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:
- 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?
- 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?
