Saturday, August 28, 2010

Scholars Academy

Scholars Academy

Changing of the Guard, and my own personal thoughts

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 09:06 AM PDT

Dear Scholars Community,

By the time you read this post, you will probably already have heard the news that a changing of the guard is underway: over the course of this school year, my esteemed colleage Ms Tanya Diaz will be taking over the reins of the Scholars Academy and International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme.

I will be slowly receding into the background over the next few weeks and months, but rest assured: I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.  To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of my demise have been severely exaggerated. 

Just to flesh out the picture of exactly what’s happening, let me provide a few details: I am currently still working full time, coming to work every day and running the day-to-day affairs of the Academy, but at some point in the future, I will enter a half-time position to teach two periods of SAT/ACT prep and run the IB collaboration period.  Ms Diaz is already working full time at the school, meeting with parents and students and learning about our advanced academics programs.  She is co-teaching the IB Theory of Knowledge course with David Guthrie, but has no other teaching responsibilities and will be available to serve our students.  So for the time being at least, you will have two people to help you for the price of one (OK, for the price of two, but still: two people to help you)! 

I am sure there are many questions and concerns already in circulation, so I want to make a few big, hairy, unequivocal statements to hopefully calm any fears that might be stirring. 

  1. I will be here every day until we all feel that the program is ready for the transition.  I have future plans that I cherish very dearly, but I will put them on hold to make sure that this project is finished and ready for handoff before I move onto the next step in my career.  I don’t yet know when I will officially enter the half-time position, but if it means that I wind up doing volunteer work for a month or two, so be it.  I’m not about to desert you guys on the dawn of IB over a few weeks’ pay. 
  2. Ms Diaz and I will keep the lines of communication open for all of our stakeholders and take all of your feedback into consideration.  We will be present at the PTSA board meeting on the morning of Thursday, September 2, and then we will hold a big public meeting that afternoon at 2:30 in the auditorium.  The idea is for our students, parents, faculty, and administration to all meet in the same place at the same time so we can all be on the same page.  I want all members of our community to hear the same message loud and clear: we are committed to the excellence of our advanced academic programs and will be here for you in every way possible.  I want everyone who can make it to come.
  3. I stand fully behind Ms Diaz as the lead teacher of our programs.  I have known here for just about two weeks, and the woman is a dynamo.  I just want to highlight some selections from her biography: She has a master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University and is about to finish a specialist’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Florida State University.  She has been a legislative aide and a program associate for the Rockefeller Foundation. She was the EESAC chair at her last school and a member of the magnet leadership team, and has extensive grantwriting experience that will be invaluable in this uniquely challenging budget year.  Just this year she will be giving presentationf for the National Association of Gifted Children, the Florida Association for the Gifted, and the Education Fund.  She has a passion for teaching and a work ethic that is unrivaled in the field, and she’s also really nice – I simply cannot imagine a better fit for the Scholars Academy and IB.  Did I mention she was from New Jersey?

All of this is to say that Ms Diaz and I will be working together, that you should expect the transition to be seamless, and that there is nothing to fear but fear itself. 

The bottom line is that great teachers follow great kids.  Over the past three years I have watched our advanced academics programs more than double in size, and our school has gone from a D to a few points shy of an A.  Now we are inaugurating our IB Diploma Programme and are on the verge of becoming a magnet school.  I wish I could take even a small piece of credit for the renaissance we are living through, but my honest-to-god assessement is that it was the simple decision of our most active and involved families to reengage with the local public school.  We can build new buildings and new programs for years and years, but without your active support and participation the seats would go empty and the lessons unlearned.  Now is not the time to worry about the future, but rather to recommit and rededicate to completing the transformation that you have started.  I have just been lucky to be along for the ride, and now Ms Diaz will have the honor of watching Miami Beach High reach its full potential.

On a personal note, I have received many messages of support in the past 24 hours, and I want to publicly say thank you the outpouring of positive energy that has been flowing my way.  I have always told my friends and colleagues that I have the best job in public education, and believe me when I say that I would never, ever leave this program to work at any other school.  The Scholars community has been a family to me here, and I will be spending this weekend thinking of all the people who were kind and helpful to a 24-year-old transplant, who invited me into their homes, and who wove me into the unique cultural fabric that is Miami Beach.  Before I took this position I had moved from city to city pretty much every year or two since I graduated high school myself, and you are the reason I have felt so comfortable here.  You are my surrogate mothers and fathers and my little brothers and sisters, and I am humbled to think that I will always have a home here.

But all of this sounds like I’m going somewhere, which I’ve already told you I am not. As for my own personal plans, I am hoping to create a summer-camp style experience for high school kids who want to do community service and learn Spanish in Latin America.  I participated in a program like this when I was in high school, and in retrospect I think it was a transformative experience in my own life — I’ve wanted to somethig like this for years, and I finally feel ready to take a risk and see if I can make it happen.  Once I go to half time, I will continue to tutor and do college counseling to make rent each month — but all of that is once this current project is finished.  The Scholars Academy and IB will be my full-time occupation until then, and I will still be here every other day after that.

I don’t think I’ve done this before, but I want to make myself available if you’d like to speak over the phone, so feel free to call me at 305.710.4925 if you have any questions.  And I promise, I’ll be back on Monday to work our those schedule changes!

Best Regards,
Andy Weiss

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