Month: May 2019

Lily Kravetz is a third-grade lead teacher at Success Academy Fort Greene. She graduated in 2017 from Penn with a degree in Visual Studies from the College of Arts & Sciences.

How do kids see the world? I ask myself this question every day as a third grade teacher at Success Academy, a high-performing charter school network in New York City. To answer it, I draw on my experience as a Visual Studies major at Penn, where I researched how design affects people’s day-to-day experiences and perspectives.

At Penn, I had the opportunity to explore visual arts through an interdisciplinary lens, pairing my major requirements with education and child development classes. My thesis advisors, David Comberg and Dr. Margaret Souders, helped me bridge these interests in a project focused on designing adaptable spaces to suit the diverse sensory needs of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The insights I gained from this project inform the choices I make about my classroom today.

One of the main reasons why I pursued a teaching career at Success Academy was the network’s emphasis on aesthetics as a vital part of creating strong schools. In a world where design has come to the forefront of so many every industries, it often falls by the wayside in education. Success Academy is a leader in this regard. Rather than adding visual elements to an existing room, each classroom is designed from the ground up with a consideration of the student’s perspective. From the “Lotsa Dots” rug embedded in the carpet, to the colorful pastel walls, every part of the room serves a purpose. Teachers are then given the flexibility to arrange the seating, library, and academic “anchor charts” according to the needs of their students. As a result, the classrooms — and the hallways! — are organized, inviting, and conducive to learning.

Of course, there is much more to teaching and learning than the physical environment. While I have drawn on what I learned at Penn to design a stimulating and nurturing classroom, I have also honed a new set of skills working at Success. The expectations for both scholars and teachers are incredibly high here, and in my first year I had to learn how to press my scholars for academic excellence. I embraced our mission of providing a high-quality education to all students and worked on bolstering skills that would push my scholars forward. In particular, I focused on data analysis. Thanks to the rigor of the school, I have developed an unexpected level of expertise in using data to problem solve. Each day, I closely analyze assessment trends and student work to identify gaps, and strategize with my colleagues to close them.

Working as a teacher here, and helping my students grow and mature into brilliant, independent scholars, has been a challenging and fulfilling experience. I feel lucky to be a part of these kids’ journeys and to pursue a career that makes use of all the skills, knowledge, and insights I gained in my undergraduate education at Penn.

Rhea May is a kindergarten science teacher at Success Academy Bed-Stuy 1. She graduated from Penn in 2011, with a degree in Evolutionary Anthropology from the College.

I spent most of my childhood forcing my younger sister to attend what I dubbed “Rhea School.” Since my parents were both teachers, I’d steal their various homework assignments and attendance logs and demand she get to work. She eventually dropped out of Rhea School and I can’t blame her. Thankfully, I’ve progressed from drilling my sister on decimals to encouraging my elementary schoolers at Success Academy, a high-performing charter school network in New York City, to love science. I’ve been teaching here since 2013 and this year, the network honored me with an Excellence Award. I attribute this achievement not to my experience as a child running a one-student school, but to the knowledge and mindset I learned as an anthropology major at Penn.

To me, anthropology isn’t just the study of human cultures — it’s a way of thinking. Penn’s anthropology program taught me how to step outside of myself and examine not only the larger world but my own experiences through a different lens. Professor Heather Love taught me Queer Theory, and Jamal Alias gave me insight into the history of Islam. Both professors were engaging, authentic, and passionate about their subjects and both were devoted to helping their students shed self-centered views. I grew up in a small town in West Virginia and courses like these exposed me for the first time to other cultures. They were inspiring and life-changing. Ultimately, I decided I wanted to play a role in making sure kids got this kind of exposure earlier in life.

So I set to work researching high-performing schools that were committed to providing children with a broad and expansive education. I landed on Success Academy, drawn especially by their distinctive science program. As a kid, I always thought of science as an abstract set of facts that I had to memorize. I remember a requirement to learn the water cycle by heart as a second grader and thinking, “Why do I need to do this?” At Success, my scholars are learning to be scientists through hands-on exploration, not textbooks. Instead of diagramming a water cycle on paper, we pour water into beakers, apply heat, and watch and document the process of condensation. The water cycle isn’t an abstraction — it’s real and my eight-year-olds find it gripping!

My first year of teaching was tough. I struggled to find a work-life balance. But I learned invaluable lessons from the training and hands-on experience Success Academy provided me — lessons like how to effectively manage a classroom. I didn’t need a degree in education to realize that learning to be a good teacher, like any other skill, is a process. I had to trust that process and rely on what my courses at Penn taught me — to think critically about the unique needs of others. This mindset greatly improved my ability to assess my teaching methods and pinpoint solutions I wouldn’t have ordinarily considered.

Toward the end of my first year teaching, I ran into the mother of one of my kindergarteners. She told me that her daughter couldn’t stop talking at the dinner table about our class unit on the science of bread. “Mold doesn’t get on white bread that much, because it has a preservative shield. So don’t eat too much white bread,” the five-year-old reportedly instructed her family, “because eating too many preservatives isn’t healthy.”

It was then that I realized the huge impact I was having on my scholars — helping to spark a passion that could lead them to become real-life scientists, doctors, or teachers. I am grateful to Penn for inspiring me to pass the torch of critical thought and study to my scholars. It is so clear that the perspective I am passing on is helping them flourish!