Week of 19October26

 

  Urban Assembly Institute of Math &                      Science for Young Women

19 October 2026

School Leadership Message.  

Between classroom visits this week, hallway chats during transitions, and seeing the ways our team consistently steps up to support each other, we're constantly reminded of how strong our community is.

Whether it’s the smiling faces and cross-grade cheering during the pep rally or the growing energy of students engaging with each other during lessons, the care we show one another is palpable. That sense of belonging is the bedrock of everything we do.

As we prepare for our upcoming Instructional Rounds, we have a powerful opportunity to build on this strong foundation. Our primary focus during rounds will be examining how we design and implement rigorous tasks so that students are doing the heavy lifting and thinking throughout the entire lesson.

A critical part of holding students to that cognitive heavy lifting is how they talk and process ideas together. Right now, classroom interactions can sometimes default to simple "turn-taking," where students share ideas sequentially rather than truly collaborating. To ensure the task's rigor translates into deep student thinking, we want to shift toward authentic dialogue where kids actively build on, reflect on, and challenge each other's ideas.

As we head into Instructional Rounds, we’ll be keeping this connection front and center by focusing on:

• Rigorous Tasks: Crafting learning experiences that require authentic problem-solving and keep the cognitive burden on students.

• Engaging & Higher-Order Questioning: Asking questions that force students to evaluate, defend, and refine their own thinking.

• Structures for Engagement: Providing the routines and sentence stems kids need to build on a peer's point or respectfully push an idea further.

When we combine a supportive culture with rigorous task design and explicit structures for student thinking, our students develop the confidence and skills to tackle hard intellectual work together & independently.

We're looking forward to visiting classrooms together and learning alongside all of you during our upcoming rounds!

Week of 12OCT26

 

  Urban Assembly Institute of Math &                      Science for Young Women

12 October 2026

School Leadership Message. 

We are officially finished with the first month of school! It has been an honor to launch this year alongside all of you, and we're excited for what the remainder of the year holds. 

Over these past few weeks, our classroom visits have highlighted the undeniable heart of our school: vibrant, warm classroom cultures built on authentic relationships. Across our halls, teachers are making an intentional, daily effort to connect with students, creating safe environments where learners feel known, valued, and ready to show up. 

At the same time, these visits highlighted key instructional trends we want to focus on as we move forward: the use of whole-class scaffolds and rapid teacher-to-student "ping-pong" exchanges. While these moves are well-intentioned attempts to guide students, they often keep the intellectual heavy lifting on the teacher, over-supporting learners and limiting opportunities for true peer discourse and independent processing.

To realize our UAI Instructional Vision, we must shift away from over-scaffolding and teacher-dominated talk toward environments where students develop agency through productive struggle. Our vision calls for stepping back so students can engage deeply with complex content through structured thinking routines, rich peer discussions, and rigorous writing. Moving from teacher-centered dialogue to student-led thinking requires us to design entry points that support access without removing the cognitive demand.

Our upcoming Instructional Rounds starting on October 19 give us the dedicated space to dive directly into this work together. These rounds mark the start of a broader push—alongside our co-planning meetings and coaching cycles—where we can dig into a shared Problem of Practice: How do we effectively plan for and implement rigorous tasks so that high cognitive demand is maintained throughout the class period for all students? 

By observing real-time learning, looking at student outputs, and tweaking how we step back, we will build the habits that help our students take ownership and grapple with complex ideas every single day.

Week of 05OCT26

 

  Urban Assembly Institute of Math &                      Science for Young Women

05 October 2026

School Leadership Message

It was a busy week! It finally feels like we're in the swing of things and we're ready to push our instructional practice. As we're walking through classrooms, we're seeing a lot of effective practice - behavior management is strong, and kids are sitting in groups ready to engage in learning. Now that foundational structures and climate are solid, our next high-leverage move is elevating academic rigor. As we move forward, our focus will be on raising cognitive demand for all students: asking open-ended 'why' and 'how' questions, increasing student-to-student discourse, and giving students more ownership over solving complex problems.

Here's some questions we will work on answering through this year's PD sessions:

1. When you lead a whole-class discussion, who is doing most of the thinking and talking - one student at a time, or everyone in the room? How can we consistently replace the traditional teacher-to-student call-and-response pattern with Total Participation Techniques (like Turn & Talks) that require every student to process, articulate, and defend their ideas with a peer?
2. How can we elevate the level of rigor of our tasks? Does this assignment ask students to recall information, or does it require them to analyze, synthesize, and grapple with complex ideas? How can we ensure our daily tasks go beyond procedural accuracy to demand higher-level cognitive work - offering multiple pathways, encouraging productive struggle, and requiring students to cite evidence, hypothesize, or draw their own conclusions?

This week we will be coming into classrooms to give non-evaluative feedback specifically around Danielson 3C - Engaging Students in Learning. 

We are raising the bar this year on the academic expectations we have for all of our students. In turn, the bar must be raised for all of us - and that starts with me. So, this year, you will receive much more constructive, honest and direct feedback from the admin team - both informally and through the evaluation process.

I am excited to be on this journey with all of you and I look forward to leaning into the hard work ahead of us.

Week of 28SEP26

    

       

   Urban Assembly Institute of Math &                      Science for Young Women

28 September 2026

School Leadership Message

Last week's conference event and PTA meeting was a good reminder of the importance of building strong and trusting relationships with our families. When families and school staff have open lines of communication and a strong sense of partnership, we are better able to support student academically, socially, and emotionally. We are going to continue to prioritize meaningful family engagement and look for new ways to create opportunities for collaboration, communication, and connection.

• We will continue to ensure our family phone call system is working effectively and consistently - where all families are given at least monthly updates on how their child is doing academically and social-emotionally across all classes.
• We will engage families in meaningful conversations about their student’s progress, areas for growth, and the supports they can expect from us as we work together to help their child succeed.
• To do this, we will host whole school evening workshops focused on understanding their student's screener data and the ways in which we are pushing their child to grow. 
• We will formalize our PTA and SLT structures so that parents have a true role in and authentic voice in shaping how we serve our students and families.

This week as you have your Initial Planning Conferences, you should expect to speak to your own personal goals for strengthening your relationships with the families of the students you teach. Building strong family partnerships is not the responsibility of one team or one role, it is something we all contribute to through consistent communication, trust, and a commitment to knowing and supporting our students and their families.

Week of 21SEP26

 Urban Assembly Institute of Math and                        Science for Young Women

21 September 2026

School Leadership Message

We have a busy and exciting week ahead, including our first opportunity to welcome families into the building. This is an important moment for us as a school community. For many of our families, this will be their first chance to meet their child’s teachers, learn more about what their students will be learning this year, and begin to build relationships with the staff who will be supporting their children throughout the year.

We want families to leave our building feeling welcomed, informed, and connected to our school community. Every interaction matters, from a personal phone call inviting a family to join us, to greeting families at the door, sharing what students are learning, and taking the time to answer questions. These early connections help lay the foundation for strong partnerships between school and home.

As we head into the week, please be intentional about making families feel that they belong here. We have a great opportunity to start the year by showing families who we are, what we value, and how committed we are to their children’s success. Thank you for helping make this week a meaningful and welcoming experience for our students and families.

Week of 14SEP26

 

Urban Assembly Institute of Math and                        Science for Young Women

14 September 2026

School Leadership Message

What a first week! I want to thank each of you for helping make the opening of the 2026-27 school year such a huge success. This week there was an incredible energy throughout the building... students were excited to be back (and staff seemed excited too), classrooms were welcoming and purposeful, and our community felt joyful!

A successful opening is the result of countless decisions, meetings, planning, and small acts of care. From greeting students at the door, to helping them find a classroom, to establishing routines and expectations, to simply making a student feel like they belong - these moments showed our students what it means to be part of the UAI community.

We now have the gift of a full school year to get better, to hold ourselves and our students to higher expectations, and build stronger relationships. There will be difficult weeks, unexpected challenges, and moments when we have to adjust course. But I am incredibly optimistic about what we can accomplish together.

Thank you for an outstanding start and, more importantly, thank you for everything you did to make our students feel that UAI is a place where they are known, supported, and loved.

Looking forward to week two!

Week of 07SEP26

 

    Urban Assembly Institute of Math and                                Science for Young Women

07 September 2026

School Leadership Message

And we are off!  I am incredibly excited to welcome you to the 2026-27 school year. The launch of this year brings with it a fresh start and a new chapter in UAI's story. I am honored to work alongside you all as we build off the successes of the past 20 years and re-establish our community as one rooted in love and excellence.   

Our focus this year will be intentional and sustained. Over the course of this week's professional development you’ll see how our new instructional vision will serve as our anchor, how we will support and prepare every staff member for success, and how updated clarity around our leadership structures will guide our work. Equally important, we’ll make time to connect with one another and start to build the trust that we know will drive our community forward.

We are about to start a 180-day marathon. I am incredibly proud to begin this journey with each of you, and I hope we enter it knowing that the work ahead will not always be easy, but it will always be worth it. There will be moments that challenge us, moments that energize us, and moments that remind us exactly why we chose this work. Through all of them, we will continue to come back to what matters most: our kids.

This year, I ask each of us to bring our best, to give one another grace, to hold ourselves and each other to high expectations, and to never lose sight of the amazing students who walk through our doors each morning. They deserve a school filled with adults who believe deeply in their potential and who are willing to work together to make that potential a reality.

Here’s to 180 days of Rigor, Power, Equity, and Joy - and to building a UAI that we are all proud to call home.

Bring your running shoes ;)