School of the Week: Bregy’s collaborative efforts lead to students' success

The F. Amedee Bregy School prefers a collaborative approach when it comes to its students, staff, parents and the community around them.

Assistant principal Christina Lee said that approach helps the school focus on educating the whole child.

“At Bregy, we make sure that we’re educating the whole child,” Lee said. “We’re doing that through our academics, programming and focusing on student’s mental health.

“Our partnership addresses the needs of our students, families and the community,” Lee added. “We’re making sure our children enjoy learning.”

Located at 1700 Bigler St., Bregy is a K-8 school whose environment is based on student inquiry and collaboration among faculty and families. Lee said the school is going through a rebranding process.

“Through our research, we found parents are looking for care afterschool; a structured program where it’s a combination of academics, homework and sports,” Lee said.

“Our staff has been ordering equipment for golf, lacrosse, tennis, dance, arts and crafts,” Lee said. “We’re developing a brand new science lab. We’re making sure that when you come into Bregy, you get the Bregy experience.”

Interim principal Yvette Duperon said that having a relationship with the community plays a crucial role in the success of Bregy students.

“We want to make sure that within developing our children, we develop the parents and the community,” Duperon said. “That way, they’re not feeling like they have to go outside of their community to be successful, they can find success right here.

“We recently had a fantastic community meeting that we were invited to,’’ Duperon said. “We had school police, community police and different extracurricular activities.

“Everyone came together to make sure that the children are making progress and that they have the best educational experience possible,” Duperon added.

Duperon said the school will continue to engage the community through various upcoming events.

“We’re going to have a Saturday gathering where we will actually go door to door in the community with our new brochure that we have developed,” Duperon said.

“Since we’re having this brand new school yard, we thought that it would be an amazing time to have an open house at the school,” Duperon added. “Our outreach has gone far beyond just going to a meeting, it’s about bringing the community here.”

To address food insecurity in the community, Bregy started a food pantry with former Bregy student Shanise Wilkerson.

Wilkerson is currently a student at Cabrini University and a fellow with the Pierce Fellowship Program, a program that focuses on issues of hunger and food insecurity.

“Shanise started Bregy’s first school pantry,” said counselor Lisa Bronca. “Her project through the fellowship program is to address and combat the challenges created by food insecurity and hunger in the Philadelphia area.

“With the help from Shanise and donations from various individuals, Philabundance and different churches, we’re able to provide free food items for our students and families,” Bronca added.

Bregy has a school-wide initiative based around social emotional learning. First-grade teacher Nicole Cartagena starts her day off with students with a community meeting.

“We start our day with a greeting where we acknowledge each person’s name and we say ‘good morning’ along with a hug, hi-five or handshake,” Cartagena said.

“That is followed by a sharing portion where each child, we usually do two at a time, talk about what’s going on in their life,” Cartagena said. “We talk about breath work and mindfulness.

“We also do acknowledgements where each child will go and tell another child something that they saw them do great,” Cartagena added. “The morning meeting is a great way for students to talk about their feelings, express themselves and engage with others.”

A huge aspect of the programming at Bregy involves art and music. In addition to having a partnership with Live Connections, the school also has a partnership with Opera Philadelphia where fourth grade students visit the Kimmel Campus and see an opera performance.

“Through our Live Connections partnership, students go to World Cafe Live to listen to real musicians,” said school based teacher leader Susan Woolbert. “They explore music and learn the history of different genres of music.

“We also have a partnership with Enchantment Theatre, which is a creative arts program that works with our fifth-graders,” Woolbert said. “Students create a play based on movement and expression of their bodies.”

Bregy also has a partnership with the Trust for Public Land. The school works with the nonprofit organization for its outdoor learning space.

“They helped us figure out everything with the playground project,” said third-grade teacher Nicole Lynn. “The sixth-graders were given the task to take on the project.

“We’re going to have a huge outdoor space that will include a rain garden, basketball court and an outdoor classroom where students will be doing a lot of project based learning,” Lynn said. “Hopefully, the project will be done in Spring 2023.”