Dear Laurel Families,
Happy November! We had a wonderful Halloween celebration for our students yesterday, despite the rainy weather. Thanks so much to Karen Schoenfeld, Danielle McMahan, and the rest of our amazing parent volunteers who helped to create such a spectacular day of activities and treats for all of us! It was a bit of a miracle that the rain held off for our Trunk or Treat! The treats were delicious and the creativity at each trunk was incredible! We are so lucky to have all of you as part of our Laurel family.
We have an award winner in our midst! We are so proud of our own Dr. Lorraine McKay, who was awarded recognition at the 26th Annual New Jersey Nonpublic School Teacher of the Year ceremony this past Tuesday. Dr. McKay was one of three finalists who were recognized for her excellence by the New Jersey Council for Private Education for her excellence as a teacher and her innovative instruction. Several of us attended the ceremony on Tuesday, at which the Deputy Assistant Commissioner of Academics from the New Jersey Department of Education and other notable leaders in the NJ nonpublic school community were there to present her award and celebrate her accomplishments. Congratulations, Dr. McKay!
Today, Dr. McKay introduced Ronald Rotunno, a Senior Infrastructure Engineer from Banc3 Engineering, to our 7th grade Future City Team. Mr. Rotunno explained what engineers do to facilitate projects and volunteered to advise our Future City Team this year.
This coming Thursday and Friday, Kelly Dun, Susan Miller, Kathy Bostock, and I will be attending the 70th Annual International Dyslexia Conference, in Portland, Oregon. On Thursday, we will be participating in the Inaugural Gordon F. Sherman Neuroscience and Education Symposium. At this symposium, scientists including D. Ken Pugh, Dr. Nicole Landi, Dr. Jay Rueckl and Dr. Mark Seidenberg, will be discussing cutting edge research with over 500 teachers and scientists interested in the study of dyslexia. I will be speaking on the panel at the end of the symposium about how at Laurel School we celebrate cerebrodiversity and promote the strengths of dyslexic mind. Laurel continues to add to Dr. Sherman’s contributions to the field of dyslexia over the years. We are grateful to our Executive Director, Tim Viands, for sponsoring this huge event in honor of Dr. Sherman’s vision, leadership and scholarship. In addition, Susan Miller, the Assistant Director of the Robinowitz Education Center, and I will be presenting a session on teaching math for children who have dyslexia. You can see more about Dr. Sherman’s Symposium below.
As you know, we are close to finalizing the location of our new campus. Many of you have questions about sharing the campus with our sister school, Newgrange, and The Ann Robinowitz Education Center. Newgrange is a wonderful place with exceptional instruction and learning happening and every day. I am confident that you will be excited to have our whole organization in one place, doing what we do best, and serving as many students who learn differently (and their families) as we can. If you would like to discuss any of this further or have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to
Tim Viands
or
Kelly Dun
. We know that the anticipation of the unknown is difficult, but we are almost there!
Reminder: Parent/Teacher Conferences are scheduled for November 20 and 21. If you haven’t yet, please sign up as soon as possible, using
this link
. It has come to our attention that the sign up platform is easier to use on a computer than on a mobile phone. We’ll be using this system again in the spring, so be sure to bookmark the page.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Dee
