First Thursdays Are Back!

First Thursdays ~ 3:30-5:00 p.m.

We work with brilliant colleagues…and in recent years GA has made a concerted effort to maximize the expertise of these teachers and create opportunities for them to share knowledge acquired off-campus as well as expertise honed in the classroom with their colleagues.  Monthly 1^st Thursdays bring faculty together from all three divisions to explore a topic of pedagogical interest.

All are welcome!  If you have an idea for a 1^st Thursday, please let me know.

Thursday, Oct 6, 2016       New Com 2.0. Chidi Asoluka & Cory Eklund BCI

Thursday, Nov 3, 2016      Metacognition ~ Janelle Collett ~ BCI

Thursday, Dec 1, 2016      Brain-based Learning ~ Charlotte Dean ~ BCI

Thursday, Feb 2, 2017       Topic and location to be announced

Thursday, Mar 2, 2017      Topic and location to be announced

Thursday, May 4, 2017     Topic and location to be announced

The Final Report of the PAIS Visiting Committee

After more than a year and a half of thoughtful preparation of GA’s Self-Study, the Germantown Academy community welcomed the PAIS Visiting Committee in late January 2016 for three and a half days of intense meetings and observations. In June 2016, GA received the committee’s final report and a renewed ten-year accreditation from the Pennsylvania Association of Independent Schools.


To read the final report please login to the GA website, go to Community, scroll all the way down to Work at GA, and find the report on the bottom of the left-hand side of the page.

Benchmark School Special Program: How to Listen

To learn more and register for this free this event click here.

Thoughts on Teaching

 As promised, the excerpt I shared at this year’s Opening Faculty/Staff Meeting~ thanks to Rachel Lintgen.


“Teaching was a far more intense job than I’d anticipated. You have to learn the curriculum. You have to learn how to test the curriculum. You have to learn how to manage children who think they’re grown-ups (and how to manage grown-ups that behave like children). You have to learn how to weave differentiated instruction into the lessons you’re building and also you have to learn what “differentiated instruction” means. You have to learn how to manage the tiny amount of time you get with each class each day. You have to learn when and how to discipline your students and you have to learn when and how to let them just exist as children, because they are children. You have to learn all of that. Every single piece. It’s all important. But you only ever really have to be good at one thing: Making sure your students know that you absolutely, no question, no doubt, for sure, 100 percent want to be in that particular classroom with those particular kids. If you do that, shit usually works out.”


To read the article in its entirety, please click here.

Welcome back to the new school year!

So many things to do: ready your classroom, copy your syllabi, update the VLE, refer to the MAP, call your advises parents. The list is almost endless. I would like to suggest adding an item to the list, in fact, to the top of the list.

Learn how to pronounce, and spell, your students’ names correctly.

Pronouncing students’ names affirms your desire to reach out and connect. It says you care about them as the individuals they are. Try to find out this information before school starts. Ask colleagues or past advisors for help. And if necessary on the first day, ask the student…and write their name down phonetically on your class list.

Not convinced. Log onto your GA account and click here to be persuaded!