Branchburg Township School District

At our March 22nd Board of Education meeting Mrs. Joyce turned the floor over to Ms. Gensel for her Superintendent Presentations. Ms. Gensel began;  

“I am very excited tonight with the guests that we have with us. When you work in a school system there are folks in the school system that are your go to people and your work horses and you know that whenever there is something that needs to be done these are the people who typically raise their hand to volunteer to do something or who are interested in learning something new or sharing information with their colleagues. They are pretty much our unsung heroes of the district. The group that is before us tonight are some of the most passionate educators that I’ve ever known who when there is a job to be done or learning to be done or anything that needs attention on behalf of our students and in support of our students these are representative of the people who do that work. I think that as a Board of Education I would like for you to know who these people are, to recognize their faces and to understand the commitment that they have to the students of Branchburg. The three groups of people that we are recognizing tonight are folks who have joined something that we call our aspiring leaders academy and these are people who spend time after school looking to see what it’s like to be an administrator of some sort within the school system. We’ve actually used the Board of Education agenda as our guide and each time that we’ve met we looked at a different part of the board agenda and all of the components of education that fall under that realm. We’ve done things that fall under the business committee and we’ve looked at budgets, we’ve done things that fall under personnel and we’ve looked at some of the legal cases and tenure cases and what decisions administrators in a school system have to make when they look at the people who are in the system. Our next coming meeting we are going to be looking at teacher evaluation and how you look at what an effective teacher is doing in the classroom and as an administrator when you go in to do an observation what is it that you want to see in the classroom from your teachers. I’ll introduce you to some of the future leaders in Branchburg hopefully and the future administrators that may come across your path moving forward as either a team leader in the district, a building principal, as a district administrator.  

The next group of people that we are going to be recognizing tonight is people who have chosen to teach their colleagues as presenters at some sort of in-service presentation that we’ve done. You’ve heard me talk many times about the EdCamp that we do where teachers get to choose their professional development. The people who are here with us tonight are the people who have said “I can teach that, I know how to do that. I will share that information with my colleagues.” They spend time planning, organizing and presenting in a way that was appealing. To stand up in front of your peers to teach is very intimidating. You want to be perceived as someone who’s effective and engaging so you spend a lot of time putting that together. These are the people who presented at our EdCamp, on some of our teaching Tuesday’s, or at opportunities within their schools to teach their colleagues what they know, so that their colleagues can become more effective at what they know and do.

The last group of people that we’re recognizing tonight are teachers in the classroom who have chosen to devote a whole semester of time as a cooperating teacher for a student intern or a student teacher. To begin to describe the work that, that involves is almost impossible because you have someone who wants to enter the profession, who is completely wet behind the ears they have had all of the course work that they need to be a teacher but none of the actual experience that they need. They walk into the classroom a little bit cocky in some ways, I’m ready, I can be a teacher and then the level of actual knowledge that they have about what it takes to be a teacher that you don’t get in any classroom, that’s what they get from their cooperating teachers. These teachers who have sponsored these interns in their classroom are to be commended because they are doing almost double work for that whole semester that they are there because they are teaching their students and then they are teaching their intern. They are teaching their students and making sure that what their intern is teaching their students is appropriate and engaging and rigorous enough for the kids in their classroom so I want to recognize the commitment they have as well to the students of Branchburg.”

Congratulations to these teachers:

Ms. Gensel and Ms. Linskey presented the 2018-2019 Updated Preliminary Budget and Ms. Gensel then presented the Student Safety Data System Mid-Year Report for September - December 2017.