April 8, 2020
Dear Soon-to-be New BCS Student,
Congratulations! You have recently received notification that you will be joining Brooklyn Collaborative Studies (15K448), starting in our school in September 2020. We are very excited to welcome you to your new school!
The next few years will be a wonderful time of growth for you, leading you on a successful path to high school and college. You will be joining a community of learners with many documented achievements.
We hope you have been transitioning well to remote learning with your current school! We are sure you miss school, your teachers, your friends and so much more, and we hope that you are hanging in there in this new normal.
Ordinarily, we would send information about our spring orientation in this letter! However, in these uncertain times, it is unclear when we will be able to have a larger gathering to welcome you to your new school – we may have to wait until later spring or summer!
In the meantime, please:
- Check out our videos to learn more about Brooklyn Collaborative. Go to the “Families” tab on our website (www.bcs448.org) and start with the Overview video and then continue down the list!
- Click some of our earlier posts to get a taste of what life is like at Brooklyn Collaborative. We post highlights every week on the web!
- Follow us on Instagram (IG: TheCollaborativeChronicle) and see our daily motivational moments!
- Send an email to Scill@bcs448.org (Principal) and Imani@bcs448.org (Assistant Principal) saying hi and letting us know how you’re adjusting to remote learning. Let us know what questions you have about Brooklyn Collaborative and we’ll contact you by phone, email, or Google Meet!
- Let us know if you’d like to speak with a current BCS family and we’ll connect you by email or phone!
- Read about some of the key features of your new school below!
Did you know:
- Brooklyn Collaborative is a diverse community where we celebrate our differences and similarities. Our current demographics are 41% Latinx, 28% Black, 25% White, and 2% Asian. We welcome you into our community to learn in a school with many students from all backgrounds from all over Brooklyn.
- Brooklyn Collaborative engages in regular fieldwork outside the building. Eight times a year, our students participate in Expeditionary Thursdays (ETs). ETs are day-long fieldwork sessions where the regular schedule is suspended and you go outside the school building to pair experiences in the city with classroom learning.
- Brooklyn Collaborative is an EL Education Outward Bound school – we expect all students to participate positively in our Crew advisory structure and in our Outward Bound outdoor experiences. Every student at BCS is in a Crew which you stay with until Grade 8 (Crews loop Grades 6-8 and Grades 9-12). Each semester starts with Crew days to help you orient to the year and meet new friends. Students in Crew learn to be agents of self-change, to take responsibility for their learning, and to develop supportive, mentoring relationships with adults and peers. Crew includes circles, field work, service, academic advising, and team building activities. All BCS 6th graders attend an intensive 3 day/2 night Crew Orientation camping experience with your Crew leaders and Outward Bound staff to develop leadership and collaboration skills.
- Brooklyn Collaborative actively maintains our website. We encourage students, families, and community members to regularly check our site at www.bcs448.org to learn more about what’s going on in our school. Under the Families tab on the website, you can also see videos to learn more about Brooklyn Collaborative. You’re part of our crew now, welcome!
- Brooklyn Collaborative prioritizes academics and character development. We believe that social-emotional learning is an important part of academic achievement. At BCS, we support students in achieving our six core values: kindness, openmindedness, responsibility, persistence, courage and collaboration.
- Brooklyn Collaborative has a New York State-approved Regents waiver – we expect all students in Grades 6-12 to meet rigorous standards to demonstrate graduation and college readiness. Students at BCS take only the ELA Regents as a graduation requirement. In all other subjects, in lieu of the Regents, BCS students complete Mastery Passage PBATs, or Performance-Based Assessment Tasks, which are seven- to ten-page analytical papers researched, developed and revised under the supervision of a faculty mentor and publicly defended before a panel of faculty, peers, and visiting experts. PBATs offer students the opportunity to produce the kind of sophisticated, high-level work typically expected in a college course. Students begin work on this type of writing in Grade 6 and slowly build each year towards their Mastery Passages. PBATs are one of many forms of authentic assessment we use to assess student learning. Read more about the schools with Regents waivers at http://www.performanceassessment.org/
- Brooklyn Collaborative is a college-preparatory secondary school – we expect all students to attend college after graduating from high school. 100% of our seniors are accepted to college every year, and our work supporting college access and success for all students is recognized among the strongest in the entire city. Students who have graduated from Brooklyn Collaborative are attending Bard College, Barnard College, Brandeis University, Cornell University, New York University, Skidmore College, and nearly every SUNY and CUNY school. Check out where BCS graduates have been accepted to college – go to our website (www.bcs448.org), click the Families tab and then College Profile!
If you have any questions, please contact:
- Principal Scill Chan (scill@bcs448.org – 646-483-8644)
- Assistant Principal Imani Matthews (imani@bcs448.org – 646-457-0743)
- Parent Coordinator Tracey Pinkard (tracey@bcs448.org – 347-563-5337)
Sincerely,
Scill, Imani, Tracey