I visited the Hoboken High school today for about 3 hours. In that time I began with an informal meeting with the building principal. We exchange pleasantries and discussed loosely our educational philosophies and perspectives. I believe we are on the same page about many of the issues facing urban education in general and some specifics about Hoboken. We both agree that there is a tremendous opportunity in Hoboken for success with the relative size of the district, the community and the fact that we are essentially a 1 feeder system. We also spoke about Reading First Program and the need for a unified and general curriculum for the district and school. In all, we meet for about ½ hour.
I then proceeded through the counselor’s offices and met with Eileen Covallo and had a very nice conversation with her about some technology issues with the district as well as some certification issues.
I next stopped in to the Child Study area and ran into some people and said hello. One person spoke to me about a program that was soon ending that dealt with the community and bringing goods to them. Seemed like an excellent interaction between the school and the community. I also said hello to some other people on the team.
I then walked around in the math/Science wing to find a fair amount of activity going on in the classrooms but relegated to primarily pencil and paper. The wing has good/excellent lab facilities and I’d like to visit again when these are in use.
I had a productive meeting with the school librarian and believe there are wonderful things going on in terms of a systemic, district wide plans for the school libraries.
