POINT PLEASANT — Point Pleasant Borough represented at the NJAMLE Conference earlier this month, both given presentations and participating in a variety of exercises.
On Wednesday, March 19, a group of Point Pleasant Borough School District educators and administrators participated in a day of learning, connecting and collaborating at the annual New Jersey Association for Middle Level Education (NJAMLE) Conference at Brookdale Community College.
This year’s conference theme was “Cultivating the Middle: Growing Middle Level Education in the Garden State.”
The day kicked off with an interactive keynote from Thomas C. Murray, titled, “Creating Cultures of Empathy and Joy.” Murray is an educator, best-selling author and speaker who serves as the Director of Innovation for Future Ready Schools. The conference offered 30 sessions, with topics ranging from Artificial Intelligence (AI) and arts integration to strategies for empowering future leaders and cultivating resilience in education. Attendees explored sessions based on their interests.
The Point Pleasant Borough School District sent 12 attendees to this conference. Of the 12, three are members of the NJAMLE Leadership Team, and two were conference presenters.
Memorial Middle School math teacher Jennifer Fitzgerald serves as the current NJAMLE President. Additionally, Point Pleasant Borough High School English teacher Lynn Thompson serves as treasurer and District Webmaster/Community Education Specialist Sarah Ulaky handles the organization’s communications.
“The 2025 NJAMLE Annual Conference was a wonderful experience,” Fitzgerald said. “We were thrilled to learn, share, connect and grow with middle level educators from all around the state. We are thankful to our sponsors, keynote speaker, presenters, and all our attendees for an amazing day.”
Point Pleasant Borough High School math teacher Stephanie Fuchilla-Goracy and Memorial Middle School math teacher Lauren Bardsley joined forces to present a dynamic session titled “Adapting Traditional Math Lessons to a Model Lesson for Building Thinking Classrooms.”
In this session, attendees learned how to adapt a traditional direct instruction lesson into a “Building Thinking Classrooms” (Peter Liljedahl) framework lesson, focusing on thin-slicing, consolidating, and assessing via an exit ticket.
This is an excerpt of the print article. For more on this story, read The Ocean Star—on newsstands Friday or online in our e-Edition.
Check out our other Point Pleasant Boro stories, updated daily. And remember to pick up a copy of The Ocean Star—on newsstands Friday or online in our e-Edition.
Subscribe today! If you're not already an annual subscriber to The Ocean Star, get your subscription today! For just $38 per year, you will receive local mail delivery weekly, with pages and pages of local news and online access to our e-edition on Starnewsgroup.com.
 6x10 4c.jpg)
