Our annual meeting with the Le Sallay Schools' Advisory Board focused on several issues we consider to be very important for anyone concerned with middle school education.
Members of our Advisory Board come from a variety of backgrounds. A Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University Niall Fergusson is a historian. Professor of Math. in the Mathematics Dept. at MIT Pavel Etingof is an advisor to the all-year high school math research program at MIT. Marina Polonskaia is a head of an academic enrichment program for motivated students with classes held on the SUNY campus. Alexander Kirillov, professor of the Department of Mathematics at Stony Brook University has over 20 years of experience teaching math in a university setting.
Their perspective on the issues faced by educators was invaluable. We have discussed Le Sallay's flexible curriculum which allows our schools to avoid many pitfalls that middle schools usually struggle with, namely a restrictive approach to subjects and dependence on limiting textbooks that are at once too broad and not engaging enough. In small classes, our teachers get to know their students very well, so that they are able to adapt the content of lessons and the way they teach to the students' individual learning styles. They don't rely on textbooks but rather develop a curated set of study materials within a topic framework to guide the students through a series of projects and discussions allowing them to gain a deep understanding of the subject instead of simply memorizing facts.
The Board members were interested to learn about the interdisciplinary approach that Le Sallay schools are developing. In our classes, teachers often collaborate to create a comprehensive learning experience drawing from different areas of knowledge. For example, history and geography, foreign languages and literature, science and art can be taught in different combinations to deepen and expand the students' view of the world.
The meeting concluded with a discussion of future partnerships and collaborations with educational institutions. We will continue drawing on our Advisory Board members' extensive expertise and hope to include them in our future.