Why I’m Running: Helping Students Reach Their Full Potential

It is in education that we place our hopes for both our children’s futures and our community’s. It is public education where we look to provide equity in an unequal society. It is to schools that we look to see our children supported in developing their unique gifts and pushed to reach their full potential in whatever those gifts are.  

I am a proud product of public schools.   As a high school student I sensed that education was my calling.  At college at the University of Chicago I majored in history and tutored and mentored all four years I was a student there.  Motivated by a desire to help children, and a passion for history as well, after college I came home to New Jersey to fulfill that hope I had.  

I taught American History, World History, Global Studies, and Sociology and had students in grades 9-12.  As a teacher I got to experience the joys of teaching, such as designing curricula, having classroom conversations go off in amazing, unpredicted directions, and seeing students grow in their knowledge of the world and as writers, researchers, and critical thinkers.  I also had frustrations as a teacher, in areas like classroom management and with keeping up with the four distinct, non-overlapping classes. 

I am now a librarian, but I work with students on a regular basis and remain passionately engaged in education. My wife, Megan, was a Teach for America Corps member in the Mississippi Delta for three years and is now the principal of a progressive, public middle school in Manhattan that is one of the highest performing in New York City. Megan is my most important advisor and I am incredibly fortunate to have her on my side during the campaign.   As an observer of the South Orange-Maplewood schools I have seen much that is wonderful. I wish I had gone to schools like the ones here and I cannot wait to have my own children be educated here. Yet, alongside the superior programs and progress there are neglected methods of support for struggling students and some missed opportunities for advanced ones.  

Wayne Eastman, Madhu Pai, and I are not running a Board of Education campaign on a single educational issue.  We are the ticket of ideas, with a broad, positive, and budget-realistic platform. To eliminate the achievement gap we should borrow a strategy used by the charter schools that have actually succeeded in this and find ways to extend learning time through expanded after school academic programs. We should also better integrate summer reading into the curriculum and recognize that students with less proficient reading skills need more of it and that difficulties with reading comprehension are sometimes caused by gaps in knowledge of the subject students are reading about.  We also need to do a better job of helping Newcomers to the district adjust socially and academically. We stand by the inclusion model for special education and believe that the presence of co-teachers benefits all students.  We are also particularly interested in the potential of new technologies as special education tools.

We are also firm believers in the academic, social, and budget values of extracurriculars and want to see our schools have activities like debate, Model UN, Fed Challenge, science competitions, and more.   

With IB and the new Common Core standards, curriculum will be a major focus of the Board in the next several years.  Specifically, this should take the directions of defining and expecting above grade level work in the elementary and middle schools, more writing, bringing complementary non-fiction into classes and a more sophisticated Language Arts curriculum.  In terms of new classes, we would like to see more electives created in 21st century subjects like computer science and robotics, economics, Mandarin, and topics on the non-Western world and more choice in general at Columbia High School.    

As a Board member I also am ready and eager to participate in the operational aspects of supervising a school system, such as taxpayer-conscious budgeting, physical plant maintenance, complying with state and federal mandates, and respectful public questioning of the administration. Also crucial, I feel a keen need to listen to, and respond to, parents, teachers, and students themselves.  

There is no greater honor I can think of than being chosen to be one of its representatives in education. If elected, I pledge to never forget the diversity of students in this community and to keep their unique needs central in my mind.  

For more information, please visit our website, www.votesoma2012.com.  My email is jsbennett70@yahoo.com.  I welcome comments.