Hi, welcome.
My name is John Grego and I'm the principal of Russell Sage.
We work really,
really hard to build school spirit and a school community.
We all really work together to build a place where students can
really learn, feel great and succeed.
We do have diverse students. We have motivated students,
we have students that care about one another.
Sage really truly represents queens the most diverse place in
the whole world.
Our sage staff and students come from many different countries
and cultures, every background, every religion, every culture,
we know that it's special no matter where you come from,
no matter what language you speak, everybody is treated equally.
You are a sage owl at the moment you walk through those doors.
That is what creates a family more than just a school.
I've never really experienced anyone being mean to me just
because I'm from somewhere else nor to any of my friends.
They're more welcome. So the overall feeling is wonderful.
I'm very honored to be in the school because the kids and the
students and the teachers, they're so cooperative,
they're so generous.
They really wanna like engage you and really help you coming in?
I only knew a few people from my school and now I know my whole
class and we can all hang out and it would be fine.
And the teachers,
they're very kind and they're very understanding.
All the teachers are really supportive on your way of learning.
Tools are the center of community.
So it's really important to have our families have an input.
So we run lots of meetings with our parents.
We find ways to make everyone feel like they belong.
Principal Grego tells the students even before they become
students at Russell sage when we have orientation is that if
there's something that you want at sage that we don't have,
we want you to come to an administrator, go to a teacher,
go to an adult in the building and say, hey,
I would like this club or I would like this activity.
There are a lot of sign up sheets everywhere around the school
so you can sign up. It's really easy to,
I really appreciated the opportunity to be able to be in all
these different clubs because I'm able to meet new people.
I'm able to meet new teachers,
be more comfortable with the community.
So being involved with these things are definitely ways to form
connections with your peers. All these things,
you are with different kids with different grades.
So it's really fun because you get to meet new people and you
also create a really good relationship with the teacher.
I'm in band and I go to after school strings.
Usually I'm really nervous about meeting people,
but it has introduced me to many new people who have the same
interests as me.
So I'm involved in the math team and that team is basically like
a family.
So I'm in the volleyball team, the girls volleyball team.
I'm in financial literacy. I do band as a talent. It's theater.
They have like student counsel. Yeah,
I'm very thankful for the opportunity because show me like new
things and that I can use further in the future.
We're surrounded by 122 different languages.
Just in this borough alone.
We have adults in the building that speak four and five
different languages in New York City schools.
You know, you're pretty much going to get Spanish or French.
So any time we could throw something else in there to give them
an opportunity to learn something new we can.
So I'm doing Mandarin,
I've done Mandarin since sixth grade with the same teacher.
I would have never thought I would be able to learn Mandarin
because my perception of Mandarin would be um like really
challenging and very difficult.
But honestly, over the course of three years,
it was really easy for me to learn the language.
I've never thought that I would be able to learn Mandarin,
but now I've got to learn how to write it.
The history behind the different traditions and it's,
it's been fun.
We wanna make sure that our students are prepared and so we are
always devoting our time.
We wanna make sure that when they get to high school,
they have the material that they need.
Each class you get to take at the end of the year,
which allows you to get high school credits.
When Principal Grego joined us a few years back and it was only
for algebra.
He sat down with us as a cabinet and said, hey, you know,
I want to offer it to all the kids,
all students no matter what their abilities are to take the
algebra regions in eighth grade, the living environment regions,
the US history regions and the language proficiency exam.
And this year is the first year we're going to be giving that
exam in Spanish, French and Mandarin.
They prepare you like you're in high school the whole year.
So you can get a little feel of high school when you're in
middle school. This is home. Russell Sage is home.
The kids appear to be happy, the staff appears to be happy,
there's learning going on and there's plenty of opportunity.
So this is definitely feels like home.