District News

Entering her 3rd year of teaching at the start of September brought forth a new level of excitement for Alex Haenny. No longer new to the school,  and now equipped with experience and a thorough understanding of the district, she leapt forward into yet another new beginning with confidence and passion for her chosen profession.

Ms. Haenny joined the Somerset Hills School District in 2023 as a math teacher at Bernardsville Middle School. This year, she is teaching Math 7 which she enjoys as students dive deeper into topics like rational numbers, proportional relationships, and multi-step equations. Additionally, she is teaching Math I/E for 6th graders which is a cycle class covering statistics. “One of my favorite units is teaching percentages which strengthens critical thinking and problem solving skills,” shared Ms. Haenny. “I love seeing students understand discounts and markups through real life examples.” This learning enhances financial literacy at a young age.  

Ms. Haenny is looking forward to growing as an educator and collaborating with colleagues. She is eager to seek out professional development opportunities as well. One math workshop she will attend this fall is geared towards mathematical interactives which she will then turnkey to students making learning more hands-on. A goal of Ms. Haenny’s is to have her classes participate with exploration activities as much as possible, allowing them to experiment with new concepts prior to the lessons. For example, before they get a list of the mathematical rules of rational numbers, she provides them with integer counters to investigate and find the patterns. In doing so, students are able to discover the rules on their own. “I feel this helps students  grasp the concepts more adeptly at the start, followed soon thereafter by procedural fluency,” she shared.  In her classroom, Ms. Haenny encourages students to share their work on a whiteboard or document camera so they can learn from one another, and feel less encumbered by any mistakes. It is an important life lesson she feels, to acknowledge that mistakes happen, and when they do, to take them in stride and grow from them.

As many in Somerset Hills know, Bernardsville Middle School was recently named a Capturing Kids’ Hearts Rising Star School! The implementation of the CKH motivational program kicked off schoolwide, in September 2024. The program fosters a relationship-driven culture. It does so via a framework for building a rapport with students based upon research showing that students need to feel safe and connected to their teachers to maximize learning. For the past two years, Ms. Haenny has created CKH contracts with her middle school students and feels it helps to create a positive learning environment. During the process, students and their teacher(s) establish very clear and agreed upon expectations. Addressed are how students want to be treated by their teacher, how the teacher wants to be treated by his/her students, and how any conflict should be handled. In Ms. Haenny’s classes they also pick a focus word each marking period which has changed between respect, engagement, and kindness to name a few. One thing is for sure, that only selecting one focus word to describe Alex Haenny would be hard as she is dedicated, motivated, supportive, caring and so much more! We are sure that she will inspire many BMS students to enjoy and appreciate mathematics this school year.