Joe Druskin '84
Lower School Blake Campus Second Grade Teacher
Conferences with Classmates
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Joe Druskin and a group of his students attend Convocation 2005. Druskin says taking part in the annual event is one of the highlights of his school year.
In addition to the yearbooks Joe Druskin collected as a student at Blake is a growing stack of annuals representing the 12 years-and-counting that he has been teaching at his alma mater. Each book is flagged with a yellow post-it note marking the page where that year's second graders smile up at their admiring teacher.
"This was a great class," Druskin says to himself as he taps his fingers across the young faces of students who are now almost college-bound. He scans the faces on the page looking for students whose parents are Blake alums and Druskin's contemporaries. Every year of his career he has had at least one child of an alum; this year he has three.
"It's incredible teaching children of contemporaries of mine," Druskin remarks. "Most friends ask about each other's kids, but how often do you get to sit across the table in a conference and talk about those kids as their teacher?"
At some point during the school year, Druskin will pull out his old yearbooks and show these students pictures of their parents in high school. But he also takes the time to share with all of his students a little bit of Blake history.
"It's not built into the curriculum, but I do look for teachable moments," Druskin says. "I'll tell them, 'Right here, where you're standing, this used to be the playground.'" He tells them about activities he used to do as a student ("I remember Will Fisher's overnight trip") and about those traditions that came and went before he was ever a student here ("Manners used to be graded"). Druskin and his colleagues have also carried on some long-held traditions of Blake second grade, most notably the unit on monarch butterflies.
While Druskin views school history as both noteworthy and important, it is his current students and the present learning that takes place that most impress and motivate Druskin. "As much as I enjoyed my experience as a student here at Blake, what teachers are doing now is even better."
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