreting literature gets to be “too much” for my students, we, too, depart for someplace new—the woodcut novels of Lynd Ward. This usually occurs in mid-April, with summer looming on the horizon. Ward, who died in 1985, was an illustrator of adult books (such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein) and children’s books (including Caldecott winner The Biggest Bear). In the 1930s, he wrote and illustrated with woodcuts six adult books of his own. He dubbed them “wordless novels,” and they depicted both the daily and the existential struggles of artists and working people....read more

Topics: English, teaching, art, James Vescovi

Online Courses - What They *Don't* Tell You

Authored by Maren Holmen, Academic Liaison

We’ve all heard about online courses; ads tout them as the best way to accrue credits on your schedule, and they seem like a handy and cost-effective alternative to traditional classes. But it’s important to understand what you’re really buying into before you make a commitment. Even the best, most well-intentioned students struggle to complete online courses. I recently spoke with a parent about her daughter. I have first-hand knowledge that this girl is a serious student: she turns in all of her homework on time, she goes above and beyond in her assignments, and she is never late for class. She had attempted to take online courses early in her high school career because she takes performance classes 3-4 hours every day, making a traditional school day virtually impossible. Online courses seemed like the perfect option. Soon, however, this serious A-student got behind in her coursework and was in danger of failing! When there is no structure, other commitments start to encroach on...read more

Topics: Online course, tutoring, flexible scheduling, Maren Holmen

What's More Beautiful Than a Great Story?

Authored by Michelle Koza, English teacher

Why do we tell each other stories? For the English teacher, the similarities between fiction and our own lives are clear: both have protagonists and antagonists, characters, relationships, and conflicts. Like the novelist, we develop motifs and metaphors that color our experiences. Though these account for the “hows”, what of the “why”? The readings we have done in my Advanced English class suggest some answers. Whereas in our own lives there are no do-overs, in literature there is always room for following the alternate route. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Czech writer Milan Kundera, the author speaks directly to the reader.  The characters, he claims, are born of his own experience (how could it be otherwise?), but make different choices. Novel writing (and reading!) is an exploration of potentials. And in our silent conversation with the author, we peer into these alternate lives, hoping perhaps to find some version of ourselves among the pages.   Nietzsche’s The Birth of...read more

Topics: storyteller, English, Michelle Koza

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