Personal relationships help Park School teacher guide young charges

The 16 students in Jon Ross-Wiley’s fifth-grade classroom have one foot in pre-adolescence and one foot in childhood. Their 34-year-old teacher deftly guides them from math to social studies to a lesson in Web page design and then, at 3 p.m., takes most of the boys out to the soccer field.

Jon is now in his second year at The Park School in Brookline, but has been teaching since graduating from Bowdoin College with a degree in government. He is the child of two educators; his father is an elementary school principal in Amherst, and his mother is a guidance counselor at a school for the arts in New Haven. Jon began his career in New Haven teaching high school, but found his niche as a relatively rare male elementary school teacher.

“I love teaching at this level. Everyday is different, but I know that I can take the curriculum and make real-life connections for the kids,” he says. “I love sharing my personal stories in the classroom. The kids respond very positively to getting to know their teacher as a person.”

Fifth-graders at Park study language arts, math and social studies with one of three homeroom teachers. The students visit the art, music and science “specialists” each two times per week.

Teachers at Park are encouraged to make their individual marks on the curriculum. This year, Jon has launched a public (password protected) class Web page, rosswileyclass.pbwiki.com. Four times each week, Jon wheels the laptop cart into his room and the kids get to work.

“The students put extra polish on their work because they know it’s being published on the Web,” he says.

Each student’s page features examples of their writing — short stories and haikus — and some of the pages also feature audio versions of the kids reading their stories.

Jon, who played lacrosse and football in college, now coaches three sports at Park. He works with older students (ages 12-15) as the boys’ varsity basketball coach in the winter and the boys’ varsity lacrosse coach in the spring.

This fall, he is also coaching two-thirds of the fourth- and fifth-grade boys in soccer. The players on the fourth- and fifth-grade team have a real mix of abilities; some have been playing since they were tiny, and some are just trying it out for the first time.

“I like having the kids see a different side of me,” Jon says. “The boys in my class get to know me as a coach as well as their teacher, which helps to bring lessons about teamwork back to the classroom.

Jon’s heritage brings other lessons into the classroom, too.

“Due to the fact that my father is African American and my mother is white and Jewish, I’m always aware of diversity, but I don’t identify with one race or ethnic group more than the other,” he explains. “One thing that struck me about Park is that it has made a real institutional commitment to diversity. There are thought-provoking events put on by the Parents’ Association and student organizations like One World Club and the Gay Student Association.”

Jon said he feels the school does not have an exclusive feel, and that Park strives to ensure a broad range of economic diversity — approximately 25 percent of Park students receive financial aid.

“In my fifth-grade classroom, I want to make sure the kids connect the dots on the term ‘diversity,’” he says.

Park presently has a large construction project underway to build a new fourth- and fifth-grade wing and renovate and expand all current Lower School classrooms. Beginning in the fall of 2008, Park will expand its enrollment in grades one through five by adding eight children to each grade level. Although the overall size of the Lower School will increase, the individual classes will in fact decrease, from 16 students in three sections to 14 students in four sections at each grade level.

“This is a great opportunity to continue the school’s commitment to finding great kids from varied backgrounds,” Jon says. “I can’t wait to see what the new classrooms look like and, more than that, I am really looking forward to being at Park during this transition.”