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.
Blog
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
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”?