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Collin Lawrence is a former — and now present again! — New York City teacher who is recounting his four years working at a Brooklyn high school. Read Collin’s previous posts.
This writing project stems from a conversation I had with my colleagues at the Brooklyn Arts Academy toward then end of my final year there. We (more…)

Collin Lawrence is a former — and now present again! — New York City teacher who is recounting his four years working at a Brooklyn high school. Read Collin’s previous posts.
When I walked into school on Thursday, June 24, 2010, I knew that my final two days at the Brooklyn Arts Academy were not going to (more…)

Collin Lawrence is a former New York City teacher who is recounting his four years working at a Brooklyn high school. Read Collin’s previous posts.
The end of my final school year at the Brooklyn Arts Academy was going exceedingly well.  My 10th-graders achieved unprecedented success on the global Regents exams — over 70 percent passed, up (more…)

Collin Lawrence is a former New York City teacher who is recounting his four years working at a Brooklyn high school. Read Collin’s previous posts.
The administration of the Brooklyn Arts Academy made what was, in my opinion, a strategic blunder when determining teacher placement for the 2009-2010 school year. The veteran and more established teachers were (more…)

Collin Lawrence is a former New York City teacher who is recounting his four years working at a Brooklyn high school. Read Collin’s previous posts.
I feel incredibly proud of the 10 or so young men who participated in the after-school weight lifting program that I supervised in my fourth year at the Brooklyn Arts Academy. I (more…)

Collin Lawrence is a former New York City teacher who is recounting his four years working at a Brooklyn high school. Read Collin’s previous posts.
One of my personal goals for the 2009-2010 school year was to help usher in better administrator-staff relations. I was committed to pushing the administration to do more to support teachers, and (more…)

My fourth and final year at the Brooklyn Arts Academy saw a flurry of structural revisions and new initiatives. The fire under the feet of the school’s administration was the need to show improvement on the upcoming School Quality Review (SQR). The review would take place in early December, so we needed to hit the (more…)

Midway through my third year at the Brooklyn Arts Academy, not too long after our disappointing school quality review, the principal asked all teachers to read a long article on the limitations of “traditional” methods of assessments for underperforming students. The paper, written by a public school teacher from Chicago, detailed how one school increased (more…)

Collin Lawrence is a former New York City teacher who is recounting his four years working at a Brooklyn high school. Read Collin’s previous posts.
The beginning of my fourth, and final, school year at the Brooklyn Arts Academy started with a bang. At our first staff meeting, shortly after introducing the new teachers, the principal (more…)

Collin Lawrence is a former New York City teacher who is recounting his four years working at a Brooklyn high school. Read Collin’s previous posts.
I had a lot to think about as my third year of teaching at the Brooklyn Arts Academy wound to an end. In mid-May, I’d received an email from a friend (more…)