LWA celebrates its centennial

Lawrence Woodmere Academy will mark its 100th anniversary with several events throughout the 2012-’13 school year, a technology upgrade and welcoming a new Upper School director.

Initially the Woodmere Academy was founded in 1912, when Clarence G. Galston, a young lawyer living in Woodsburgh who had two children, met with a half dozen families from the Rockaway Peninsula. That meeting led to the formation of a private school in a house at the intersection of Woodmere Boulevard and Central Avenue. In 1990, the Woodmere Academy merged with the Lawrence Country Day School to become LWA.

“I am so pleased to be opening our school doors for our one-hundredth year,” said Headmaster Alan Bernstein. “We intend to have a yearlong celebration of our school’s history and the history of our shared community. This is a very proud moment for all of us.”

The events will reflect on the school’s past and ambitions — shared by faculty and staff, parents, students and alumni —for a second century that leaves as a rich a legacy of scholarship and community service as its first, according to Robbie Brenner, the Woodmere’s school director of Development and Alumni Relations.

All three levels of the school, Lower, Middle and Upper, will reap the benefits of additional technology. A dozen new SMART and Eno boards were purchased, and then installed in classrooms in each of LWA’s academic divisions.

These 12 new boards add to the existing sizable collection and will help in increasing interactive learning and the sharing of audio, video and web-based resources within the classroom. Art teachers will be able to demonstrate brushstrokes by projecting their live-action movements to the entire class using a document camera. Biology students will be able to enlarge cells and filmstrips using a microscope attachment to the camera for more in-depth analysis.

Behind the scenes, a server upgrade will assist in creating a safer and more secure technological environment for the school helping students take on increasingly complex digital projects and produce larger sized ones.

LWA's technology coordinator and teacher Robin Wilensky said that the infrastructure improvements will give the school greater ability to support bot operational and educational technology.

"It will allow teachers and students to collaborate in new ways both within LWA and beyond, bringing authenticity and global perspectives to the forefront of their and their peers' education," Wilensky said.

Cynthia Webb will now be patrolling the halls and visiting classrooms in the Upper School. Webb, a former practicing lawyer turned educator, takes the reins from the retired Shelley Silbering.

Webb was previously at the German School in Manhattan, where she developed the Advanced Placement English program, chaired the English department and oversaw college guidance for students. She recently earned her master’s degree from the highly selective Private School Educational Leadership program at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

Upper School students will be the beneficiaries of changes in the curriculum. College preparatory study tools such as time management, organizational strategies and approaches to different types of tests and assessments will be discussed during a newly created freshman seminar.

There will also be a sophomore seminar “Navigating Naviance’s Method Test prep” that will focus on SAT and ACT test-taking practice and strategy. Juniors and seniors still receive the time-tested writing skills, vocabulary and college application process seminars. More than 50 college and university admissions offices sent representatives to LWA last fall to meet with the school’s juniors and seniors in a small groups and that number is expected to increase this year.

This year, the middle school expands its existing Global Concerns class work to include independent study and small group projects. Every year, officials from Global Concerns, an international aid organization, visits students and leads lecture- and project-based learning geared to expanding their worldviews and educate them about the most important issues facing the world’s poorest nations.

In addition, there will be an expanded writing program, including dedicated writing classes for the middle school, while the theme “Reflect and Respect” will be a vital component of the curriculum in the Lower School.