School District: Jersey City Public Schools
State: New Jersey
Product: Teaching Guides and AP Test Prep

Shmoop Brings Literature to Life in Jersey City

What comes to mind when you think of New Jersey? Maybe you think of the boardwalk, "The Boss," Tony Soprano, or summer days "down the shore." You wouldn't be wrong, but did you know that the Garden State has one of the highest performing K-12 education systems, in terms of test scores and graduation rates, in the country? Well, it's true and we've been able to work with one of the most innovative districts in the state.

Welcome to Jersey City!

Jersey City Public Schools (JCPS) is made up of 38 preK-12 schools, serving a little over 30,000 students. Today, students and teachers in JCPS are using Shmoop tools in a variety of ways - from our ACT, SAT, and AP test prep to using our online teaching and learning guides to improve students' engagement with instruction. However, our story with the district began in 2016 when school leaders took interest in leveraging digital resources to help foster more project-based learning (PBL).

That's because PBL is RWL (real-world learning), where students spend their classroom time developing the skills needed to be college-, career-, and citizenship-ready. Many school leaders are using technology-enhanced resources (raising our hands here) to cultivate this dynamic and relevant approach to education.

Shmoop prides itself on providing teachers and students with a suite of digital resources that promote an engaging and active learning experience. And while our content is always delivered with humor, we're no slouches in the rigor department, either. We always strive to go beyond regurgitation and into examination and scintillation that breeds fascination! Learning is always fun, but it is also, unmistakably, learning.

Making Jonathan Swift as Relatable as Taylor Swift 

Teachers at JCPS are using Shmoop in a variety of ways. For example, when it came time for a group of Creative and Critical Writing students to read and analyze Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, their instructor was able to leverage our Teaching Guide to provide supplementary materials including quizzes, activity ideas, and discussion questions. These materials equipped students with the skills to analyze themes, develop in-depth characterizations, and identify a variety of literary elements from the novel. In addition, students and teachers could keep track of their progression over time, which put the learning process squarely in their hands.

"The Teaching Guide provided me with a plethora of standards-aligned lesson plan activities and assessments," says Nathaniel Wallace, an English teacher at Dr. Ronald E. McNair Academic High School. "These resources allowed for my students to dive into the story of Lemuel Gulliver by augmenting the scope of learning activities and tie in related history and current events to help students in 2018 relate to a character from 1726."

AP? A-Plus!

Another teacher recalls how students in Advanced Placement Language Arts classes felt their high scores (4s and 5s) on the AP test were due, in part, to practice that they received using Shmoop resources. "Students felt changed by the advanced vocabulary in the passages, and the complexity of text offered in the drills, so it was certainly worthwhile for me to implement it into daily instruction," says Fortunato Kelly, also an English teacher at McNair HS.

For English language arts teachers, Shmoop Teaching Guides are designed to help supplement in-classroom learning with fun, engaging, and relatable learning materials that bring literature to life. And at JCPS, teachers have used the guides to go above and beyond by helping students develop standards-aligned skills that support the district's focus on PBL.

Interested in getting Shmoop into your school or district? Email sales@shmoop.com and let our sales team know who you are and what you're looking for.

Just have a question about something in Shmoopland? Hit us up at support@shmoop.com. We'll get back to you in the blink of a cursor.

_{AP is a registered trademark of the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product.}