Please join us as celebrate excellence in teaching! On May 9^th, the EGTA will honor Linda Kaminski as EGTA’s Teacher of the Year. The celebration will take place at Moscatiello’s Restaurant, Troy Road. Hors D’oeuvres, soda, wine and beer will be served, courtesy of EGTA. Come join the festivities. 

Some highlights from Linda's career include:

• As a member of the Green Meadow staff, Linda has been the driving force behind the implementation of reading strategies based on current research. Because she is so driven and word got out about her expertise, she not only has led several staff meetings regarding new strategies, but other elementary schools in the district have requested her to be a professional development presenter and book talk leader on the strategies she is using. These are always well attended and received.   

• Several on-going efforts in which she is involved include the creation of an on-line pictorial archives of the history of the school. Along with this she has helped create Document Based Questions and exercises related to the NYS learning standards and testing for all grades K-5.  This is added to as new pictures of the school are taken and events happen. The second effort is related to character education – a subject that is near and dear to Linda’s heart. She and the school librarian have spearheaded an in-house news show involving students in the creation of the news topics and writing their own “words of wisdom” to present. Through her efforts a parent who is a professional videographer for a local TV station has come into the school to teach children how to run the equipment and create the video. This has been a labor of love that has taken two years to complete, but we are viewing our first ever show on Friday, June 3^rd!

The East Greenbush Central School District recognizes and supports recently enacted New York State legislation that allows public employees up to four hours of paid personal leave for the purpose of undertaking a breast or prostate cancer screening.  Should you wish to avail yourself of this right, you should follow the following steps...

At Green Meadow, Betsy Van Deusen completed a  6 week online writing course...

Jackie Timmany-White and Belinda Gould visited Haiti this past summer.  The trip  was funded in part by a district professional development grant.  ... more of the article to come, I asked Jackie and Belinda to provide me with an article...