Schultz, Julie
Mrs. Julie Schultz
5th grade
Room 304
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Where she lives: Suffolk County, Long Island
Teaching since: 1992
Teaching at P.S.8 since: 2007
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Julie Schultz adores P.S.8 enough to commute two hours to work each way. She lives with her husband, a high school teacher, and their 2 terriers in Suffolk Country and calls the LIRR her second home. She reads and sleeps on the train and does all her prep work.
Ms. Schultz worked at P.S. 148 and P.S. 111 in Queens, before she enrolled in the Department of Education's City Hall Academy, a Lab School for Enrichment and Best Practices for Social and Literacy Studies. For three years she hosted New York city students and teachers, giving them a two-week intensive unit about civic education.
A few years ago, she met a class from P.S.8 that participated in this program. Mrs Schultz immediately felt drawn to them. "The kids were so comfortable with each other and with their teacher," she says. "Of all the schools I had worked with, P.S.8 was at the top of my list." When the City Hall Academy folded, P.S.8 was the first school she applied to. "Here I am, marveling at my luck to be part of this amazing team," she says. Ms. Shultz especially appreciates the cooperative atmosphere among the staff, praising the weekly meetings of the teachers in each grade.
Social studies are Julie Schultz' strength and joy, and this is very obvious when entering her classroom, which is wallpapered with facts about presidents, government, and being a citizen of a democracy. The 5th grade curriculum is all about U.S. government, and Ms. Schultz approaches the topic in a multi-layered way, including arts, music and math. "We even figured out how many minutes it took to write the Declaration of Independence," she says.
Ms. Schultz points out that testing is not a focus at P.S 8. "Good teaching is test prep," she says, explaining her own and Mr. Phillip's approach, adding, "Children graduating from P.S.8 have a very good chance of standing out. They are perfectly prepared for middle school."
Mrs. Schultz majored in English at Ohio State University. While working at a summer camp as an instructor, she realized that teaching was meant for her. She moved to New York in the mid-nineties and received her Masters Degree in Multicultural Education at Mt. Saint Vincent in the Bronx.
Posted on: April 13, 2008
