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 Update July 19, 2004 Urban Assembly School for Design and Construction Hello, Welcome to the first e-mail update from the Urban Assembly School for Design and Construction. We will send these e-mails periodically to provide you with a brief synopsis of our progress, achievements and future plans. For more detail on any topic, please feel free to contact us. We are grateful for your interest and wonderful support over the past months. As our Urban Assembly colleagues can attest, creating a school can be intimidating and overwhelming. Therefore, to stay focused and concise, we group all of our tasks and initiatives into one of three general categories that identify the essential responsibilities of our school: Student Support/Activities, Teacher Support and Theme Realization & Integration. Student Support and Activities On Wednesday, July 14, 2004, we held our Welcoming Night for Students and Parents. Over 100 people attended, including 60 students. Students met with their advisors for the first time, received their first sketchbook and pencil (and summer assignment) and heard from our principal, Lawrence Pendergast, as well as Richard Kahan, founder and president of the Urban Assembly, and Jennifer Park, an architect who has been instrumental in the forming of the school. We distributed our school handbook and policies and we are currently compiling the surveys that each student and parent completed. Special thanks to everyone who was involved in that evening,especially Claire Dezotell and the Board members of the General Society for Mechanics and Tradesmen, who graciously donated their historic library space at no cost to us. Over the next few weeks, we will invite students to meet with their advisors at the Park West Campus. Advisors will introduce students to their high school building, learn about each students prior educational experience, and set the groundwork for the advisor-advisee relationship. We will plan an ™Introduction to Architectural and Design CareersÓ day in November. Advisory classes will prepare students for discussion on this day, when architects and leaders in the design and construction fields will visit the school to speak with our students about careers and post-secondary education opportunities. Teacher Support We have assembled a fantastic group of teachers. Rebekah Shoaf and Ariel Nadelstern will teach English; Anna Tuazon and Jeremy Epstein will make up our math department; Physics will be taught by Scott Thomas; and Alan Marks, formerly of Park West High School, will bring his experience as a social studies and ESL teacher to UASDC. Three of our teachers were fortunate to attend architecture-education institutes this summer. Ariel Nadelstern attended the Salvadori Institute at the Salvadori Center at City College, and Scott Thomas and Anna Tuazon participated in the Cooper Hewitt Summer Design Institute. Our teachers will be meeting individually with Amy Weisser, an architectural historian, and Jennifer Park, an architect, to discuss how to integrate the theme of architecture into New Yorks mandated curriculum. These two women offer extraordinary perspective and insight. Our teachers and students will benefit from their expertise and generosity throughout the school year. Our summer professional development institute will take place in mid-August for two weeks. Theme Integration and Realization After digesting the advice and ideas of many architects and design educators, we have determined that there are four primary skills that each UASDC graduate should possess: we must teach our students to see, collaborate, critique and present. These themes are applicable across the curriculum and extra-curricular activities, and they can be developed foremost in advisory class. Thank you to everyone who has provided contacts in the field and offered to network on our behalf. Over the next few weeks, we will reach out to these contacts to discuss how we might collaborate over the course of the year. Specifically, we will line up speakers for our Builders Workshop, a monthly forum when design professionals will converse with students about career paths and daily work lives. We are also coordinating field trips throughout the year. Of course, we welcome your involvement in any capacity. We are actively recruiting our architect-in-residence. Thanks to Andrew Bogucki, who has donated his time and creativity to designing our logo and print-identity. All of the designs brilliantly communicate our mission. Our new identity will be unveiled next month. Once again, we would like to thank you for your ideas, contributions, energy and encouragement. You have provided a tremendous foundation of support, and we look forward to building on these relationships. Please feel free to contact us at this e-mail address with any questions or comments.
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