Achieve Names Riecke Fellows, Admin. Grant Winner

The following is a press release from the Achieve Foundation.

Two ESL teachers at Clinton Elementary School and a mathematics teacher at Columbia High School are recipients of the Achieve Foundation's Riecke Fellowship. The foundation's Administrator Grant is being awarded to Maplewood Middle School Principal Jeffrey Truppo. The Riecke Fellows and Administrator Grant recipient were announced last week at a reception honoring all teachers who received Achieve grants this school year. 

"I find it both exciting and very rewarding to be able to assist our staff in moving forward with new and innovative ideas for our students," said Patti Coleman, chairwoman of Achieve's grants committee and past president of the foundation. "It is wonderful to help fulfill a wish of teachers or administrators who want to excel and learn more to enrich the teaching skills they already have." 

Arlene Aguirre and Katherine Fearon, who teach English as a Second Language at Clinton, will attend a workshop in Washington at the Center for Applied Linguistics. The workshop will focus on understanding the similarities and differences between teaching reading to English-language learners and teaching it to native English speakers. 

The teachers hope to learn practical strategies for teaching reading in the area of oral language development, vocabulary development, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency and comprehension, according to their grant application. With their training, they will be able to reach out to other teachers to help them address the needs of English-language learners and struggling readers. 

Mark Richman, who has spent more than 40 years in the classroom, including nine at Columbia, will attend the Advanced Placement Summer Institute in Statistics at Middlesex County College. The workshop, run by the College Board, will give him the tools necessary to teach statistics at all levels. 

The Riecke Fellowship is named for Michelle T. Riecke, who served on the school board for six years, including a two-year term as board president. She believed that teachers are our schools' greatest asset and the key to maximizing student achievement. This fellowship is an endowed program that awards annual professional development grants to district educators who wish to pursue summer learning experiencse that relate to their teaching assignments. 

Each spring, Achieve also awards its Administrator Grant to enhance the educational program of a school, grade level or department. Truppo's grant will help teachers put technology into the hands of students to create learning experiences that would not have been possible without these devices. 

A sixth-grade teaching team at Maplewood Middle has worked on this effort for two years, according to the grant application. Students maintain digital notebooks in social studies and access their notes from any connected device. In language arts, students get teacher comments through a Google "doc" that also shows changes each student has made as writing is refined. Math and science teachers post content-based questions on Web pages that let them measure student comprehension so they can plan instruction. 

With this grant, the district's technology department will be able to purchase Chromebooks during the summer for use beginning September 2013. Each student on the sixth-grade team will have access to a Chromebook for their team classes and use Cloud-based applications and storage for their assignments, notes and academic interactions, Truppo said. 

The Achieve Foundation of South Orange and Maplewood raises money to promote exemplary public education for all students and educators in the community. These funds provide classroom grants, volunteer tutors, professional development, family outreach and technology and facility improvements to enrich the learning experience of students at all grade levels.