Michelle Brochu
Assistant Principal

Before coming to Henry Street, Michelle was the co-founder and co-director of the Bronx Lab School, a new high school on the Evander Childs campus in the Bronx. Prior to starting Bronx Lab, she was an A.U.S.S.I.E. educational consultant/coach in literacy. She spent many of the last several years working with teachers in middle and high school classrooms in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx, designing engaging curricula, planning effective lessons, developing authentic assessments, and demonstrating effective literacy instruction. She has led workshops for both new and veteran teachers on: Purposeful Planning; Curriculum Mapping; Reading and Writing Workshop; the Tenets of Balanced Literacy; Found Poetry; The Art of Read Aloud; Multi-genre Teaching; Literate Classrooms, and Literature Circles among others.

She is a former Rehabilitation Counselor, and High School English, Drama and Art Teacher. She worked extensively with the chronic mentally ill population and with at-risk students, many of whom were court ordered to attend school. She encouraged her students to find their voices, to discover the wonder and magic of books, to appreciate the nuance of language, and to believe in themselves. She fostered partnerships with the local arts community by arranging for her students to attend theatre, dance, opera, and music performances for free and by hosting guest poets in her classroom. She developed a writing curriculum where students were able to synthesize their understanding of various literary techniques, such as rhythm, tone, voice, mood and syllabic stress through drumming. As a result, students listened to each other in ways they hadn’t before; they became members of a diverse community that respected the value of the individual in the sound of the whole. She inspired her students to perform regularly-- on the p.a. system in her classroom and on the microphones of local venues. Several of her students even read their poetry and prose on a live radio broadcast!

She is also a performance poet, an actor, a singer, a yogi, and an exhibiting artist. When she is not at Henry Street, you might catch her in a headstand, leading a Kirtan at a Yoga studio, sketching on the subway, or performing in a local venue.

She is committed to empowering students and teachers by developing assessment driven instruction that is reflective, creative, differentiated, and collaborative.