ERC Co-Founder Dr. Larry Myatt was an invited panelist at the Tenth Anniversary celebration for the New Haven Academy. An audience of students, staff, district officials, and regional educators were in attendance as panel members addressed the importance of preparing students for citizenship and the importance of schools reflecting on their practices and culture through networking. The New Haven Academy is a member of the Coalition of Essential School and the Facing History network, and according to Co-Principal Gregory Baldwin, the ideas and principles of those networks were instrumental in helping to give the school a focus on personalization, intellectual growth and service in its early years.

Meredith Gavrin, the Academy’s other Co-Principal shared stories of the school’s impact on students and teachers and their commitment to big ideas that challenge their students to think deeply and demonstrate their work to outside observers through portfolios and public exhibitions, an Essential schools practice. Also invited to be on the panel was Marc Skvirsky of the Facing History and Ourselves Institute in Boston, who lauded the authenticity of the school’s approach to curriculum and willingness to delve deeply into history to learn about the present. New Haven Academy is a district magnet school of the New Haven Public Schools. Dr. Myatt and Principal Baldwin met in the mid-1990’s during Myatt’s Thompson Fellowship at Brown University where Mr. Baldwin was a graduate intern at CES.