Josh Radnor Congratulates Far Hills School Faculty: See Why

FAR HILLS, NJ — Far Hills Country Day School became the nation's first private preschool-eighth grade school to achieve Level 1 certification in Mind, Brain, and Education Science through Neuroteach Global. The interactive online program re-imagines classroom design and layout, embracing the role of teachers as "brain changers."

Even actor and filmmaker Josh Radnor thought that was quite the accolade. So the "How I Met Your Mother" star made Far Hills a congratulatory video. Watch it here.

For the past four years, Far Hills partnered with the Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning and committed to an intensive professional development track for full-time faculty. The development focused on how students learned and re-imagined teaching strategies.

"I loved the program because it was designed using the practices of meta-cognition, spaced-retrieval, feedback, and memory, so teachers are learning using the same research-based methods they practice in the classroom," said Head of School Georgia Zaiser.

Here's what Neuroteach Global says Level 1 entails:

Teachers as Brain Changes:

• Embrace the concept of neuroplasticity, and that all educators are brain changers
• Recognize ‘neuromyths’ that may appear in your teaching practice and address them
• Identify any implicit biases based on race, gender, or other identifiers that may be affecting your teaching practices

Classroom Design

• Understand the impact the classroom environment has on working memory and attention
• Design a classroom that facilitates and tells the story of the learning that happens there, and reflects the students’ voice
• Understand how to create more space for students to visually show their thinking

Classroom Culture

• Describe the relationship between emotion and cognition
• Strategically implement the use of positive emotion in the learning environment
• Understand that social belonging and academic belonging are different and manage both for students
• Depersonalize and normalize struggle, so students can see their successes and challenges as separate from stereotypes

So how did Radnor find out? Fortunately, it's not as long a story as when his TV character, Ted Mosby, told his children how he met their mother.

Far Hills originally wanted to hold a schoolwide celebration, but the coronavirus pandemic had other plans. So the school found a different way to congratulate its faculty.

Some of the teachers would mention "How I Met Your Mother" and drop quotes from the show. So when senior leadership voted on who to select for a surprise video, they decided on Radnor. The actor provided the message through Cameo, a website that lets celebrities send personalized video messages to fans.

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