Our spring program was a big success as students enjoyed the mix of classroom instruction and training. The spring program provided a brief but thorough introduction to our full year program. In the classroom, students worked hard to reinforce math concepts alongside their personal development lessons in decision making, service/gratitude, and leadership. It was very nice to see some of the activities they logged over the 8 week period in the areas of service, leadership, and personal growth.

With Mr Grimes, the students discussed articles, learned effective strategies for conducting research, and established a toolkit they will be able to use in the future when working on research and writing assignments.

Highlights included a session with Jon Schwartz who is a long time senior executive in multiple sports leagues and professor of journalism at NYU. Mr Schwartz spoke about the importance of having an ‘elevator pitch’, following directions, and how to apologize. We took away some very useful advice from our discussion. Another thrill was our meeting with an active Navy Seal Commander. He spoke to us about his views on teamwork and leadership; how his own style evolved from growing up in Rockland County, to playing hockey at the Naval Academy, and on to over 15 years leading an elite special forces team.

Each of our classroom sessions was followed by an hour in the gym with Coach Joe. It was great to see the progress made in even the short time we worked together as each week students were able to complete more rounds and reps, and moved more comfortably through the exercises.