Claremont, along with the rest of the district has kicked off our restorative restart; an effort to ensure that our school site is better aligned to support ALL students and families. We are hoping you have already felt a few of our initiatives, such as centering relationships with small advisories and making learning relevant and rigorous with our block scheduling and multiple opportunities for elective, intervention or study periods built into the schedule. We also hope you took advantage of our Knights reunite event this past weekend, also part of our restorative restart.
Over the next few weeks we are hoping to focus on another initiative within the restorative restart: empowering teams to reimagine and rebuild systems. Each week we plan to feature a different role or team that works with our staff to support addressing the whole child. This week we will start with the dean role, one that isn’t new to Claremont, but is one of the many supports that Claremont has to offer.
The dean is the grade level representative and liaison for anything happening outside of the classroom and should be the first point of contact for anything that is not specifically curricular. On a regular basis, you may see deans supervising students at lunch, running an assembly or organizing a field trip. Students would check in with the dean if they were interested in starting a club/other leadership role, if they were a part of or concerned about friends involved in a conflict, or if they were having another struggle and didn’t quite know the next step. Parents would reach out to the dean if they were worried about a social issue or if they were seeing a trend in multiple classes of worrisome academic performance. The dean often works closely with the community schools manager and the restorative justice team who will be featured in future weeks, as well as the grade level teaching staff and office staff!
Meet your Deans:
Ms. Lefkowitz is the 6th grade dean and Assistant Principal! She started teaching history at Claremont 15 years ago and 4 years ago, with Mr. Moore, helped to create the dean role as it exists today!
Ms. Sawyer is the 7th grade dean. It is her first year at Claremont and has over 17 years in education!! She has experience in Colorado and San Leandro!
Mr Chiparo is the 8th grade dean. It is his first year at Claremont and 15th year as an educator!! Most of his career has been in San Francisco!
Feel free to contact your grade level deans using the following.
Ms. Lefkowitz – Lacy.Lefkowitz@ousd.org
Ms. Sawyer – Jessica.Sawyer@ousd.org
Mr. Chiparo – Chad.Chiparo@ousd.org