For Immediate Release

Nov. 17, 2009

Contact:  Georgia Sauer, 212.348.2600, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

 

NEW YORK - Harlem Academy - only six years old - is already on the map as one of the premier schools in New York for children who are gifted and talented.   Vincent Dotoli, founder and head of the school, recently served on a New York state panel for gifted and talented students, AGATE, and has been invited to speak at another panel Nov. 23 at the Schomburg Center.

 

AGATE (Advocacy for Gifted and Talented Education), which sponsored the first conference,  invited panelists from the most prestigious public and private schools in New York. 

         

"It is interesting to talk to educators from other schools and share ideas and programs," Dotoli said. "l learned about the use of Latin in elementary and middle schools and about a leadership program in peer mediation."

           

Two of Harlem Academy's programs which garnered interest from the other schools were Harlem Academy's environmental science studies in partnership with the New York Restoration Project as well as the school's work with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where representatives from the art museum visit the school and the students visit the museum. 

           

Dotoli is looking forward to the panel at the Schomburg Center conference  -"Quality Education in the Black Community" - where about 300 people are expected to attend.  Panelists include policy makers, academics, administrators, teachers, and activists. 

            

The conference, which is free and open to the public, will be 7 p.m. Nov. 23 in the Langston Hughes Auditorium of the Schomburg Center, held in conjunction with an exhibition - "Courage: The Vision to End Segregation, the Guts to Fight for It." For more information, call (212) 491-2229.

             

"To me, these panels are a great opportunity to get the word out about Harlem Academy," Dotoli said. 

              

Harlem Academy, an academically rigorous independent school for children whose aptitude for success in higher education might otherwise go unrealized,  was founded in 2004 with first-grade.  Presently, there are 96 students in first- through sixth-grade, with plans to add a grade a year until eighth-grade.