Brook Glenn Elementary, with a tradition for excellence and challenged by poverty and diversity, is dedicated to building a partnership among home, school, and community. We provide educational opportunity through standards-based curriculum and high - quality instruction so that all students will develop the World Class Skills of the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate by working alongside families and community. We encourage our students to be innovative, creative; and we provide opportunities to utilize critical thinking skills. At Brook Glenn, we celebrate our differences and diversity through achieving, believing, and caring in an inclusive, safe, and student-centered learning environment where everyone can learn and become better thinkers and independent learners. We provide a caring and academically challenging learning environment, which cultivates and nurtures lifelong learners to excel in an interdependent global society. We know that students learn best when they are safely in school.
While, Brook Glenn was not identified as a Support and Improvement School, we participated. We focused on the continuous implementation of evidence-based interventions, practices, and strategies such as guided math and reading groups; RTI, instructional rounds; coaching cycles, etc.; alongside school district Teaching and Learning personnel.
To assist our students who experienced learning loss in reading, we utilized common interventions such as Morning Tutorials for grades 2nd - 5th and Reading Interventionists who not only worked with students in 4K – 5th grades but as classroom teachers when no substitute teachers could be obtained. Extended Day Program funds were used to hire a part-time tutor, who was fluent in Spanish, to work with our Multi-Lingual students.
To strengthen the teaching and learning in math, we shifted away from teaching mathematics to students and moved to teaching children mathematics which enabled our students to become problem solvers and to have a voice in explaining how to solve math problems. To reduce the stress of learning math facts, we continued usage of the math on-line program, Reflex. We continued our focus on guided math. Our Literacy Coach and Instructional Coach provided coaching cycles for first year and veteran teachers in reading, math, and classroom management. Opportunities were provided for interventionists, literacy coach, and teachers to analyze data, collaborate, and identify students who could benefit from extra support and unit planning.
At Brook Glenn, the pandemic helped us break the chains of 51-year old traditions and look to the future in innovative and unique ways to delivery instruction and meet student needs. We acknowledge our responsibility to help our students connect learning with real life and provide them with the necessary skills to prepare them for success with world class skills and life and career characteristic to be successful in the 21st Century and beyond.
Jordan L. O'Toole, Principal Carrie Silver, SIC Chairperson
