EAST BRUNSWICK — Hammarskjold Middle School Principal Dr. JoAnn Susko has been named Principal of the Year by a number of New Jersey educational groups.
Susko, who has been principal of the school since 1988, was notified in May that she is the first to be honored as the Central Jersey Middle School Principal of the Year. Selected for her "visionary leadership," she was given a $10,000 grant to pursue professional development at her school, she said.
The award and grant were given to her by the state Department of Education. She was chosen for the honor by a number of groups, including the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association, the Geraldine Dodge Foundation and the Business Coalition for Educational Excellence.
As part of the award, she was also given a $1,000 personal grant from the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce.
There were nine awards given out, as the Department of Education divided the state into three regions and gave an award to the top high school, middle school and elementary school teacher in each. Susko said 90 teachers throughout the state applied for the awards.
She said the review process was "quite elaborate" and began with a panel review to narrow the field to 18 candidates. The applicants were then called in for interviews, which were followed by site visits to their schools.
Susko was chosen because of her efforts to establish "high expectations" for student learning and her ability to form partnerships with the community.
Two of the programs she said she feels most proud of are mainstays at the middle school.
"Differentiated instruction is a whole philosophy," she said, "because same is not fair for all when it comes to learning. So, we assess kids at a readiness level."
As part of the philosophy, classroom teachers vary assignments based on their students’ perceived "readiness level." This allows for the more "ready" students to be challenged and not become bored, and for other students to avoid becoming frustrated and give up, she said.
Another program she has helped promote is called Character Counts.
"In 1994, (actor) Tom Selleck came and spoke here about character," she said. "He was a national spokesman for the Character Counts Foundation."
As part of the program, students spend 22 minutes a week studying various hypothetical scenarios.
The scenarios are designed to get students thinking about ethical and moral questions. The students are asked how and why they would respond a certain way in the scenario.
Susko said a typical scenario would place a student in the position of needing to decide whether or not to turn in a friend who broke someone’s window.
"Kids are out in the street, and their baseball breaks someone’s window," Susko explains. "The group scatters, and you know who broke it. What do you do?"
Other acts which led to Susko’s selection were the doubling of extra curriculum programs, the initialization of world languages and new strategies of learning, and enhancing the "team concept" at the school.
As part of that concept, teachers are assigned to a group of students in order to make the school, which educates approximately 1,500 students, a warmer place to be.
"It’s to make a smaller community within a larger community," she said. "There’s also a counselor on each team. It’s to make sure kids do not get lost. The kids are with the host teachers for six periods a day and get to know each other. I don’t think they’d survive without it."